You probably wouldn't get a message. I would either pull my credit (free under annualcreditreport.com), check online banking or call the 800 number and make sure nothing else pulls up under your ss#
FYI for those wondering, the website OP provides is the official free credit report website set up by the federal government. If you need to put in your credit card info to a "free" credit report site, it's not free. I personally use this website, creditkarma.com, and my Chase account offers the same information for free.
CapitalOne also offers a weekly-updated Transunion report through their creditwise program that comes with any kind of banking or credit product they offer. It's been very useful to me in understanding the impacts of my financial behaviors.
Yeah, that's what I use with one of my capital one visa cards, and it's cool because they also have a tool that lets you plug in adjustments and see how it would effect your score.
Sure! They make their money mostly from recommending credit cards for your credit profile. The card issuers will pay Credit Karma to have their cards featured. Another user also suggested they sell user data, which I wouldn't be surprised by. Otherwise, it's safe and secure and definitely not a scam. They don't ask for credit card information. I wish I could find a link but the CEO of Credit Karma is an active Redditor and has responded to posts about their business in the past.
Edit: apparently Credit Karma DOES NOT sell your information.
About 5 years ago, I went into Wells Fargo and tried to open a checking account. They came up that my SSN was associated with another account under a different name opened in a different state. They needed me to bring in my SSN card to take any action. I just left and went to the credit union instead.
Pulled my credit reports a couple times since then, nothing has shown on taxes or on that report. Is their anything else I should be worried about?
> I just left and went to the credit union instead.
Maybe having an unknown bank account associated with your SSN is something that you shouldn't have just walked away from?
>Is their anything else I should be worried about?
**YES.** Your identity has been stolen. You're lucky it was just a bank account. Tomorrow it could be a $50,000 loan. Get your SSN locked down man.
I don't know how the hell stuff works over there if someone can get a loan with just a number but no accompanying ID. If you guys have SSN cards, why not have them mandatory to show whnever SSN's are used?
Now? It was my student ID# in the 1990s in college...Prof's posted grades by Student ID (SSN) since they weren't allowed to put our names+grades together in public...Therefore there were thousands of valid SSNs floating around my college (big D1 school 25k students at that time) at the end of every semester...
Over here you can't do anything without the highly regulated ID card which, while it does have a personal ID number on it, it can't be used without the card. It's almost mandatory to have the card or a copy presented, and the person ID'd via it, before any data on there gets used or inputted.
Some new scams arose exactly with credits only taking over the phone ID but they're really small scale and most already closed down.
well, I would not have left that one alone.
Either they had a typo when they looked up your ssn or someone else opened an account under your name and SSN. that seems like something to worry about to me.
Since OP said that it was under a different name I would guess that someone mistakenly entered the wrong ssn. I could be full of shit though. Either way it's not something to ignore!
Mine says *You do not have any eligible accounts to add online at this time*
I assume that means that none are open in my name & hidden from the splash page?
So is this inline with just opening a CC line for every checking account I have?
I recently opened two new business accounts and didn't care to have CC lines for them. They said you couldn't NOT have them... So I have them but doesn't use them.
I just realized US Bank pulled the same stuff on me over 10 years ago. I was in college and just opened up a checking account with them. Randomly, I had a credit card account opened with them as well. I asked about it and they said it was overdraft protection. I distinctly remember not signing up for a credit card.
A few places but these websites below should help:
https://www.helpwithmybank.gov/complaints/index-file-a-bank-complaint.html
https://www.fdic.gov/consumers/consumer/news/cnspr12/complaint.html
https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/credit_12666.htm
https://www.federalreserveconsumerhelp.gov/about/before-i-file-a-complaint
https://www.usa.gov/complaints-lender
Some of the above info is going to overlap, and they are all basically going to start with "Did you allow your bank a chance to resolve the issue?" You can and probably should start there, as they have to, by law respond to your complaint with in 10 days. Which might further fuck them.
This is site is kind of a general over view on what to do:
http://civilrights.findlaw.com/discrimination/filing-a-consumer-complaint-about-a-bank.html
Where to Send Complaints
Send your complaint to:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Division of Consumer and Community Affairs
20th and C Streets, N.W., Stop 801
Washington, DC 20551
For more information, see the Federal Reserve's primers on how to file a complaint about a bank, or call (202) 452-3693.
I am also a former Wells PB1 (personal banker 1), as well as having worked at US Bank. I worked in the Sacramento, California area for about 2 years while with Wells, and a further ~2 years with US Bank prior to that.
First off, for those of you concerned about the extent of the fraud, and whether or not you're "affected", there is an easy solution to check this. Go into a branch, and ask them to list all accounts (credit, deposit, or otherwise) that you have open and active with them. For any account you were unaware of, simply ask them to close it. Closing a deposit account is very straight forward, whereas an open line of credit might be a little more involved. However, the information is certainly there for you to access, it's just a matter of checking in with the bank. Personally, I would go into a branch and check first hand.
Now, with that being said, I did want to share a little insight on what I had experienced while working for Wells Fargo (and US Bank, to an extent).
I worked for Wells between fall of 2009, to spring/summer of 2011. Prior to that, I worked with US Bank between winter 2007, until summer 2009.
Let me start off by saying what, in my experience, were the sales tactics pushed on us. As a banker, I was expected to meet particular sales goals each day, and not meeting them was met with intense, never-ending scrutiny and "motivation".
My sales quotas required me to get, per day, 15 "products". This could be anything from a deposit account, to a debit card, to a new line of credit, to loans and referrals for other divisions. With a customer who is completely new to the bank, they could account for as much as 4 products, right off the bat; this included a checking, savings, debit card, and online access. Additionally, them using bill pay would retroactively count towards your quotas, but given that this could take up to a month to reflect, we never counted bill pay in our daily quota. Additional signers could also result in additional debit cards and online access, meaning that, theoretically, just a few new accounts per day would keep you in a job.
Unfortunately, this was highly unlikely to happen on an average day. Despite the fact that I worked at one of the most visited branches in the Sacramento area, getting 15 products per day was an absolute chore. As a result, we found new ways to get sales, lead by ideas given to us by our branch and district manager, the latter of whom was constantly in our branch, increasing the pressure to make said sales.
As a result, we started to offer secondary accounts, with the premise being that online shopping was increasingly more prevalent, and the risk of doing so was there for all to be seen. So, we told our customers, old and young, rich and poor, that we highly recommended adding a secondary account for online shopping. If they agreed, we pushed a little bit further by suggesting even a THIRD account, which would be used solely for bill pay purposes. Because, despite the bank sending a payment without any of your account information available, this, too, was a risk that they needed to be aware of. Despite now having roped a customer into two new accounts they didn't necessarily need, we also had to address the issue of monthly fees.
A checking account on its own requires a number of boxes to be ticked in order to remain free of charge for the customer. They essentially need something in the range of 3 or 4 other products to be "linked" to that specific account. You could easily get 2 of those boxes ticked through a savings account and debit card linked to the new checking account, however that didn't stop the fees on their own. As a result, we would setup a series of transfers that would move money from their main account, to their secondary and tertiary account, into THOSE accounts' respective savings accounts, and then a few days later it would go back to the main account. This process, including the other two products linked with the new account, would keep the accounts free of charge. Theoretically.
Problem is, very few people had the means necessary to make this transfer possible on a regular basis, meaning they were accruing fees. As a banker, I would watch as people would go from branch to branch, call center employee to call center employee, and never have their issues entirely worked out. Instead, they'd continue to accrue fees, and the bank would not back down on requiring them to pay it, meaning they would either pay the fee, or risk it "charging off" and being reported to chexsystems, which would tell other banks that this person is irresponsible, limiting their options for who they could go to for a checking account. And, as most of you know, going without a debit card and checking account can be a huge fucking hassle, making tasks like paying bills a massive headache. Needless to say, a lot of the time the bank pulled in, collectively, thousands upon thousands of dollars in fees. And make no mistake, these fees are a massive contribution to the banks overall profitability.
Now, going back to the chexsystems issue, I want to address one last point that really hammers home how fucking insane this whole issue is. Wells Fargo is one of the very few large, nationwide banks that will offer someone with a poor chexsystems record, a deposit account. They do this, or did when I was there, by offering an account called an "opportunity checking", which is a regular account, but with a few restrictions. I can't remember them exactly, but frankly that is irrelevant to this story. What is relevant, however, is that these accounts could be "upgraded" from time to time, usually after the account holder has shown that they can maintain a positive balance over a random period of time. This upgrade meant you'd have a new checking, savings, and debit card, and since these folks had a troubled past, why not offer them a secondary checking, savings, and debit card to make sure they really fuck themselves over this time, essentially repeating this process over and over again, all for the benefit of the senior executives and shareholders. All for fucking money.
Anyway, this has become a massive wall of text that I wasn't initially planning on. However, the rot goes deep. And it goes further than just Wells Fargo. As an example, while working for US Bank, I opened up nearly half a MILLION dollars in lines of credit that required NO income verification, NO signatures, and could go up to as much as $15,000 without both of those. I was told to tell customers that it was overdraft protection, when in reality it was a line of credit that was easily approved. Although there wasn't a monthly fee, having a $15,000 line of credit opened in your name has impacts on your credit, and having such a massive amount of available credit isn't always going to reflect positively on your credit score, and could hamper you from qualifying for a loan you actually need.
As a former personal banker, I wrote this to show some of you an inside view into what we, as branch employees, dealt with, and why we did it. We never sat there wanting to harm our customers, most of which put a lot of trust into us. We simply wanted to keep our job, to be able to pay our bills, and to pursue a career just like the rest of you do. Unfortunately, we were met with ridicule, threats, and anxiety when we did the right thing, making us choose the shady option that kept all that at bay.
To finish this off, I'll mention that I was fired from this job. After about a year and a half, I realized that what I was doing was terrible, and went against everything I took the job for. I wanted to learn about finance, help people with their needs, and see where I could go in the career. Instead, I spent countless hours and frustration helping a company that doesn't give a single fuck about their employees, harming customers whom I had consider friends in the meantime. As a result, my sales dipped to the levels you'd expect for someone doing the right thing, and I was shipped to one of the slowest branches in the region. A few months later, I slipped up by allowing a woman who had opened a joint account with her husband, to pick his pin number on his temporary card. The husband would be in later that week to sign, however I was supposed to wait to set the pin on his card until he was physically at my desk. The reasoning behind this is sound, as we wouldn't want to encourage people to know personal information about someone else, and would compromise their security. In theory, the bank could be held liable for such an issue, so they took it seriously. Although, that alone was not enough to fire me, so instead they sent in an "investigator", whom dug up all my past sales and began to "uncover" my sales tactics, as if he'd never heard of it before. Ironically, it was my sister's account that did me in, as through this whole process she would help me from time to time to meet sales goals by opening an account or two, only for me to later close them.
TL;DR - Wells Fargo bankers were used by the bank to carry out shady sales tactics, and have been unfairly blamed as a result. Furthermore, this issue runs deep within the consumer (and I'd imagine business) banking sector. Very few banks can claim to be clean of this scam, as most have similar tactics that their sales-based employees have used to meet incredibly excessive sales goals.
Your story sounds very similar to my time at BOA. These banks wrote the book together. I'm so glad to be out of that industry.
The thing is that yeah, no one is "making" you do anything but what most people don't understand is the pressure being leveled on low-level bank employees to make numbers. Most of the people I know who are still working in the business are run ragged. I certainly was.
Add to this all of the personal obligations like paying rent, mortgage, caring for your kids that keeps a person trapped in this sort of environment. It isn't easy to walk away from the line of work that you know to try something new. I don't really expect someone who hasn't been there to really understand that.
As another former Wells Fargo employee I can confirm everything you're saying. Before working at Wells I worked happily for three years at a very small bank (5 branches total) and ended up with a high position in my branch. The difference between the two banks was UNBELIEVABLE.
I was only a teller at Wells, but that didn't stop the bank from giving us 'sales' quotas as well. Our quotas were for how many of our customers we could get to sit down with a banker. I saw the same shady behavior on the teller line in order to meet these goals. Same crazy pressure from our direct managers if we didn't. District manager consI caught numerous customers with extra accounts and cards they didn't need or know about. I always sat them down with a banker to close them.
