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How many people honestly look at their banking statement monthly?
This definitely happened in my wife's case, but it was only done to family and friends and with their consent. People got used to the late afternoon calls of "I need more solutions today! Can I please open another account for you?" Every other manager she knew was doing the exact same thing with their friends and family. Nobody was ever charged any fees though. It sounds like corporate got even worse with their sales pressure over time, forcing many to escalate beyond their friends/family.
I read it was $100M fine. I wouldn't consider that heavy, considering the size and revenue of Wells Fargo. The equivalent of a nominal parking ticket for a regular person, and certainly not enough to discourage similar behavior in the future.
Large relatively speaking for the short history of fines issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
If you're looking for something other than "they don't pay attention to their accounts", I've got nothing for you
So they take a small amount from people, then overdraft the account to generate fees? I guess I could see that as a scam. Seems so small time.If you're looking for something other than "they don't pay attention to their accounts", I've got nothing for you
This certainly isn't true. Many, many people have accounts with banks that benefit both sides. By and large if you pay attention and abide by the rules, you'll get what you expected.
if an account is opened in your name that you don't know about, and they overdraft $25 a day for a year, that's a bit over $9K on a single account. You have no idea that it's happening either. The account they take the initial money from isn't the account they are targeting (typically). They rack up fees on the account they opened that you know nothing about not the one they used to "transfer" funds from that you DO know about.
It is small time, the remediation is only a few million dollars in fees being paid back to customers (an article said it averaged to about $25 per customer affected.) "Wells Fargo" didn't make anything off this scam, the small time branch employees did though by making their sales numbers.
Read an article many years ago that one of the reasons all companies (not just banks) love for people to convert to electronic billing and auto bill pay is because people, on average, don't bother to look at their statements. So most of the time they do not catch how frequently most companies make mistakes on peoples bills or charge them extra fees, etc.
As someone who works in retail banking, I think that most everyone who works in banking knows to never jump ship to go to Wells for many of the reasons listed by others. They have horrific goals and push you to somehow meet them, they have punishment call nights if you do not achieve your horrific goals, so your personal life suffers too.
I am fascinated by this. I work for the company, albeit in technology for the retirement group. I was a First Union employee, then Wachovia, now Wells Fargo. I had no idea our retail bank was managed this way. Just strengthens my resolve to tell people to look for a local credit union to bank with and use the large banks as a holding spot for cash and ATM access. I have one small personal loan with Wells and a checking account along with my 401k (obviously). That's it. Everything else I go to smaller credit unions.
now imagine this is happening at every bank branch across the country. personal/universal bankers are under a ton of pressure to churn sales or get canned.
I was a First Union customer and then Wachovia and over to Wells. Each brand was a downgrade as a customer. However I find that the credit union thing is overplayed too, as I have encountered just as many bad CU stories as I have people who love their CU. They are just like every other institution in that it is all about the people that you deal with. Most people have so little interaction with their bank that not much of it matters.
There might be a few exceptions, but by and large those lenders are not credit unions. In fact, many credit unions can't charge more than an 18% APR by law.culdeus said:
