I have a lot of friends that have been clients of Wells Fargo Bank in the past, and have left because they had poor experiences with the customer service there. Wells Fargo, I've stuck up for you for years! When the criticisms came in thick, I brushed them off with a wave of my "High Value Customer" hand. Then you went and stabbed me in the back. Here's my tale:
I performed one action to bring this headache on, and it was making one deposit. I made one deposit and the following is what has happened in that poor decision's wake...
So I go to Wells Fargo on Tuesday, the 19th to make a deposit so I can pay my tuition for school this semester. I get to the teller line and visit with Jorge while he makes my deposit. He hands me the receipt and I immediately notice that he left a zero off the end of my deposit. I point out the sizable difference in dollar amount and he calls his manager over to fix the problem. The manager notices the amount and decides he wants to put a hold on the check. I tell him that I need it for tuition and can't afford to wait for a hold to clear, so he asks if it's okay if he holds just SOME of the check.
Fine. I don't care. As long as I have enough available for tuition.
The transaction completed, I leave the branch.
Wednesday, January 20
I get online to make a transfer so I can pay my tuition, but something is different... what could it be? Oh yes, the positive balance I had in my checking account the day before is now mysteriously nearly $900 in the negative! Some quick maths inform me that the difference between the amount I had on Tuesday (prior to my deposit) and the amount I have Wednesday is exactly the same amount as the hold the Store Manager placed on my account. Not only is my account missing all this money, but the sizable deposit I had just made is no where to be seen. Usually you'll see a deposit as 'pending' until it posts, but my account shows no such transaction.
I phone my pal Bryce. He works for Wells Fargo, in fact, he works at the very branch I made my deposit at (but he wasn't at work at the time I was in.) I say, "Bryce, I'm missing a whole bunch of money..."
Bryce is a good man. He replies, "Yep."
Bryce tells me he's gotta make some phone calls to see what the deal is and promises he'll call right back. When Bryce calls me back he tells me a whole bunch of bank transaction process mumbo jumbo (which I actually understood since I used to work for Wells Fargo) and posts a credit to my account in the amount of my original deposit. He makes it clear that it won't look normal for a few days because they had to find my original paperwork that they had already mailed in to the back shop. Whatever, there's money in the bank.
Thursday, January 21
Email 1 (6:09am): I wake up and check my email. Subj:Wells Fargo Overdraft Protection Advance. I'm not sure why I need Overdraft Protection Advances when I haven't even made a withdrawal, but apparently Wells Fargo was happier seeing all the money in my Savings Account and all the available credit on my credit card moved into my checking account. I call up my good pal Bryce and he says, "Yeah, I saw that this morning. Don't worry, just call me if you get any service fees."
I'm super grateful for Bryce. He's been a champ helping me out with all this, but the problem is that there shouldn't be an issue in the first place. I should have to worry about service fees simply because I made a deposit.
Email 2 (4:43pm): Subj: Insufficient Funds Notice. Really? Alright. I don't even have time to check what this is about because I'm on my way to school. I call up Bryce and leave him a message. He responds a couple hours later telling me that there were some service fees and he reversed them and assured me the problem would be fixed by tomorrow.
Once again, Bryce is the man for taking care of things for me, but I fear what this experience would have been like if I didn't have a close friend on the inside watching out for me. I have finally experienced what all my friends have and why they've left Wells Fargo.
Wells Fargo, you broke my heart.
I had a friend at work who had a similar experience with them. He totaled his truck and his insurance company cut him a huge check. It was over $10,000 and Wells Fargo told him they were going to put a hold on it for, 2 weeks (I think it was 2 weeks -could have been longer)! Ridiculous! How long does it take money to go through the process from the payer's account to the payee's account? That just doesn't seem right.
ReplyDeleteI realize I'm coming a little late to this story, but it's nice to know that it's not just me - Wells Fargo has some serious customer service issues. In fact, I stumbled across this while doing a goolgle search for contact information for a Bryce Osborne with Wells Fargo. He's the executive that the Manager of the Fraud Department reports to. I was transfered to his voicemail and was hoping I could find some other means of contacting him as well.
ReplyDeleteWhy am I dealing with the fraud department?!? My husband and I obtained an account with Wells Fargo in the process of financing a purchase at a furniture store. My husband spoke directly to the WF rep, while at the furniture store, to verify his identity/credit. While on the phone, he verified our address. Long story short, WF put a hold on our account because they could not verify our address. They pulled one of our previous addresses (I'm assuming from our credit report) that we don't even live at anymore. My husband has called numerous times to varify our address as well as authorize me on the account so I can make these annoying calls for him since he's at work during their business hours and his boss isn't really keen on him sitting on hold to do personal business. However, the furniture store is unable to process our purchase because WF still can't get our correct address on file. And oh yeah, everytime I try to call to deal with this, WF says I'm not authorized and they can't talk to me - even though my husband has called told them to authorize me already.
The furniture store is great and the salesman has gone above and beyond to help us out with this - even though he's done his part and shouldn't have to deal with this anymore. Even so, I am seriously considering returning the purchase just so we don't have to deal with Wells Fargo.
Alright, I feel like I need to respond her. I am the Bryce from the story and I am the Service Manager at the branch Johnny visited. There are a couple of things which need to be noted. The service I gave Johnny is the same service I would have given anyone who had a problem like this at my branch. The fact that Johnny is one of my best friends is irrelevant. The only reason there was a problem with this transaction is because my manager was making a customer service exception to make the money Johnny needed available sooner. Johnny knows this.
ReplyDeleteThe most complained-about policies tend to ironically be the ones that are in place to protect the customer.
Scott, insurance companies do tend to take longer to pay the checks they make and are often located across the country. At one branch I worked at a customer had received an insurance check for their house which had fire damage. The check was for around $75,000. We put a week-long hold on the check. After a week the funds became available and the customers withdrew the money to pay people to fix their house. A week after that, Wells Fargo received the check back, unpaid because the customer didn't sign the back of the check in the right place. The customer's account went overdrawn $70,000 and they were unable to use it. It took 2 months to get cooperation from the insurance company to get the problem resolved.
Kimberly, it sounds like you are dealing with Wells Fargo Financial. I'm not too sure how their processes are or why they wouldn't record any of the authorizations or verifications. All of the trouble you ran into, though, came from the fact that Wells Fargo was trying to protect your husband from fraud and releasing too much information. They didn't approve the credit because your husband's credit report address had another address on it. With the sheer amount of identity theft which occurs every day I don't think too much caution is unjustified. The average time spent on resolving account and credit problems after identity theft is 116 hours. If identity theft happens to you, you will wish that someone would have made you make an extra phone call or two to save you 116 hours the average person spends fixing identity theft. I know it's not convenient but it is the world we live in.
Wells Fargo is cautious, that is their culture. For that reason they are thriving in an economic crisis relative to other banks and credit unions, many of which have failed.
Wells Fargo has a HUGE emphasis on customer service. It understands people can go to any bank or credit union to do their business. It understands people rarely even have to go into the bank if they don't want to. Most of my day is spent making sure and coaching my tellers on how to provide great customer service and making sure they do. I actually am grateful that Johnny wrote this because I will have a chance to share this with my team and make sure it doesn't happen again. I will use this as a tool to improve our customer service. Of the many people from the vocal minority who complain about Wells Fargo, there are millions who stick with Wells Fargo because the customer service they experience is more important to them than a free Ipod nano.
I just thought I would chime in on this post.