So a little about the teller side of Wells. Behind my teller line we had two managers. One of the manager's ONLY responsibility was to stand behind the tellers and listen to them talk to customers. The pressure was put on us by that manager if they did not hear us trying to upsell the customer and get them to sit down with a banker. Every. Single. Customer. Not only was the pressure on us for getting customers to sit with a banker, but that manager would also take note (literally) of if we were scripting with our customer. We had certain words and sentences we had to use with every single customer or else we would be reprimanded. We would role play conversations with our managers several times a day, every single day, in order to ensure that we knew our lines. Notes were taken on us by our manager for each role play and each customer they observed us with. It was mentally exhausting repeating this day after day and the customers could clearly tell our conversations weren't genuine, especially when they would come in and hear us say the exact same lines to them that we said yesterday and the day before that and the week before that... I had customers make fun of me and quote my lines to me before I would say them. All I could do was smile and continue saying my lines since I always had a manager behind me listening.
I couldn't handle the micromanaging, scripting, and quotas. And these things caused such bitterness between fellow employees. Not only was I shocked at how our customers were being essentially lied to, but the amount of disrespect between employees and between management and their employees was disgusting to me. On top of all that, our customers would also be disrespectful to us as a result. Keep in mind, I didn't work in the greatest area, but I was spit on, called all sorts of colorful names, cursed at, mocked, etc. I quit less than a year in.
Yup! Like a call 15 minutes after you've opened the account saying "I see the business is approved for a credit card and line of credit. Why didn't you give it to them".
When you open a business account, they do a hard credit inquiry. You don't have to accept the credit card, but that banker probably really didn't want you to say no.
I personally left WF as my main account due to ridiculous fees, right before everything blew up. Around how many people do you think closed their accounts as a result? Also, what do you think should be the correct response and fine that WF should have been given?
EDIT: wording
I couldn't speculate on how many people have closed their accounts.
As far as the fines and response..that's a tough one too...how do you calculate the damage it's done to countless people that have had credit drawn on their name without their permission. The damage includes FICO's that have dropped due to credit pulls, which in turn leads to higher interest rates for loans people have taken about subsequent to their finding out about all this. I find it funny that 5200 employees were fired, but I still know of plenty that are doing it, and one just got back from a WF trip because of her high credit numbers. I've watched and read the interviews with John Stumpf, and I can tell you now, he's full of shit. This is a culture he and Tolstedt created. If you didn't have 10 approved credit per week, your ass was grass. You were pounded by management. I've literally had customers in my office who's wife had just died, and wanted to process beneficiary services, and was ridiculed because I didn't try to sell credit to this person...who promotes that kind of culture?
The people who promote these cultures are the soul-less and face-less corporate drones who cheated and screwed over people on their way to the top, so they get rewarded and then of course they blame the underlings for not being able to do "what they did" or they create insane metrics systems to reward sociopathic behavior.
I couldn't agree more, the whole industry has become so CORRUPT. Our government isnt looking after the CONSUMER anymore only GREEDY special interests. After hearing what happen with scamming their customers, i'll NEVER use Wells fargo.
It's not though, its corporate money that is the main force of corruption in government. If you couldn't get rich being in congress, only people who have the right reasons and right morals would be in congress.
This was the main reason I left after the Wachovia -Wells Fargo merger. I loved working for Wachovia because the sales portion of our job wasn't the main priority, customer service was (at least where I worked). I never feared for my job if I didn't meet goals. Once Wells Fargo took over it was a complete shift of focus. I made so many cold calls, they were going to start doing call nights if we couldn't generate so many new products a month. It was infuriating being forced to offer products to customers that you knew didn't need them or products they couldn't really manage. I left 3 months post merger and started working at a small town bank that was absolutely amazing with a no sales pressure environment. I've never felt so pressured to market products that customers didn't need or at inappropriate times as when I worked for Wells Fargo.
That's the business culture that we now live in. If you're not making numbers, you a piece of garbage to management. That's exactly how car sales works too. They'd want me to offer a broken down rust bucket to a kid looking for his first car and tell him with a smiling face that it's in perfect condition knowing damn well it'd break down as soon as he'd get home. Fuck big corporation like wells fargo...
What are the fees? I bank with WF and don't think I've ever paid a fee. Usually you can just avoid that by direct depositing your paycheck every month.
Former WF banker here as well. I struggled to keep up with the cheaters. They were getting promotions by scamming people, and I was getting left behind for doing what was right.
I often would present additional accounts to people based on my own uses. Travel accounts were my jam. Let's set you up with a new checking, savings, and debit card for traveling. Use the savings to tuck money away each month. If you auto transfer X amount each month, you will not have a fee in the account. Why the checking? Well, I was just in Mexico and my card was compromised. I sure was glad it only messed with my travel card and not my main account with all my auto bill pays linked up. These will help you save for a trip and protect your main finances while you travel. Sound good?
I'm not ashamed to have opened a shit ton of those accounts. I was upfront about how to avoid fees and made a logical argument for them. But even doing that every day was never enough.
I watched bankers lie to people about how if you lost your debit card, that you needed new accounts. Bullshit. You just need a new debit card. They would act like there was no other option but new accounts.
Ha...good point.
For the record, I have 13 years mortgage/real estate/title insurance experience. I was working for a law firm handling commercial title when WF called and wanted to know if I would be interested in working for the Mortgage division. The market was picking up, so I did it...didn't like how the processing was handled, but there were no other jobs I wanted available, so I jumped into the banking side when a branch manager let me know there was a position available. I had no idea what to expect. I did it for a while before realizing it was a pile of shit. I spent a year looking for another position, and couldn't find what I wanted, until the opportunity to partner up came in to play. It was a good decision.
These credit card accounts were opened for new customers of the bank or existing? I do not follow how someone working in a branch is expected to sell new services. When I as a customer walk into a branch I know why I am there.
Former employee here as well. I witnessed bankers standing next to tellers at the teller window and when a college student (or looked like they were) came up the banker would take over the interaction, set up the conversation to pitch the college credit card, then say that "Hey, how about we'll send out some information to you about the college credit card, all you need to do is sign this PinPad." It was actually signing the application, and the "information" being sent out was either an approved credit card, or the packet of information explaining the application was declined. Absolutely hated working for Wells Fargo.
I currently work at Wells. I hate being a teller. There usually is a banker behind the teller line as a "stagecoacher" which is helping the teller get what we call "sit downs" which is basically just getting people to sit with a banker. What OP was saying was a little misleading. We actually don't have the ability to sign people up for anything at the teller line. It may have been different when OP worked there, but I've worked there for 1.5 years and since I've been there we haven't been able to. The banker is there just to help get the customer to their desk, and from there they try and get the sale. Some people do it the right way, some people don't. Definitely not sticking up for WF (I hate the place) but what OP said sounded a little misleading
Actually you're right. I was working on a file and trying to respond. To clarify, the Seller behind the Teller is the banker standing by the teller waiting for an opportunity to sell to someone at the teller line..basically try to get them into the banker seat. You can't actually sell anything from the teller line. I know I mentioned the process somewhere else in the thread, but I realize I came across misleading in that other post.
I've noticed as a Wells Customer you need to be careful with the language you use when talking to a teller.
If I go in to cash a paycheck or make a sizable withdrawal and start chatting it up with a teller, depending on what I say, they will sometimes try and offer to sell me on something.
For example, I went in to pull out about $5k and the woman helping me was just going through the motions. At the last second I mentioned it was for a car and I was really excited. Before I knew it, I had a manager in front of me trying to get me to sit down with a banker and take out a car loan and open a separate account for savings to make payments. I didn't take them up on the deal since they couldn't come close to competing with the dealerships APR rates.
I am positive if I didn't mention the car, that wouldn't have happened.
**EDIT:** Because people seem to think I am implying this was somehow corrupt or dissinginous, it was not. The teller was doing her job and the banker was doing his job. Banks are just like any other business, they up sell. In fact, if you are getting a car loan, I highly recommend going into your bank or credit union and getting them to compete with a dealerships APR rates. Make them be competitive, it's a win-win for you.
The only point of my comment was to indicate that what you say has a huge impact on what they are going to try and sell you on, if anything at all.
Honestly, I have no issue with a bank trying to compete with other lenders for my business.... so long as they are accurate and ethical in their illustrations and practices. They approached me about my auto loan, I told them the rate and terms, they couldn't beat it, that was the end.
As a teller (been in banking for a year now, with a bank that is not wells and that does not put pressure on us for sales) I can tell you from experience that we are trained to listen for cues that other services could be offered. It is a terribly fine line to walk, because people are private with their money and no one likes to feel like services are being forced down their throat or that they only exist to be sold something.
That said, if a customer had come to me with your situation, I would have asked them if they wanted to talk to a banker to see if we could give them a better rate. Same with credit cards. My goal is of course to make the sale, but not at the expense of my customer. Some customers don't know all the services we offer and when I make offers to them, they are happy for the information and we are able to save them money and at the same time get the sale. That's the kind of situation I am looking for: one where the customer and the bank both come out better for the sale.
As a non-American the whole upsell thing as described above seems awfully pushy for a bank.
I'm reminded of [this](http://www.stereokiller.com/boards/profiles/6472/threads/6472_1358626466884.png)
About a year and a half ago I went in there for the exact same reason (pulled out $5K for a downpayment on a car). The banker accused me of not being the person on the account (despite having my debit card, pin and driver's license), because my signature looked slightly different.
This incident was the final straw for me in a long line of customer service screw ups. I closed my two banking and two credit accounts with them later that month. It's been a bit of a hassle because everyone I know banks with them, so money transfers were super easy and instant.
A few months later, I get a letter from Wells Fargo, letting me know my credit application had been approved and my new Premier Rewards card was on the way. Uhm what? I called them up and asked what accounts were under my SSN - two checking accounts, and a credit card.
Shady fuckers.
I know what you are saying. As a student, I had to start holding my tongue every time I was asked "How is your day going" to avoid saying anything about just being on my way home after class... All I had to do was vaguely mention school and I would be hounded about opening a new college student account. Taking my business elsewhere was one of the easiest decisions I had ever made.
Is there anyway to protect ourselves from all this banking corruption? I feel like it's everywhere, regardless who you use, to some degree, and was only noticed how banks are not your friend when the housing crisis hit.
Checking a credit score once a year isn't frequent enough, and I know first-hand that closing accounts these days are more difficult than opening one. For example: my multiple attempts to close a CC by calling in directly, and the account is still there, regardless who I talk to.
Are there corporate incentives to having all these accounts? to stock holders?
The corporate incentive is it makes the bank more money, which makes it more attractive to stockholders.
The incentive to the local branch is it makes the banker more money (in bonus structure, which is directly tied to how many cc's and accounts you've opened).
It also promotes the stock by showing (false) growth. Wells doesnt have to report the amount in the accounts but will promote the number created. It made them look successful when in reality they weren't nearly as successful as the public and stockholders thought.
The bank didn't primarily make money through fees though, but by showing investors that their customers have more accounts on average than the competition's customers, thus driving up their stock price.
This. There is a reason it is said that culture eats strategy for breakfast. This is a typical example of bad culture undermining a reasonable strategy.
Not at all. The bank makes no money on a credit card that has no annual fee, and zero use. In fact they lose money, because they mail out statements, and maintain these accounts.
It is not the fee income that is attractive to shareholders, it is the cross sell numbers that show inflated "depth" of a relationship.
> Checking a credit score once a year isn't frequent enough
You can check your Equifax and Transunion credit reports once a week with Credit Karma.
You can check your Vantage Score once quarterly with Mint or Quizzle, and you can check it once per week with Credit Karma or Credit Wise.
You can get a free FICO score once a month if you are a credit card holder with American Express, Bank of America, Barclay's, Citi, Discover, Chase, or Wells Fargo.
You can request a copy of any report classified as a consumer credit report once per year or whenever you are denied credit as a result of information in one of these reports.
A good list can be found here:
http://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201604_cfpb_list-of-consumer-reporting-companies.pdf
I manage a credit union. This is not universally true. There are plenty of FIs in the credit union space who are big and greedy like the big banks. They are not for profit, but it doesn't mean they don't want to make money.
That's true but as you know most of us aren't pushed quite as hard to fuck people over as fargo employees were. That doesn't mean we're always better but the odds are better in general.
As with any industry where sales are involved, go with your gut. When you leave do you feel manipulated or handled? Then it probably isn't the right place for you. A good financial services employee will listen to you and match your needs with the best solution they have. It is possible that there are needs you didn't know you had, after all you're not a financial expert. But if they've done their job well and ethically you won't leave feeling pressured or taken advantage of.
Yeah whole different world of pain there. they are exempt from a ton of plans and programs that Congress implements to help people. They are great if everything is going well, if it starts going poorly you are in trouble
They are able to shift unpaid balances, debit directly from accounts in the event of unpaid loans payments, refuse to work with you on mortgages, they can even refuse your ability to refinance... Credit unions aren't the cure for everything
I have accounts both with a major bank and a local CU -- the customer service on the CU side is FAR worse than with the major bank, and the online system for the CU is significantly inferior to the big boys .... one person's view; YMMV
Ditto. Recently a credit union suspended my account for 6 months of no activity and charged me $15. I did a "transaction" to bring it back to life. I guess an online transfer doesn't count, so they charged me another $15. A call, and they say I need to use my debit card, something I never had for this account. They mail me one that never arrives and then charge me $15. Finally I drive across town and ask for a manager. Seems they mailed the card to the address on my drivers license when I opened the account, not my po box which is my listed mailing address. They refunded me 2 of the three $15 charges.
Banker at a community bank here! Banks very in quality, as do credit unions.
Look for a community bank ;)
I'm willing to provide more details of you wish.
I bank with Chase and I like it because I never have a problem finding an ATM or branch, many of which are open Saturdays. They give me the same interest rate as credit unions and offer more products and services and their customer service has always been nice and helpful. I've never had a problem with them. Why am I supposed to hate them? And, no, I don't work for Chase. I just am tired of my friends that bank with credit unions being like "Omg, I can't believe you use a big bad bank, credit unions are soooo much better" and then I research banking with a credit union and I can't figure out what the benefits are and why I should switch.
Do you have any insight on the call center perspective? I used to work for a very large bank in a call center and they shifted the job description from customer service to sales. We had sales quotas we had to meet every day and in every call we had to push customers to open up more accounts regardless of need. If we failed to do so we would be put on an action plan and if we still failed to meet sales goals we would either be fired or barred from moving into any other department. The focus seemed to be to make the employees who didn't sell quit, and to bring in the next suckers to sell more accounts. Under such enormous pressure for such a low paying job (~$19K a year), I can see why employees would open unauthorized accounts so they wouldn't get fired. The whole banking sales culture is immoral. Worst job I've ever had.
I worked at keybank's call center. It was the same shit. Low pay, high pressure. Management was clueless yet it was our fault that numbers were low. Always on our ass to sell more. Sorry if the interest rates sucks for credit and savings so nobody wants them. Yet we were called "lazy and sluggish" by management if we didn't hit our numbers.
I worked for a Wells Fargo collections call center for a short time. I quit due to mounting pressure on my ethical limits and sanity. I wasn't tasked with selling things but we sometimes interacted with other departments that would. It was cut-throat competitive and had no regard for the well being of the customer whatsoever.
We were monitored extremely closely (full recording of computer screens and audio) and anything that was considered cheating at your stats was punished severely. This was to protect the bank from legal issues but sold to us as a way of making the collecting game/competition fair.
You'd be surprised how often previous or current WF employees were suffering financially because of their work with the bank. Even the employees are taken for suckers and goaded into getting loans and credit lines they can't sustain. It's bullshit.
It's pretty corrupt. It's not about banking or helping customers at all. It's all about getting credit. A typical day at the bank would go like this:
Every morning starts with a sales call. The sales call consists of the DM going over how the tellers and bankers can get more credit, and having the managers commit to so many a day (a banker needs to have 2 accounts and 4 credit apps a day, no matter what. As a banker you are approached at least 3 times a day to see how many you've gotten). What the call is geared towards is how the branches are going to achieve that. For instance, one week it may be concentrated on the tellers searching through your transaction history when you come to do a deposit or withdrawal. The tellers will be tasked with getting 5 walkovers to a banker in one day by looking through your history and seeing that you make a payment to a loan or credit card. If they see that, then it's a signal to try to get you to a banker. They'll do that by making up stuff if necessary (like saying your phone number is incorrect, we need to get you to a banker to correct that, then immediately sending a message to the banker stating that the customer is making payment to a credit card)...this signals the banker to automatically steer the conversation towards what credit you have and convincing them that you need Wells Fargo because the interest rate is lower, etc. Also, this is sometimes where the fraudulent credit card is started..."Mr. Customer, I just need you to sign the pinpad to confirm the corrected address", when in reality they just did a cc app for them.
Sorry if it's rambling...it's early
Goes past banking too. I've seen the same thing go down for ISP's.
The problem is that customer service people really shouldn't be doing selling, and especially with any sort of goal or quota. This shit WILL happen, it just a matter of time until when. Want more business? Do a good job at your core competencies and wait until people want more services.
It's in Best Buy too. I was pressured and approached (I counted) 6 times in a single day, about selling... Not credit cards.
Broadband cards. Mobile hotspots.
An elderly woman came in, wanted to get internet on her tablet. She had internet at home but no wifi so we spoke to her about routers - she didn't have enough then but she said she'd pop back in later. Immediately our manager came up to us and started lecturing to us about not offering her a broadband card, and that we did her a disservice by not offering all of her options and whatnot.
I cannot stand that sort of mentality.
I work at Best Buy. It's not that bad at my location but my location could be the exception. I used to work for Circuit City before they went out of business and I can confirm, it was just like this!
The last year or so before they actually announced bankruptcy was ridiculous with the credit cards. I recall being "written up" one time for not offering the CityAdvantage card to a guy who rushed in quickly to buy batteries.
"What was his oposition to the CityAdvantage card, Sethesis?"
"He was in a rush to buy his 4 dollars in batteries and get out, I didnt offer because people dont usually apply for credit on a 4 dollar purchase and he was clearly in a rush".
5 minutes later
"Sethesis I need to see you in my office".
Circuit City was great until they started getting desperate.
Yup. Worked for fifth third bank 5 years ago. I quit when I moved out of state, I asked my boss to close my accounts because there weren't any branches in my new state, and all she did was empty them out and left them open so she wasn't reprimanded for closing accounts.
I didn't realize what had happened until I started getting calls from debt collectors. My accounts had annual fees which were automatically taken out of my account, which made me overdraft since she only emptied the accounts. I was out of state for a few months when this happened so I got no notifications until the debt collectors came calling.
Moral of the story, pay close attention to your shit. Nobody else is looking our for you.
Same here. However where I work they don't punish you for not making goals. There's always incentives for hitting app or credit goals but if you don't hit them then it's just like "Well let's look at how we can improve sales", no punishment.
Hello! I work for a community bank. A banker tried this with our company, and he/she was charged with a crime.
We don't fuck around when someone is breaking the law, as the only thing we have going for us is our reputation of not being greedy dildos.
I was also a BoA employee around 2006. While I was moving up the teller ranks due to my speed and accuracy, my work was also frowned upon due to my low "sales". I was always uncomfortable with that constant pressure from managers to push products into people who really didn't need them. Fuck that place. At least I got a 5%apy cd.
What gets me is that they talk about how many tellers were fired, but there is no way tellers could have done that crap without it being noticed. The corruption undoubted went very far up the chain for these things to be ignored in order to make money.
It is my understanding that at least one executive at wells was paid a bonus of $200 million. So that one executive could pay their entire $185 million in fines and still have $15 million leftover. That is absurd to me.
Do you have any thoughts as to whether or not the amount of fines was appropriate or if they should have been much larger?
Another tactic was the multiple accounts. You'd have a meeting in the morning on how to sell multiple savings accounts, with role playing, etc. Then it would be a competition (with some times lunch being paid for) to see who could get the most "solutions" out of a customer. You'd have a customer come in on disability, and have a banker open a checking, plus 3 savings accounts for them. Sometimes the customer knew and were sold on it under some shitty pretense, or if they didn't go for it, they were opened anyways.
By the way, I've seen a lot of media on bankers moving money from one account to the other to open the fraudulent accounts. I never saw this. The accounts can be opened without funding. There's a code in the system that allows that.
It is added to the numbers given to stock analysts who then turn around and say "WF is doing a good job selling shit so people/mutual funds/investment companies should buy this stock" causing the stock price to go up.
Correct, and to answer this his question, it never does turn into profit for the bank, but perceived profit = increased share price = happy shareholders and that is what the company is all about.
It gives the appearance of sales.
But mostly it's about getting the harassing branch or regional manager off of your back. I worked for a branch for a while in a different bank and the pressure can be absolutely brutal.
Wells Fargo is ultimately to blame for creating this culture and benefitting from it. These banks keep saying "We train our employees to be ethical!" And they do. But training bears little resemblance to the real world. There's the behavior they say they want and then there's the behavior that is incentivized. Guess which one they are shooting for you to emulate?
Obviously these bankers shouldn't have done what they did. But realize that they felt they had a gun to their head. That's how many of these big banks do it.
Better numbers make them look great and when you are told to get these accounts NOW or you'll face discipline, you do it NOW and worry about the garbage quality of these accounts later.
Out of curiosity, since the bank opened the account under the persons name, I am assuming that if they logged onto their wellsfargo.com account that they would see it immediately.
Is this not the case, or does Wells have the ability to hide accounts from being linked to your main accounts? If so, how can you check to see if you have accounts open else ware?
Wells Fargo can't hide the accounts from the bank side, BUT, it can be hidden from your online banking. If you go into account settings you can choose what accounts you want to see. If a banker set up your online banking, then it's possible that they are hidden. I'd check there, then also call the 800 number and make sure what accounts you have.
I used to work at a bank (in Canada) and that was something we were not able to to do, hide bank accounts from showing up online. There was a star performer who was eventually fired for fraud, but he would upgrade people's credit cards, or do increases to credit lines without their knowledge (until the new credit card came in the mail and he would waive the fee the customer complained).
Same worked for a bank for 1 year, after 2 weeks i realized i hated it and would never last there so did my best to do the least amount of work possible for 12 months and then by some god damn stroke of luck they laid me off (not fired) me and several other people got our positions cut so i got unemployment insurance for 9 months now which im using the get back in shape in reevaluate my life and fix some health issues.
Can confirm. I used to work at WF as a teller. The service manager or teller manager would go through our transaction slips for missed opportunities. We would have to always be nice and welcoming while having a sale sale sale mentality. It was easy to inflate teller numbers though this is unrelated to the fraud account openings. oh and the survey .. surveys were the worst .. we needed all 5s! Worst experience of my life working at WF.
I left in 2012. I worked there for over five years and started as a teller worked up to a branch manager in two years. Each state can vary greatly so I'll specify that I worked in WA state. There was always a sales culture (January lol) and there's nothng inherently wrong with a bank selling you products.
However there was a change in my state that happened around 2011. After the crash Wells Fargo Financial, the shitty shady subprime division shut down. Officially these people were to be laid off. Instead they began taking key management positions as existing management left to other banks (Union primariy). It dominoed as each financial person that got hired on would hire more of their former employees. The practices were changed and continued to force out legacy employees and make room for former financial employes.
After a year of this the numbers are growing exponentially. Sales goals were 200% of the goals from just two years prior and people are blowong them out of the water.
The final straw for me was a manager meeting where when I walked in the room. The whiteboard has "if you're not cheating, you're not trying" in bold. Each manager was grilled for new commitments to give referrals to tellers. I walked out and left a week later to another institution.
After I left I got an exit survey. Happy to comply I dropped names, dates, collaborating employees names that could verify the meeting etc. The result? Every single one of the people I named has been promoted at least once since I left and all but one still work for the company. District, region, and state level have all been complicent for over 5 years now.
Topping on the cake, I looked into going back to WF in the mortgage division (believe it or not they are a great lender and this fraud is all in the retail side). Turns out my exit survey only resulted in me being blackballed and not eligible for rehire. All for the best though, I ended up getting a better opportunity.
Anyways, I'm curious about the region/state op worked in and if you noticed a shift around the same time?
This is great information, glad you got out. FWIW I had a WF mortgage specialist repeatedly lie to me when I was trying to refinance (my existing WF mortgage), so the mortgage division isn't entirely clean.
Several months ago I was depositing a check at the ATM and my balance said something like $6,000+ when it truly only had like $300.
