My wife and I have been a victim of what appears to be Wells Fargo's standard policy of stealing from their customers.
What started out as a bank error cost me $535.00 in overdraft fees. This is after the bank admitted that the error was their fault.
My wife and I were unemloyed recently and heve subsequently been on a tight budget. However we have maintained our finances meticulously so as to avoid the problems that we have had because it seems that the bank cannot do what it requires of its customers.
We have an automatic withdrawl come out on the 5th of every month, and this is where the problem came in. On the 5th of May this transaction was made, no problem. The problem came 25 days later when the once a month transaction was put through on the 30th of May, six days early.
On the 2nd of June we recieved a notice from Wells Fargo that our account was overdrawn by $11.98 because of this transaction, and they had assesed us a $90.00 fee for paying this and for being overdrawn. Thus we were now overdrawn by $101.98. On June 2nd we had deposited the money to cover that transaction.
On June 3rd we recieved another notice that the transactions we had preformed over the weekend had been assesed fees because we had been overdrawn. We did have the money to cover all of our transactions, "IF" the bank had not made their error on the automatic withdrawl.
We went into our local branch to resolve this problem and were told that they could not help us. Although we had been banking at that branch for the last 8 years, and have been banking there since it became Wells Fargo after they took over First Security Bank, we had to go to the branch where we had opened our account 14 years ago which is 75 miles away.
We drove the distance to that branch and were told by the manager there, Wendy Colibert, "Yes, I can see where the problem started. It was our error. When we put this original transaction through and the subsequent fees, it caused a snow ball effect."
So after admitting that they were in the wrong, and that none of the resulting fees would have happened if the bank had not messed up, her solution was to reverse the first $90.00 in fees, although this left $535.00 in additional fees that were a direct result of the banks error, but she said that because at the time we were overdrawn she would not reverse the larger portion of fees, because "In her view they were valid because, though we would not have been overdrawn if we had not been assesed the original fees, at the time the transactions had been presented to the bank we had ween overdrawn."
At this time we are taking this to the regional manager to try and get this resolved. I will say that our local branch manager has been very helpful, though she can do nothing about it because it is up to the manager at your "Home" branch, she does agree that they are responsible for all costs, and she is talking to the regional manager for us.
It seems to me from research that I have done, that this greedy institution makes it a habit to prey on those who are poor or in difficult circumstances. I wonder, what is "The Next Stage"? Not Customer Service.
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