Wells Fargo Denies Opting Out of overdraft protection
In Sept Wells Fargo PR made public address this option on bank accounts was offered, due to 1) the criticism to excessive Overdraft fees that has gone to Class Action Law suits and 2) new bills being introduced by Senator Christopher Dobbs to curb this excess cost to low and middle income customers.
When I tried to get over draft removed from my two checking accounts that have ATM cards associated to them I was told Wells could not do that because the cards have a Visa name on them. They said the accounts must remain with overdraft, and I will continue to get fees if the account go negative.
I have been hit with 13 $35 fees in the last month over a 4 day weekend, Thanksgiving. The issue is with two debit cards on two checking accounts. Getting the wrong card used along with checks on these accounts. The combination can get overdrawn over a long weekend. The bank will approve all the tranactions even when it knows the account is overdrawn. I have seen on weekend from my home computer that the ATM transactions are debited from the account almost within minutes of the transaction. But not until Monday early AM does Wells Fargo then sort all the transactions by highest dollar amount for the weekend (Starting PM Friday) to debit from the prior Friday early AM starting balance. This will make the smallest transactions be last. The more of these there are then the more fees they can charge. So the bank processes the Monday am debits not in the order they were approved but to get the most fees from a customer if they are overdrawn. At no time does the Bank let the customer know by phone call, Twitter, e-mail or denying the ATM bebit card transaction. Not until usually Tuesday does an E-mail get sent and then two days later a letter is sent. However, I have since found out if you try to just get cash from the account that ATM transaction will be denied by a Wells ATM machine.
I have even tried to transfer funds between account on a Saturday night when I get home to the computer and this does not work. The transfer of funds into the account is not done until after they have charged the fees on Monday early AM.
Wells is deliberately taking money from those who can least afford to have fees assessed on them. None of the people who have excess cash in checking accounts are impacted by this practice. But the 10% unemployed, the 10% under employed and the 30% low and 30% middle income are heavily impacted.
The Banks are making as much money as possible with Charge cards increased to 30% and now ATM overdraft fees, at $35 per transaction. Shame on Wells for doing this in the first place, the second time shame on me for not trying to get the income and spending balanced and the third time shame on our Banking oversite for not seeing the injustice this is to those in this very hard time who are in deep financial trouble.
It is time our Banking industry try to honestly make money not the cheap and dirty tactics of preying on our own countrymen who are barely making ends meet.
If it takes congress to fix this or a class action law suit then let's see some champions for what is right step up to the task of stopping not only Wells Fargo but the other banks who know this is not right but who can't resist making a bigger bonus by doing the wrong thing.
Not all that is wrong with banking is at Wall Street. It is at the top management of Banks who hire people to make up these dirty accounting tricks to make more money no matter how it is done or who it hurts. It is time for new manangement ethics to come to banking. There is no recovery if 80% of the working are kept in constant debt at indefensible interest and fees for credit cards and ATM/Checking accounts that are necessary to daily living.
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