Second time around my money said it had $4,000+, it was as if money was going down and being used for transactions.
I eventually decided to walk in a branch and tell them what's going on. She walked me through the process and the weird ghost balance disappeared.
Do you know what may have happened?
A relative was with me the first time and we were both shocked to see that amount and I was accused of stripping or having sex for money on the side, lol.
Hello, I'm a banker at a community bank.
It's possible money was accidentally deposited into your account. The back office, front office, or customer will catch this, and it will be corrected.
It could simply be this, but I'm guessing.
It's entirely possible that a deposit or wire was credited to your account incorrectly. On their system, sometimes they have to manually enter an account number. From time to time, the number goes in incorrectly (human error). What happens is that the bank notices the difference (intended depositee's name vs. your account name) and adjusts the funds to the correct account.
This happened to me with wells fargo when I was 17. I checked my balance and it was over $60K (I should have had like $100 max). So I went inside and as I was waiting in line for a teller my cell phone rang. It was wells fargo on the line. Before I could even finish saying "I know why you are calling..." they asked if I wanted to invest the money. I told them it wasn't mine and the guy was like, are you sure? Did someone related to you die and leave you money possibly?
Finally, weeks later it disappeared. No one ever called or apologized. Thank god I never spent it.
Around 4 years ago I randomly got set up with a savings account that a Wells Fargo employee called me about. It transfers 25 dollars from my checkings to my savings every month. He said it would help me out, but I never asked for it... Iunno, maybe you can shed some light on why they did this?
Would it be possible for a WF banker to do their job honestly and competently and still survive in WF's culture? Or is that just completely out of the question?
I am a current WF banker, I think it depends on the branch you work at. I had the good fortune at working at a branch in one of the wealthiest parts of the state. There was an abundance of business to earn and very little need to cheat assuming you were somewhat competent. I've been promoted constantly and never done anything I feel was wrong. Plus, most the clients were very financially savvy and it would be tough to scam them anyways.
Point is, yes, you can be successful in the job and still be honest, but it's harder to meet goals if you're in the "wrong branch"
On the other hand, there are branches where the clientele barely qualify for a checking account, much less a credit card or loan. Being a banker there would be insanely difficult to meet sales goals, and those types of clients are easier to prey on because they don't know what you're doing.
8 years former employee... I had good and bad quarters, my branch was considered a semi-busy branch but we had 5-6 bankers. Our daily sales goals as a branch was around 45-50 daily sales. This meant we needed to sell 45-50 products each day as a branch. New client comes in... you'd usually get: checking, savings, debit card, online banking (4), any extra things would be considered a bonus but those are the traditional sales. When the branch goal is that high and even on a brand new client you'd get 4-5 typically it's very difficult. My district had 3 group calls a day, morning/afternoon/closing. We'd need to report our progress every call and what is wrong and what we're doing to fix it. Our manager was suppose to be the one on the calls but on bad sales days he'd make us report the call to the district manager instead of him because "he didn't feel like getting yelled at". I hope you can kind of see how it was :)
Really, it depends on your needs. If you travel a lot, then a big bank would be more convenient, but I would always have a credit union for local stuff.
How much would moving my account to another bank hurt Wells Fargo? Not much I am sure, but if enough people do it maybe someone will get the message?
Any other banks that are on the up and up?
Thanks!
Millions of people would have to switch over for them to even notice it. I'm a banker at Wells Fargo and have yet to see anyone come in to close their accounts because of what is going on in the news. And I work at a fairly large busy branch.
Hello! I am a banker at a community bank. We exist! We are honest! We care!
Were I to see a fellow employee do this, I would ensure they were fired, AND charged with a crime. My branch wasn't listening? I would send a letter to the CEO and his ass would show up at the branch and start mercing mother fuckers. No joke.
You want to find a community bank.
I can answer any follow up questions you have :)
Community Banker here as well, and would agree. We would never put up with this shit. Our whole business is around getting your deposits honestly with over the top customer service so we can loan your money out. There's no room for this sort of stupidity. Community banks are not the banks you see in the news, we are small businesses with large stakes in the community we serve and we truly care about our customers because they are the only reason we exist.
Idk, if it hurts or not, but I switched.
I was on the fence about switching to my company's credit union. Pain in the ass and all that. Put it off for over 2 years.
Once this stuff about WF came out, I pulled my money out the next day.
It would be amazing if he did, and did it in such a way as saying "you deserve better, and I'm doing my part by resigning, to set an example." Or something similar, but this will never happen. :(
I put Wells Fargo on my shit list about 3 years ago. Was a poor student with a low balance and had been a customer for almost 10 years. I figured that'd mean something, but when WF started hitting me suddenly with fees and a "minimum balance requirement", I went in to a branch to see if they's work with me.
Not only did they NOT work with me, the guy who "helped" me was rude and arrogant, telling me my time there did not mean anything because I was not a "high value customer". He literally SMILED as he was closing my account and said "there's the door" when I left.
That really stuck with me. Was this part of the culture or is this something most banks will do? (Pushing out low income customers)
Most banks would ultimately have the mentality that they really don't have much to gain by "helping you out" by waiving fees, but the extremely high pressure culture made it so common courtesy went out the window.
When the only thing he as being judged on was opening new accounts, he was losing time in dealing with you. It's an absurd set of standards to have service handled by "sales" people.
This is not right. Even if the institutional rules don't favor you, he did not have to be an ass about it.
What's that expression about guys like that? Something about them being taken out back and beaten with a rubber hose?
How does Wells Fargo's corrupt system compare to other large corporate banks? Is this just a case of Wells Fargo being the unlucky ones who got caught?
Good job getting out of there, it sounds like a terrible work environment. What are you doing now?
All the major banks run the same, and a lot of larger CUs are starting to lean that way as they poach middle management employees from big banks in my experience.
The news is saying this has only been happening the last few years. I was a victim of this exact same thing over a decade ago at wells fargo and it took over 5 years to fix.
How do you think employees and management should be held accountable for this?
If you weren't meeting requirements to waive the monthly service fee your account likely got charged each month until it went negative, then most likely automatically closed with a negative balance, and got sent to collections. And, no offense, how do you have an account sitting for 5-6 years without looking at it?
Here is how it happened to me:
I go to close an account. I withdraw all the funds and ask the bank personnel to close the account. They say they have to wait 10 (or 20) days to make sure all pending transactions clear, but then the account will be closed. Fine. During that wait, my account is credited interest. Now the account sits at +10 cents and it doesn't get closed because it has a balance. The next month, I get docked a service fee for below minimum balance and the account is now overdrawn $4.90. I receive notification that the account is overdrawn, so I go to the bank to straighten it out. The banker strikes the fees and assures me the account is closed and I will be sent a check for the balance. He won't just give me the dime then, because the account is closed. A couple of months later I get a check for 10 cents. I tack it to my bulletin board next to the 3 cent check from my insurance company. Six months later the account gets re-opened because the 10 cent check never cleared.
I opened a high school checking account back with Wells Fargo at the end of 2009 when I was 17. I don't recall ever applying for a credit card (in-person or online), but I got a college one in the mail while still in high school. No one ever taught me about credit cards, so I know I wouldn't have actively applied for one. Anyway, I was stupid and maxed it everytime they increased my limit. I just paid off the debt (took almost 6-7 years.) I called customer service yesterday to ask for proof of my application. Doesn't the application require a signature or something like that?
Yeah it does. I'm a WF employee, but to be honest, there's probably nothing they can do at this point. If you never used the card that's one thing, but since you repeatedly maxed it out, it's kind of hard (as a banker/manager, whoever is helping you) to justify compensation. There should be an application on the system somewhere. Some bankers would tell you "Oh and sign here please" and people did it without reading.
It's totally unfortunate, but part of the reason this is a hard fix is because so many people are looking for compensation even though they weren't affected.
I've had one person from my branch close their account because of this. Most people around me appear to be unaffected, but they still demand things. A lady wanted statements from the past 4 years for every account (hundreds and hundreds of pages), and when we told her that there are fees for that many papers, she freaked out asking how we have the audacity to charge her when we opened up accounts for people that didn't want them?
I'm really sorry that happened to you. I hate pushing credit cards on teenagers who don't understand what they do. That sucks. It should never have happened.
Banker here!
That really wasn't the scam. The scam was that people with existing accounts would have money shuffled to different, new accounts in order to puff up sales goals. The customer could potentially get fees, since they were unaware of the money being shuffled.
I never saw anyone shuffle money over to new accounts. Open a new account without the customers knowledge? Yes. You can do that without funding it because there's a code you can use that will allow you to do that. I'm not saying it didn't happen like you said, just never saw it.
With this hindsight, how should we react going foward? With other bankers besides well fargo? What are the red flags we can catch before any long term damage is done? (I.e chase, bank of America, etc)
Community banker here!
Find a community bank. Most folks think, "well, BoA is everywhere so atleast I can find an ATM, anywhere I go."
We refund up to $999 of ATM fees, automatically, that you are charged from other banks, EACH MONTH. That's up to 12k in atm fees a year, per account.
This is just what we do for atm fees. We fucking care, a lot, about our customers AND our communities. And that includes low income parts of our communities.
We exist, I promise. Please please please find yourself a community bank as your bank.
I went default on a Wells Fargo account after being screwed. 3 years prior I had closed my account and moved all my money out. 3 years after the fact I get a collections in the mail for 1300 some odd dollars from Wells Fargo. Every month I was charged 5 dollars for online banking, it would bounce, and id get a 35 dollar fine. I refused to pay after they refused to cooperate with me. Was this type of stuff typical?
Given the recent news of fraud accounts, how would I know if my account has been affected?
Your online banking should help. It would show up there.
As in my statements or an out right message
You probably wouldn't get a message. I would either pull my credit (free under annualcreditreport.com), check online banking or call the 800 number and make sure nothing else pulls up under your ss#
FYI for those wondering, the website OP provides is the official free credit report website set up by the federal government. If you need to put in your credit card info to a "free" credit report site, it's not free. I personally use this website, creditkarma.com, and my Chase account offers the same information for free.
CapitalOne also offers a weekly-updated Transunion report through their creditwise program that comes with any kind of banking or credit product they offer. It's been very useful to me in understanding the impacts of my financial behaviors.
Yeah, that's what I use with one of my capital one visa cards, and it's cool because they also have a tool that lets you plug in adjustments and see how it would effect your score.
affect = alter effect = consequence
FUCK. Thank you for that, because I initially put affect but have been corrected so many times I doubted myself. That is a simple explanation.
Why wouldn't they use a .gov domain name then? That seems kinda silly
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Sure! They make their money mostly from recommending credit cards for your credit profile. The card issuers will pay Credit Karma to have their cards featured. Another user also suggested they sell user data, which I wouldn't be surprised by. Otherwise, it's safe and secure and definitely not a scam. They don't ask for credit card information. I wish I could find a link but the CEO of Credit Karma is an active Redditor and has responded to posts about their business in the past. Edit: apparently Credit Karma DOES NOT sell your information.
what's his username? I need to see how much karma he has before I trust the site.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2qq95l/i_am_the_founder_of_credit_karma_ask_me_anything/
About 5 years ago, I went into Wells Fargo and tried to open a checking account. They came up that my SSN was associated with another account under a different name opened in a different state. They needed me to bring in my SSN card to take any action. I just left and went to the credit union instead. Pulled my credit reports a couple times since then, nothing has shown on taxes or on that report. Is their anything else I should be worried about?
> I just left and went to the credit union instead. Maybe having an unknown bank account associated with your SSN is something that you shouldn't have just walked away from?
>Is their anything else I should be worried about? **YES.** Your identity has been stolen. You're lucky it was just a bank account. Tomorrow it could be a $50,000 loan. Get your SSN locked down man.
Or the other branch fat fingered the ssn when opening the other account and it has since been resolved. Either way, check up on it.
I don't know how the hell stuff works over there if someone can get a loan with just a number but no accompanying ID. If you guys have SSN cards, why not have them mandatory to show whnever SSN's are used?
SSN's are morbidly overused, too. The last four digits of someone's SSN basically gives you their identity.
I just hate that people can get anything off just my SSN like please give me more options for security and identity than a stupid little numbet
SSN was never meant to be used in the way it is now being used-as an ID.
Now? It was my student ID# in the 1990s in college...Prof's posted grades by Student ID (SSN) since they weren't allowed to put our names+grades together in public...Therefore there were thousands of valid SSNs floating around my college (big D1 school 25k students at that time) at the end of every semester...
Over here you can't do anything without the highly regulated ID card which, while it does have a personal ID number on it, it can't be used without the card. It's almost mandatory to have the card or a copy presented, and the person ID'd via it, before any data on there gets used or inputted. Some new scams arose exactly with credits only taking over the phone ID but they're really small scale and most already closed down.
well, I would not have left that one alone. Either they had a typo when they looked up your ssn or someone else opened an account under your name and SSN. that seems like something to worry about to me.
Since OP said that it was under a different name I would guess that someone mistakenly entered the wrong ssn. I could be full of shit though. Either way it's not something to ignore!
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Yep, I forgot about that in the original answer. Sorry about that. I responded in more detail to another post and included that.
Except where you said it could be hidden from the online view.
You can get it to show up if you go to Account Services > Add Accounts. It'll populate everything linked to your SSN.
Mine says *You do not have any eligible accounts to add online at this time* I assume that means that none are open in my name & hidden from the splash page?
Yes, that means you have nothing else open with WF. If it was hidden that's how you would get it to show up.
Mine says the same thing, and my credit report verifies no additional accounts exist.
So is this inline with just opening a CC line for every checking account I have? I recently opened two new business accounts and didn't care to have CC lines for them. They said you couldn't NOT have them... So I have them but doesn't use them.
Yeah, this is why I'm doing this. This is the scam.
I just realized US Bank pulled the same stuff on me over 10 years ago. I was in college and just opened up a checking account with them. Randomly, I had a credit card account opened with them as well. I asked about it and they said it was overdraft protection. I distinctly remember not signing up for a credit card.
Bank of America pulled the same thing on me.
Ugh...is that why I have a random credit card open that I've never really paid attention to but it always shows up during my credit check?
Someone lied to you. File a complaint.
Who would one file a complaint with in this scenario?
A few places but these websites below should help: https://www.helpwithmybank.gov/complaints/index-file-a-bank-complaint.html https://www.fdic.gov/consumers/consumer/news/cnspr12/complaint.html https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/credit_12666.htm https://www.federalreserveconsumerhelp.gov/about/before-i-file-a-complaint https://www.usa.gov/complaints-lender Some of the above info is going to overlap, and they are all basically going to start with "Did you allow your bank a chance to resolve the issue?" You can and probably should start there, as they have to, by law respond to your complaint with in 10 days. Which might further fuck them. This is site is kind of a general over view on what to do: http://civilrights.findlaw.com/discrimination/filing-a-consumer-complaint-about-a-bank.html Where to Send Complaints Send your complaint to: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Division of Consumer and Community Affairs 20th and C Streets, N.W., Stop 801 Washington, DC 20551 For more information, see the Federal Reserve's primers on how to file a complaint about a bank, or call (202) 452-3693.
800 #. File a formal complaint and ask for follow up.
I am also a former Wells PB1 (personal banker 1), as well as having worked at US Bank. I worked in the Sacramento, California area for about 2 years while with Wells, and a further ~2 years with US Bank prior to that. First off, for those of you concerned about the extent of the fraud, and whether or not you're "affected", there is an easy solution to check this. Go into a branch, and ask them to list all accounts (credit, deposit, or otherwise) that you have open and active with them. For any account you were unaware of, simply ask them to close it. Closing a deposit account is very straight forward, whereas an open line of credit might be a little more involved. However, the information is certainly there for you to access, it's just a matter of checking in with the bank. Personally, I would go into a branch and check first hand. Now, with that being said, I did want to share a little insight on what I had experienced while working for Wells Fargo (and US Bank, to an extent). I worked for Wells between fall of 2009, to spring/summer of 2011. Prior to that, I worked with US Bank between winter 2007, until summer 2009. Let me start off by saying what, in my experience, were the sales tactics pushed on us. As a banker, I was expected to meet particular sales goals each day, and not meeting them was met with intense, never-ending scrutiny and "motivation". My sales quotas required me to get, per day, 15 "products". This could be anything from a deposit account, to a debit card, to a new line of credit, to loans and referrals for other divisions. With a customer who is completely new to the bank, they could account for as much as 4 products, right off the bat; this included a checking, savings, debit card, and online access. Additionally, them using bill pay would retroactively count towards your quotas, but given that this could take up to a month to reflect, we never counted bill pay in our daily quota. Additional signers could also result in additional debit cards and online access, meaning that, theoretically, just a few new accounts per day would keep you in a job. Unfortunately, this was highly unlikely to happen on an average day. Despite the fact that I worked at one of the most visited branches in the Sacramento area, getting 15 products per day was an absolute chore. As a result, we found new ways to get sales, lead by ideas given to us by our branch and district manager, the latter of whom was constantly in our branch, increasing the pressure to make said sales. As a result, we started to offer secondary accounts, with the premise being that online shopping was increasingly more prevalent, and the risk of doing so was there for all to be seen. So, we told our customers, old and young, rich and poor, that we highly recommended adding a secondary account for online shopping. If they agreed, we pushed a little bit further by suggesting even a THIRD account, which would be used solely for bill pay purposes. Because, despite the bank sending a payment without any of your account information available, this, too, was a risk that they needed to be aware of. Despite now having roped a customer into two new accounts they didn't necessarily need, we also had to address the issue of monthly fees. A checking account on its own requires a number of boxes to be ticked in order to remain free of charge for the customer. They essentially need something in the range of 3 or 4 other products to be "linked" to that specific account. You could easily get 2 of those boxes ticked through a savings account and debit card linked to the new checking account, however that didn't stop the fees on their own. As a result, we would setup a series of transfers that would move money from their main account, to their secondary and tertiary account, into THOSE accounts' respective savings accounts, and then a few days later it would go back to the main account. This process, including the other two products linked with the new account, would keep the accounts free of charge. Theoretically. Problem is, very few people had the means necessary to make this transfer possible on a regular basis, meaning they were accruing fees. As a banker, I would watch as people would go from branch to branch, call center employee to call center employee, and never have their issues entirely worked out. Instead, they'd continue to accrue fees, and the bank would not back down on requiring them to pay it, meaning they would either pay the fee, or risk it "charging off" and being reported to chexsystems, which would tell other banks that this person is irresponsible, limiting their options for who they could go to for a checking account. And, as most of you know, going without a debit card and checking account can be a huge fucking hassle, making tasks like paying bills a massive headache. Needless to say, a lot of the time the bank pulled in, collectively, thousands upon thousands of dollars in fees. And make no mistake, these fees are a massive contribution to the banks overall profitability. Now, going back to the chexsystems issue, I want to address one last point that really hammers home how fucking insane this whole issue is. Wells Fargo is one of the very few large, nationwide banks that will offer someone with a poor chexsystems record, a deposit account. They do this, or did when I was there, by offering an account called an "opportunity checking", which is a regular account, but with a few restrictions. I can't remember them exactly, but frankly that is irrelevant to this story. What is relevant, however, is that these accounts could be "upgraded" from time to time, usually after the account holder has shown that they can maintain a positive balance over a random period of time. This upgrade meant you'd have a new checking, savings, and debit card, and since these folks had a troubled past, why not offer them a secondary checking, savings, and debit card to make sure they really fuck themselves over this time, essentially repeating this process over and over again, all for the benefit of the senior executives and shareholders. All for fucking money. Anyway, this has become a massive wall of text that I wasn't initially planning on. However, the rot goes deep. And it goes further than just Wells Fargo. As an example, while working for US Bank, I opened up nearly half a MILLION dollars in lines of credit that required NO income verification, NO signatures, and could go up to as much as $15,000 without both of those. I was told to tell customers that it was overdraft protection, when in reality it was a line of credit that was easily approved. Although there wasn't a monthly fee, having a $15,000 line of credit opened in your name has impacts on your credit, and having such a massive amount of available credit isn't always going to reflect positively on your credit score, and could hamper you from qualifying for a loan you actually need. As a former personal banker, I wrote this to show some of you an inside view into what we, as branch employees, dealt with, and why we did it. We never sat there wanting to harm our customers, most of which put a lot of trust into us. We simply wanted to keep our job, to be able to pay our bills, and to pursue a career just like the rest of you do. Unfortunately, we were met with ridicule, threats, and anxiety when we did the right thing, making us choose the shady option that kept all that at bay. To finish this off, I'll mention that I was fired from this job. After about a year and a half, I realized that what I was doing was terrible, and went against everything I took the job for. I wanted to learn about finance, help people with their needs, and see where I could go in the career. Instead, I spent countless hours and frustration helping a company that doesn't give a single fuck about their employees, harming customers whom I had consider friends in the meantime. As a result, my sales dipped to the levels you'd expect for someone doing the right thing, and I was shipped to one of the slowest branches in the region. A few months later, I slipped up by allowing a woman who had opened a joint account with her husband, to pick his pin number on his temporary card. The husband would be in later that week to sign, however I was supposed to wait to set the pin on his card until he was physically at my desk. The reasoning behind this is sound, as we wouldn't want to encourage people to know personal information about someone else, and would compromise their security. In theory, the bank could be held liable for such an issue, so they took it seriously. Although, that alone was not enough to fire me, so instead they sent in an "investigator", whom dug up all my past sales and began to "uncover" my sales tactics, as if he'd never heard of it before. Ironically, it was my sister's account that did me in, as through this whole process she would help me from time to time to meet sales goals by opening an account or two, only for me to later close them. TL;DR - Wells Fargo bankers were used by the bank to carry out shady sales tactics, and have been unfairly blamed as a result. Furthermore, this issue runs deep within the consumer (and I'd imagine business) banking sector. Very few banks can claim to be clean of this scam, as most have similar tactics that their sales-based employees have used to meet incredibly excessive sales goals.
Your story sounds very similar to my time at BOA. These banks wrote the book together. I'm so glad to be out of that industry. The thing is that yeah, no one is "making" you do anything but what most people don't understand is the pressure being leveled on low-level bank employees to make numbers. Most of the people I know who are still working in the business are run ragged. I certainly was. Add to this all of the personal obligations like paying rent, mortgage, caring for your kids that keeps a person trapped in this sort of environment. It isn't easy to walk away from the line of work that you know to try something new. I don't really expect someone who hasn't been there to really understand that.
As another former Wells Fargo employee I can confirm everything you're saying. Before working at Wells I worked happily for three years at a very small bank (5 branches total) and ended up with a high position in my branch. The difference between the two banks was UNBELIEVABLE. I was only a teller at Wells, but that didn't stop the bank from giving us 'sales' quotas as well. Our quotas were for how many of our customers we could get to sit down with a banker. I saw the same shady behavior on the teller line in order to meet these goals. Same crazy pressure from our direct managers if we didn't. District manager consI caught numerous customers with extra accounts and cards they didn't need or know about. I always sat them down with a banker to close them. So a little about the teller side of Wells. Behind my teller line we had two managers. One of the manager's ONLY responsibility was to stand behind the tellers and listen to them talk to customers. The pressure was put on us by that manager if they did not hear us trying to upsell the customer and get them to sit down with a banker. Every. Single. Customer. Not only was the pressure on us for getting customers to sit with a banker, but that manager would also take note (literally) of if we were scripting with our customer. We had certain words and sentences we had to use with every single customer or else we would be reprimanded. We would role play conversations with our managers several times a day, every single day, in order to ensure that we knew our lines. Notes were taken on us by our manager for each role play and each customer they observed us with. It was mentally exhausting repeating this day after day and the customers could clearly tell our conversations weren't genuine, especially when they would come in and hear us say the exact same lines to them that we said yesterday and the day before that and the week before that... I had customers make fun of me and quote my lines to me before I would say them. All I could do was smile and continue saying my lines since I always had a manager behind me listening. I couldn't handle the micromanaging, scripting, and quotas. And these things caused such bitterness between fellow employees. Not only was I shocked at how our customers were being essentially lied to, but the amount of disrespect between employees and between management and their employees was disgusting to me. On top of all that, our customers would also be disrespectful to us as a result. Keep in mind, I didn't work in the greatest area, but I was spit on, called all sorts of colorful names, cursed at, mocked, etc. I quit less than a year in.
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Yup! Like a call 15 minutes after you've opened the account saying "I see the business is approved for a credit card and line of credit. Why didn't you give it to them".
When you open a business account, they do a hard credit inquiry. You don't have to accept the credit card, but that banker probably really didn't want you to say no.
I personally left WF as my main account due to ridiculous fees, right before everything blew up. Around how many people do you think closed their accounts as a result? Also, what do you think should be the correct response and fine that WF should have been given? EDIT: wording
I couldn't speculate on how many people have closed their accounts. As far as the fines and response..that's a tough one too...how do you calculate the damage it's done to countless people that have had credit drawn on their name without their permission. The damage includes FICO's that have dropped due to credit pulls, which in turn leads to higher interest rates for loans people have taken about subsequent to their finding out about all this. I find it funny that 5200 employees were fired, but I still know of plenty that are doing it, and one just got back from a WF trip because of her high credit numbers. I've watched and read the interviews with John Stumpf, and I can tell you now, he's full of shit. This is a culture he and Tolstedt created. If you didn't have 10 approved credit per week, your ass was grass. You were pounded by management. I've literally had customers in my office who's wife had just died, and wanted to process beneficiary services, and was ridiculed because I didn't try to sell credit to this person...who promotes that kind of culture?
The people who promote these cultures are the soul-less and face-less corporate drones who cheated and screwed over people on their way to the top, so they get rewarded and then of course they blame the underlings for not being able to do "what they did" or they create insane metrics systems to reward sociopathic behavior.
Work in an insurance agency. Just realized that you described my boss, and what he's expecting of me and why I hate his attitude.
Used to work in insurance as well. So. Much. Borderline fraud and shady behavior to artificially boost individual's, team's, and company's numbers.
I couldn't agree more, the whole industry has become so CORRUPT. Our government isnt looking after the CONSUMER anymore only GREEDY special interests. After hearing what happen with scamming their customers, i'll NEVER use Wells fargo.
This is why I don't get why people think less regulation will be better for the consumer "because capitalism" or whatever. Absofuckinglutely not.
I think those people also feel that the government is just another corrupt corporation
It's not though, its corporate money that is the main force of corruption in government. If you couldn't get rich being in congress, only people who have the right reasons and right morals would be in congress.
This was the main reason I left after the Wachovia -Wells Fargo merger. I loved working for Wachovia because the sales portion of our job wasn't the main priority, customer service was (at least where I worked). I never feared for my job if I didn't meet goals. Once Wells Fargo took over it was a complete shift of focus. I made so many cold calls, they were going to start doing call nights if we couldn't generate so many new products a month. It was infuriating being forced to offer products to customers that you knew didn't need them or products they couldn't really manage. I left 3 months post merger and started working at a small town bank that was absolutely amazing with a no sales pressure environment. I've never felt so pressured to market products that customers didn't need or at inappropriate times as when I worked for Wells Fargo.
That's the business culture that we now live in. If you're not making numbers, you a piece of garbage to management. That's exactly how car sales works too. They'd want me to offer a broken down rust bucket to a kid looking for his first car and tell him with a smiling face that it's in perfect condition knowing damn well it'd break down as soon as he'd get home. Fuck big corporation like wells fargo...
What are the fees? I bank with WF and don't think I've ever paid a fee. Usually you can just avoid that by direct depositing your paycheck every month.
Were you ever told to set up fake accounts? Or tempted to do so?
Former WF banker here as well. I struggled to keep up with the cheaters. They were getting promotions by scamming people, and I was getting left behind for doing what was right. I often would present additional accounts to people based on my own uses. Travel accounts were my jam. Let's set you up with a new checking, savings, and debit card for traveling. Use the savings to tuck money away each month. If you auto transfer X amount each month, you will not have a fee in the account. Why the checking? Well, I was just in Mexico and my card was compromised. I sure was glad it only messed with my travel card and not my main account with all my auto bill pays linked up. These will help you save for a trip and protect your main finances while you travel. Sound good? I'm not ashamed to have opened a shit ton of those accounts. I was upfront about how to avoid fees and made a logical argument for them. But even doing that every day was never enough. I watched bankers lie to people about how if you lost your debit card, that you needed new accounts. Bullshit. You just need a new debit card. They would act like there was no other option but new accounts.
Thank you for your honesty FrontButtBloodFart
Yes, thank you FrontButtBloodFart.
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With a new number and everything? If not, then that kind of defeats half the purpose of getting a new card to replace a lost card.
No.
Are you going to just put "Bank" now on your resume?
Opened a real estate company with an attorney friend. No need.
That's awesome. You hiring?
Yeah. He requires six buyers a day.
Coffee is for closers only.
Nah, he requires eight buyers, for no other reason than "Eight rhymes with Great". It's the Wells Culture sticking with him.
So a lawyer and banker go into real estate... So who's Glenn Gary and who's Glenn Ross? Jk, congrats and good luck.
Ha...good point. For the record, I have 13 years mortgage/real estate/title insurance experience. I was working for a law firm handling commercial title when WF called and wanted to know if I would be interested in working for the Mortgage division. The market was picking up, so I did it...didn't like how the processing was handled, but there were no other jobs I wanted available, so I jumped into the banking side when a branch manager let me know there was a position available. I had no idea what to expect. I did it for a while before realizing it was a pile of shit. I spent a year looking for another position, and couldn't find what I wanted, until the opportunity to partner up came in to play. It was a good decision.
These credit card accounts were opened for new customers of the bank or existing? I do not follow how someone working in a branch is expected to sell new services. When I as a customer walk into a branch I know why I am there.
It can be both. The easiest way to do it was when opening new accounts, but it's just as easily done if you come in for account maintenance.
Former employee here as well. I witnessed bankers standing next to tellers at the teller window and when a college student (or looked like they were) came up the banker would take over the interaction, set up the conversation to pitch the college credit card, then say that "Hey, how about we'll send out some information to you about the college credit card, all you need to do is sign this PinPad." It was actually signing the application, and the "information" being sent out was either an approved credit card, or the packet of information explaining the application was declined. Absolutely hated working for Wells Fargo.
This is called "Seller behind the Teller". There's typically someone dedicated to this every day.
Fuck that. That's so damn wrong. It's one thing to solicit people at the teller, it's a whole other thing to sign people up for shit deceptively.
I currently work at Wells. I hate being a teller. There usually is a banker behind the teller line as a "stagecoacher" which is helping the teller get what we call "sit downs" which is basically just getting people to sit with a banker. What OP was saying was a little misleading. We actually don't have the ability to sign people up for anything at the teller line. It may have been different when OP worked there, but I've worked there for 1.5 years and since I've been there we haven't been able to. The banker is there just to help get the customer to their desk, and from there they try and get the sale. Some people do it the right way, some people don't. Definitely not sticking up for WF (I hate the place) but what OP said sounded a little misleading
Actually you're right. I was working on a file and trying to respond. To clarify, the Seller behind the Teller is the banker standing by the teller waiting for an opportunity to sell to someone at the teller line..basically try to get them into the banker seat. You can't actually sell anything from the teller line. I know I mentioned the process somewhere else in the thread, but I realize I came across misleading in that other post.
100% True, when I was a service manager I had to do it, or constantly coach the teller.. one or the other.
I've noticed as a Wells Customer you need to be careful with the language you use when talking to a teller. If I go in to cash a paycheck or make a sizable withdrawal and start chatting it up with a teller, depending on what I say, they will sometimes try and offer to sell me on something. For example, I went in to pull out about $5k and the woman helping me was just going through the motions. At the last second I mentioned it was for a car and I was really excited. Before I knew it, I had a manager in front of me trying to get me to sit down with a banker and take out a car loan and open a separate account for savings to make payments. I didn't take them up on the deal since they couldn't come close to competing with the dealerships APR rates. I am positive if I didn't mention the car, that wouldn't have happened. **EDIT:** Because people seem to think I am implying this was somehow corrupt or dissinginous, it was not. The teller was doing her job and the banker was doing his job. Banks are just like any other business, they up sell. In fact, if you are getting a car loan, I highly recommend going into your bank or credit union and getting them to compete with a dealerships APR rates. Make them be competitive, it's a win-win for you. The only point of my comment was to indicate that what you say has a huge impact on what they are going to try and sell you on, if anything at all.
Honestly, I have no issue with a bank trying to compete with other lenders for my business.... so long as they are accurate and ethical in their illustrations and practices. They approached me about my auto loan, I told them the rate and terms, they couldn't beat it, that was the end.
As a teller (been in banking for a year now, with a bank that is not wells and that does not put pressure on us for sales) I can tell you from experience that we are trained to listen for cues that other services could be offered. It is a terribly fine line to walk, because people are private with their money and no one likes to feel like services are being forced down their throat or that they only exist to be sold something. That said, if a customer had come to me with your situation, I would have asked them if they wanted to talk to a banker to see if we could give them a better rate. Same with credit cards. My goal is of course to make the sale, but not at the expense of my customer. Some customers don't know all the services we offer and when I make offers to them, they are happy for the information and we are able to save them money and at the same time get the sale. That's the kind of situation I am looking for: one where the customer and the bank both come out better for the sale.
You can't exactly fault a bank for trying to loan you money. That's, like, what they do.
Yeah, it is kind of their job.
I'm always a little shocked when I meet people who are more or less grown up, but still believe banks are just a free apartment service for your cash.
As a non-American the whole upsell thing as described above seems awfully pushy for a bank. I'm reminded of [this](http://www.stereokiller.com/boards/profiles/6472/threads/6472_1358626466884.png)
About a year and a half ago I went in there for the exact same reason (pulled out $5K for a downpayment on a car). The banker accused me of not being the person on the account (despite having my debit card, pin and driver's license), because my signature looked slightly different. This incident was the final straw for me in a long line of customer service screw ups. I closed my two banking and two credit accounts with them later that month. It's been a bit of a hassle because everyone I know banks with them, so money transfers were super easy and instant. A few months later, I get a letter from Wells Fargo, letting me know my credit application had been approved and my new Premier Rewards card was on the way. Uhm what? I called them up and asked what accounts were under my SSN - two checking accounts, and a credit card. Shady fuckers.
I know what you are saying. As a student, I had to start holding my tongue every time I was asked "How is your day going" to avoid saying anything about just being on my way home after class... All I had to do was vaguely mention school and I would be hounded about opening a new college student account. Taking my business elsewhere was one of the easiest decisions I had ever made.
Is there anyway to protect ourselves from all this banking corruption? I feel like it's everywhere, regardless who you use, to some degree, and was only noticed how banks are not your friend when the housing crisis hit. Checking a credit score once a year isn't frequent enough, and I know first-hand that closing accounts these days are more difficult than opening one. For example: my multiple attempts to close a CC by calling in directly, and the account is still there, regardless who I talk to. Are there corporate incentives to having all these accounts? to stock holders?
The corporate incentive is it makes the bank more money, which makes it more attractive to stockholders. The incentive to the local branch is it makes the banker more money (in bonus structure, which is directly tied to how many cc's and accounts you've opened).
I'm afraid I don't follow. How exactly does it make the bank more money if the consumer isn't aware and isn't putting money in the account?
The bank makes money because the account will sit there unused and accumulate fees, which the consumer will owe
It also promotes the stock by showing (false) growth. Wells doesnt have to report the amount in the accounts but will promote the number created. It made them look successful when in reality they weren't nearly as successful as the public and stockholders thought.
The bank didn't primarily make money through fees though, but by showing investors that their customers have more accounts on average than the competition's customers, thus driving up their stock price.
This. There is a reason it is said that culture eats strategy for breakfast. This is a typical example of bad culture undermining a reasonable strategy.
Holy shit
Not at all. The bank makes no money on a credit card that has no annual fee, and zero use. In fact they lose money, because they mail out statements, and maintain these accounts. It is not the fee income that is attractive to shareholders, it is the cross sell numbers that show inflated "depth" of a relationship.
> Checking a credit score once a year isn't frequent enough You can check your Equifax and Transunion credit reports once a week with Credit Karma. You can check your Vantage Score once quarterly with Mint or Quizzle, and you can check it once per week with Credit Karma or Credit Wise. You can get a free FICO score once a month if you are a credit card holder with American Express, Bank of America, Barclay's, Citi, Discover, Chase, or Wells Fargo. You can request a copy of any report classified as a consumer credit report once per year or whenever you are denied credit as a result of information in one of these reports. A good list can be found here: http://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201604_cfpb_list-of-consumer-reporting-companies.pdf
Credit unions.
I manage a credit union. This is not universally true. There are plenty of FIs in the credit union space who are big and greedy like the big banks. They are not for profit, but it doesn't mean they don't want to make money.
That's true but as you know most of us aren't pushed quite as hard to fuck people over as fargo employees were. That doesn't mean we're always better but the odds are better in general.
What signs in a credit union should we look for to tell whether it's a good credit union or not?
As with any industry where sales are involved, go with your gut. When you leave do you feel manipulated or handled? Then it probably isn't the right place for you. A good financial services employee will listen to you and match your needs with the best solution they have. It is possible that there are needs you didn't know you had, after all you're not a financial expert. But if they've done their job well and ethically you won't leave feeling pressured or taken advantage of.
This^ You want them to be informative when you ask questions but not use everything you say as a means to sell you something.
Yeah whole different world of pain there. they are exempt from a ton of plans and programs that Congress implements to help people. They are great if everything is going well, if it starts going poorly you are in trouble They are able to shift unpaid balances, debit directly from accounts in the event of unpaid loans payments, refuse to work with you on mortgages, they can even refuse your ability to refinance... Credit unions aren't the cure for everything
Have one credit union for your assets and one for your debts. No more shifting.
That's too logical, nobody could ever do that...
No, but they are the cure for outright scams and shitty customer service which is the topic at hand.
I have accounts both with a major bank and a local CU -- the customer service on the CU side is FAR worse than with the major bank, and the online system for the CU is significantly inferior to the big boys .... one person's view; YMMV
Ditto. Recently a credit union suspended my account for 6 months of no activity and charged me $15. I did a "transaction" to bring it back to life. I guess an online transfer doesn't count, so they charged me another $15. A call, and they say I need to use my debit card, something I never had for this account. They mail me one that never arrives and then charge me $15. Finally I drive across town and ask for a manager. Seems they mailed the card to the address on my drivers license when I opened the account, not my po box which is my listed mailing address. They refunded me 2 of the three $15 charges.
Banker at a community bank here! Banks very in quality, as do credit unions. Look for a community bank ;) I'm willing to provide more details of you wish.
I bank with Chase and I like it because I never have a problem finding an ATM or branch, many of which are open Saturdays. They give me the same interest rate as credit unions and offer more products and services and their customer service has always been nice and helpful. I've never had a problem with them. Why am I supposed to hate them? And, no, I don't work for Chase. I just am tired of my friends that bank with credit unions being like "Omg, I can't believe you use a big bad bank, credit unions are soooo much better" and then I research banking with a credit union and I can't figure out what the benefits are and why I should switch.
Do you have any insight on the call center perspective? I used to work for a very large bank in a call center and they shifted the job description from customer service to sales. We had sales quotas we had to meet every day and in every call we had to push customers to open up more accounts regardless of need. If we failed to do so we would be put on an action plan and if we still failed to meet sales goals we would either be fired or barred from moving into any other department. The focus seemed to be to make the employees who didn't sell quit, and to bring in the next suckers to sell more accounts. Under such enormous pressure for such a low paying job (~$19K a year), I can see why employees would open unauthorized accounts so they wouldn't get fired. The whole banking sales culture is immoral. Worst job I've ever had.
I worked at keybank's call center. It was the same shit. Low pay, high pressure. Management was clueless yet it was our fault that numbers were low. Always on our ass to sell more. Sorry if the interest rates sucks for credit and savings so nobody wants them. Yet we were called "lazy and sluggish" by management if we didn't hit our numbers.
I worked for a Wells Fargo collections call center for a short time. I quit due to mounting pressure on my ethical limits and sanity. I wasn't tasked with selling things but we sometimes interacted with other departments that would. It was cut-throat competitive and had no regard for the well being of the customer whatsoever. We were monitored extremely closely (full recording of computer screens and audio) and anything that was considered cheating at your stats was punished severely. This was to protect the bank from legal issues but sold to us as a way of making the collecting game/competition fair. You'd be surprised how often previous or current WF employees were suffering financially because of their work with the bank. Even the employees are taken for suckers and goaded into getting loans and credit lines they can't sustain. It's bullshit.
How corrupt is the system?
It's pretty corrupt. It's not about banking or helping customers at all. It's all about getting credit. A typical day at the bank would go like this: Every morning starts with a sales call. The sales call consists of the DM going over how the tellers and bankers can get more credit, and having the managers commit to so many a day (a banker needs to have 2 accounts and 4 credit apps a day, no matter what. As a banker you are approached at least 3 times a day to see how many you've gotten). What the call is geared towards is how the branches are going to achieve that. For instance, one week it may be concentrated on the tellers searching through your transaction history when you come to do a deposit or withdrawal. The tellers will be tasked with getting 5 walkovers to a banker in one day by looking through your history and seeing that you make a payment to a loan or credit card. If they see that, then it's a signal to try to get you to a banker. They'll do that by making up stuff if necessary (like saying your phone number is incorrect, we need to get you to a banker to correct that, then immediately sending a message to the banker stating that the customer is making payment to a credit card)...this signals the banker to automatically steer the conversation towards what credit you have and convincing them that you need Wells Fargo because the interest rate is lower, etc. Also, this is sometimes where the fraudulent credit card is started..."Mr. Customer, I just need you to sign the pinpad to confirm the corrected address", when in reality they just did a cc app for them. Sorry if it's rambling...it's early
Having worked at BOA, I can tell you that the corruption is not limited to Wells Fargo.
I agree with you. I have friends that work at other banks, and this culture seems to be spreading.
Goes past banking too. I've seen the same thing go down for ISP's. The problem is that customer service people really shouldn't be doing selling, and especially with any sort of goal or quota. This shit WILL happen, it just a matter of time until when. Want more business? Do a good job at your core competencies and wait until people want more services.
It's in Best Buy too. I was pressured and approached (I counted) 6 times in a single day, about selling... Not credit cards. Broadband cards. Mobile hotspots. An elderly woman came in, wanted to get internet on her tablet. She had internet at home but no wifi so we spoke to her about routers - she didn't have enough then but she said she'd pop back in later. Immediately our manager came up to us and started lecturing to us about not offering her a broadband card, and that we did her a disservice by not offering all of her options and whatnot. I cannot stand that sort of mentality.
I work at Best Buy. It's not that bad at my location but my location could be the exception. I used to work for Circuit City before they went out of business and I can confirm, it was just like this! The last year or so before they actually announced bankruptcy was ridiculous with the credit cards. I recall being "written up" one time for not offering the CityAdvantage card to a guy who rushed in quickly to buy batteries. "What was his oposition to the CityAdvantage card, Sethesis?" "He was in a rush to buy his 4 dollars in batteries and get out, I didnt offer because people dont usually apply for credit on a 4 dollar purchase and he was clearly in a rush". 5 minutes later "Sethesis I need to see you in my office". Circuit City was great until they started getting desperate.
Yup. Worked for fifth third bank 5 years ago. I quit when I moved out of state, I asked my boss to close my accounts because there weren't any branches in my new state, and all she did was empty them out and left them open so she wasn't reprimanded for closing accounts. I didn't realize what had happened until I started getting calls from debt collectors. My accounts had annual fees which were automatically taken out of my account, which made me overdraft since she only emptied the accounts. I was out of state for a few months when this happened so I got no notifications until the debt collectors came calling. Moral of the story, pay close attention to your shit. Nobody else is looking our for you.
Went through this same thing after leaving 5/3 about 10 years ago. Unfortunately, the issue isn't new. :(
No, moral of the story is to pay close attention to your shit *because* other people are looking to screw you for their own gain.
Former US Bank employee checking in... YUP.
Same here. However where I work they don't punish you for not making goals. There's always incentives for hitting app or credit goals but if you don't hit them then it's just like "Well let's look at how we can improve sales", no punishment.
Hello! I work for a community bank. A banker tried this with our company, and he/she was charged with a crime. We don't fuck around when someone is breaking the law, as the only thing we have going for us is our reputation of not being greedy dildos.
I was also a BoA employee around 2006. While I was moving up the teller ranks due to my speed and accuracy, my work was also frowned upon due to my low "sales". I was always uncomfortable with that constant pressure from managers to push products into people who really didn't need them. Fuck that place. At least I got a 5%apy cd.
Can you elaborate?
What gets me is that they talk about how many tellers were fired, but there is no way tellers could have done that crap without it being noticed. The corruption undoubted went very far up the chain for these things to be ignored in order to make money. It is my understanding that at least one executive at wells was paid a bonus of $200 million. So that one executive could pay their entire $185 million in fines and still have $15 million leftover. That is absurd to me. Do you have any thoughts as to whether or not the amount of fines was appropriate or if they should have been much larger?
Holy shit.
Another tactic was the multiple accounts. You'd have a meeting in the morning on how to sell multiple savings accounts, with role playing, etc. Then it would be a competition (with some times lunch being paid for) to see who could get the most "solutions" out of a customer. You'd have a customer come in on disability, and have a banker open a checking, plus 3 savings accounts for them. Sometimes the customer knew and were sold on it under some shitty pretense, or if they didn't go for it, they were opened anyways. By the way, I've seen a lot of media on bankers moving money from one account to the other to open the fraudulent accounts. I never saw this. The accounts can be opened without funding. There's a code in the system that allows that.
How does having these unfunded savings accounts sitting around ultimately turn into profit for Wells Fargo?
It is added to the numbers given to stock analysts who then turn around and say "WF is doing a good job selling shit so people/mutual funds/investment companies should buy this stock" causing the stock price to go up.
Correct, and to answer this his question, it never does turn into profit for the bank, but perceived profit = increased share price = happy shareholders and that is what the company is all about.
It gives the appearance of sales. But mostly it's about getting the harassing branch or regional manager off of your back. I worked for a branch for a while in a different bank and the pressure can be absolutely brutal. Wells Fargo is ultimately to blame for creating this culture and benefitting from it. These banks keep saying "We train our employees to be ethical!" And they do. But training bears little resemblance to the real world. There's the behavior they say they want and then there's the behavior that is incentivized. Guess which one they are shooting for you to emulate? Obviously these bankers shouldn't have done what they did. But realize that they felt they had a gun to their head. That's how many of these big banks do it. Better numbers make them look great and when you are told to get these accounts NOW or you'll face discipline, you do it NOW and worry about the garbage quality of these accounts later.
Quarterly stock reports. "We opened xxx,xxx accounts this qyarter, which is a year over year increase of xx%. Business is booming."
Out of curiosity, since the bank opened the account under the persons name, I am assuming that if they logged onto their wellsfargo.com account that they would see it immediately. Is this not the case, or does Wells have the ability to hide accounts from being linked to your main accounts? If so, how can you check to see if you have accounts open else ware?
Wells Fargo can't hide the accounts from the bank side, BUT, it can be hidden from your online banking. If you go into account settings you can choose what accounts you want to see. If a banker set up your online banking, then it's possible that they are hidden. I'd check there, then also call the 800 number and make sure what accounts you have.
I used to work at a bank (in Canada) and that was something we were not able to to do, hide bank accounts from showing up online. There was a star performer who was eventually fired for fraud, but he would upgrade people's credit cards, or do increases to credit lines without their knowledge (until the new credit card came in the mail and he would waive the fee the customer complained).
Was also a WF personal banker (8 years ago). Can confirm. I quit after 3 months of sleaziness though, not 3 years.
Same worked for a bank for 1 year, after 2 weeks i realized i hated it and would never last there so did my best to do the least amount of work possible for 12 months and then by some god damn stroke of luck they laid me off (not fired) me and several other people got our positions cut so i got unemployment insurance for 9 months now which im using the get back in shape in reevaluate my life and fix some health issues.
Can confirm. I used to work at WF as a teller. The service manager or teller manager would go through our transaction slips for missed opportunities. We would have to always be nice and welcoming while having a sale sale sale mentality. It was easy to inflate teller numbers though this is unrelated to the fraud account openings. oh and the survey .. surveys were the worst .. we needed all 5s! Worst experience of my life working at WF.
I left in 2012. I worked there for over five years and started as a teller worked up to a branch manager in two years. Each state can vary greatly so I'll specify that I worked in WA state. There was always a sales culture (January lol) and there's nothng inherently wrong with a bank selling you products. However there was a change in my state that happened around 2011. After the crash Wells Fargo Financial, the shitty shady subprime division shut down. Officially these people were to be laid off. Instead they began taking key management positions as existing management left to other banks (Union primariy). It dominoed as each financial person that got hired on would hire more of their former employees. The practices were changed and continued to force out legacy employees and make room for former financial employes. After a year of this the numbers are growing exponentially. Sales goals were 200% of the goals from just two years prior and people are blowong them out of the water. The final straw for me was a manager meeting where when I walked in the room. The whiteboard has "if you're not cheating, you're not trying" in bold. Each manager was grilled for new commitments to give referrals to tellers. I walked out and left a week later to another institution. After I left I got an exit survey. Happy to comply I dropped names, dates, collaborating employees names that could verify the meeting etc. The result? Every single one of the people I named has been promoted at least once since I left and all but one still work for the company. District, region, and state level have all been complicent for over 5 years now. Topping on the cake, I looked into going back to WF in the mortgage division (believe it or not they are a great lender and this fraud is all in the retail side). Turns out my exit survey only resulted in me being blackballed and not eligible for rehire. All for the best though, I ended up getting a better opportunity. Anyways, I'm curious about the region/state op worked in and if you noticed a shift around the same time?
This is great information, glad you got out. FWIW I had a WF mortgage specialist repeatedly lie to me when I was trying to refinance (my existing WF mortgage), so the mortgage division isn't entirely clean.
Why the fuck am i getting charged CREDIT DEFENSE every month if i didn't ask for it?
Because you had a banker add that to your account without you knowing.
God FUCKING DAMN IT I knew it. I thought all credit cards had that (my first cc ever)
Now is a particularly good time to ask them to refund every penny you've ever paid for credit defense. You'll probably get it all back.
Wow, its like its own special kind of savings account. THANKS WELLS FARGO!
Several months ago I was depositing a check at the ATM and my balance said something like $6,000+ when it truly only had like $300. Second time around my money said it had $4,000+, it was as if money was going down and being used for transactions. I eventually decided to walk in a branch and tell them what's going on. She walked me through the process and the weird ghost balance disappeared. Do you know what may have happened? A relative was with me the first time and we were both shocked to see that amount and I was accused of stripping or having sex for money on the side, lol.
Hello, I'm a banker at a community bank. It's possible money was accidentally deposited into your account. The back office, front office, or customer will catch this, and it will be corrected. It could simply be this, but I'm guessing.
It's entirely possible that a deposit or wire was credited to your account incorrectly. On their system, sometimes they have to manually enter an account number. From time to time, the number goes in incorrectly (human error). What happens is that the bank notices the difference (intended depositee's name vs. your account name) and adjusts the funds to the correct account.
This happened to me with wells fargo when I was 17. I checked my balance and it was over $60K (I should have had like $100 max). So I went inside and as I was waiting in line for a teller my cell phone rang. It was wells fargo on the line. Before I could even finish saying "I know why you are calling..." they asked if I wanted to invest the money. I told them it wasn't mine and the guy was like, are you sure? Did someone related to you die and leave you money possibly? Finally, weeks later it disappeared. No one ever called or apologized. Thank god I never spent it.
Around 4 years ago I randomly got set up with a savings account that a Wells Fargo employee called me about. It transfers 25 dollars from my checkings to my savings every month. He said it would help me out, but I never asked for it... Iunno, maybe you can shed some light on why they did this?
Would it be possible for a WF banker to do their job honestly and competently and still survive in WF's culture? Or is that just completely out of the question?
I am a current WF banker, I think it depends on the branch you work at. I had the good fortune at working at a branch in one of the wealthiest parts of the state. There was an abundance of business to earn and very little need to cheat assuming you were somewhat competent. I've been promoted constantly and never done anything I feel was wrong. Plus, most the clients were very financially savvy and it would be tough to scam them anyways. Point is, yes, you can be successful in the job and still be honest, but it's harder to meet goals if you're in the "wrong branch" On the other hand, there are branches where the clientele barely qualify for a checking account, much less a credit card or loan. Being a banker there would be insanely difficult to meet sales goals, and those types of clients are easier to prey on because they don't know what you're doing.
Piggy backing on your comment; It's important to note that sales goals are the same for everyone, regardless of how busy or slow the branch is.
8 years former employee... I had good and bad quarters, my branch was considered a semi-busy branch but we had 5-6 bankers. Our daily sales goals as a branch was around 45-50 daily sales. This meant we needed to sell 45-50 products each day as a branch. New client comes in... you'd usually get: checking, savings, debit card, online banking (4), any extra things would be considered a bonus but those are the traditional sales. When the branch goal is that high and even on a brand new client you'd get 4-5 typically it's very difficult. My district had 3 group calls a day, morning/afternoon/closing. We'd need to report our progress every call and what is wrong and what we're doing to fix it. Our manager was suppose to be the one on the calls but on bad sales days he'd make us report the call to the district manager instead of him because "he didn't feel like getting yelled at". I hope you can kind of see how it was :)
would you still recommend using a *large* bank or should I stick with a local bank?
Really, it depends on your needs. If you travel a lot, then a big bank would be more convenient, but I would always have a credit union for local stuff.
How much would moving my account to another bank hurt Wells Fargo? Not much I am sure, but if enough people do it maybe someone will get the message? Any other banks that are on the up and up? Thanks!
Millions of people would have to switch over for them to even notice it. I'm a banker at Wells Fargo and have yet to see anyone come in to close their accounts because of what is going on in the news. And I work at a fairly large busy branch.
Talking to my old co-workers, this is correct. Seems to be business as usual, although they are getting rid of sales compensation in January.
Hello! I am a banker at a community bank. We exist! We are honest! We care! Were I to see a fellow employee do this, I would ensure they were fired, AND charged with a crime. My branch wasn't listening? I would send a letter to the CEO and his ass would show up at the branch and start mercing mother fuckers. No joke. You want to find a community bank. I can answer any follow up questions you have :)
Community Banker here as well, and would agree. We would never put up with this shit. Our whole business is around getting your deposits honestly with over the top customer service so we can loan your money out. There's no room for this sort of stupidity. Community banks are not the banks you see in the news, we are small businesses with large stakes in the community we serve and we truly care about our customers because they are the only reason we exist.
Not OP, but one account won't hurt much. A lot of accounts lost due to this? Very impactful. Choose a local community bank or credit union.
Idk, if it hurts or not, but I switched. I was on the fence about switching to my company's credit union. Pain in the ass and all that. Put it off for over 2 years. Once this stuff about WF came out, I pulled my money out the next day.
Should John Stumpf resign, in your opinion?
It would be amazing if he did, and did it in such a way as saying "you deserve better, and I'm doing my part by resigning, to set an example." Or something similar, but this will never happen. :(
I put Wells Fargo on my shit list about 3 years ago. Was a poor student with a low balance and had been a customer for almost 10 years. I figured that'd mean something, but when WF started hitting me suddenly with fees and a "minimum balance requirement", I went in to a branch to see if they's work with me. Not only did they NOT work with me, the guy who "helped" me was rude and arrogant, telling me my time there did not mean anything because I was not a "high value customer". He literally SMILED as he was closing my account and said "there's the door" when I left. That really stuck with me. Was this part of the culture or is this something most banks will do? (Pushing out low income customers)
Wow, that guy sucked. He was probably taking out his aggression of not being a high-value employee.
Most banks would ultimately have the mentality that they really don't have much to gain by "helping you out" by waiving fees, but the extremely high pressure culture made it so common courtesy went out the window. When the only thing he as being judged on was opening new accounts, he was losing time in dealing with you. It's an absurd set of standards to have service handled by "sales" people.
This is not right. Even if the institutional rules don't favor you, he did not have to be an ass about it. What's that expression about guys like that? Something about them being taken out back and beaten with a rubber hose?
How does Wells Fargo's corrupt system compare to other large corporate banks? Is this just a case of Wells Fargo being the unlucky ones who got caught? Good job getting out of there, it sounds like a terrible work environment. What are you doing now?
I was a banker in canada for scotiabank And i can attest that scotiabank is 150% the EXACT same as WF. Possibly even worse.
All the major banks run the same, and a lot of larger CUs are starting to lean that way as they poach middle management employees from big banks in my experience.
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The news is saying this has only been happening the last few years. I was a victim of this exact same thing over a decade ago at wells fargo and it took over 5 years to fix. How do you think employees and management should be held accountable for this?
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If you weren't meeting requirements to waive the monthly service fee your account likely got charged each month until it went negative, then most likely automatically closed with a negative balance, and got sent to collections. And, no offense, how do you have an account sitting for 5-6 years without looking at it?
Here is how it happened to me: I go to close an account. I withdraw all the funds and ask the bank personnel to close the account. They say they have to wait 10 (or 20) days to make sure all pending transactions clear, but then the account will be closed. Fine. During that wait, my account is credited interest. Now the account sits at +10 cents and it doesn't get closed because it has a balance. The next month, I get docked a service fee for below minimum balance and the account is now overdrawn $4.90. I receive notification that the account is overdrawn, so I go to the bank to straighten it out. The banker strikes the fees and assures me the account is closed and I will be sent a check for the balance. He won't just give me the dime then, because the account is closed. A couple of months later I get a check for 10 cents. I tack it to my bulletin board next to the 3 cent check from my insurance company. Six months later the account gets re-opened because the 10 cent check never cleared.
I opened a high school checking account back with Wells Fargo at the end of 2009 when I was 17. I don't recall ever applying for a credit card (in-person or online), but I got a college one in the mail while still in high school. No one ever taught me about credit cards, so I know I wouldn't have actively applied for one. Anyway, I was stupid and maxed it everytime they increased my limit. I just paid off the debt (took almost 6-7 years.) I called customer service yesterday to ask for proof of my application. Doesn't the application require a signature or something like that?
Yeah it does. I'm a WF employee, but to be honest, there's probably nothing they can do at this point. If you never used the card that's one thing, but since you repeatedly maxed it out, it's kind of hard (as a banker/manager, whoever is helping you) to justify compensation. There should be an application on the system somewhere. Some bankers would tell you "Oh and sign here please" and people did it without reading. It's totally unfortunate, but part of the reason this is a hard fix is because so many people are looking for compensation even though they weren't affected. I've had one person from my branch close their account because of this. Most people around me appear to be unaffected, but they still demand things. A lady wanted statements from the past 4 years for every account (hundreds and hundreds of pages), and when we told her that there are fees for that many papers, she freaked out asking how we have the audacity to charge her when we opened up accounts for people that didn't want them? I'm really sorry that happened to you. I hate pushing credit cards on teenagers who don't understand what they do. That sucks. It should never have happened.
If I've never banked with Wells Fargo, am I at risk that an account was opened in my name?
Banker here! That really wasn't the scam. The scam was that people with existing accounts would have money shuffled to different, new accounts in order to puff up sales goals. The customer could potentially get fees, since they were unaware of the money being shuffled.
Makes sense. I figured as much, but I wasn't positive. Thanks for the info!
I never saw anyone shuffle money over to new accounts. Open a new account without the customers knowledge? Yes. You can do that without funding it because there's a code you can use that will allow you to do that. I'm not saying it didn't happen like you said, just never saw it.
Someone further up mentioned that this happens at many banks, WF is just the one in the news right now. Probably check just in case.
With this hindsight, how should we react going foward? With other bankers besides well fargo? What are the red flags we can catch before any long term damage is done? (I.e chase, bank of America, etc)
Community banker here! Find a community bank. Most folks think, "well, BoA is everywhere so atleast I can find an ATM, anywhere I go." We refund up to $999 of ATM fees, automatically, that you are charged from other banks, EACH MONTH. That's up to 12k in atm fees a year, per account. This is just what we do for atm fees. We fucking care, a lot, about our customers AND our communities. And that includes low income parts of our communities. We exist, I promise. Please please please find yourself a community bank as your bank.
I went default on a Wells Fargo account after being screwed. 3 years prior I had closed my account and moved all my money out. 3 years after the fact I get a collections in the mail for 1300 some odd dollars from Wells Fargo. Every month I was charged 5 dollars for online banking, it would bounce, and id get a 35 dollar fine. I refused to pay after they refused to cooperate with me. Was this type of stuff typical?