Dear Wells Fargo,
Look, I gave you a
chance. But you just were not meeting my needs, so I think it's best that we
part ways.
First, you wanted
to start charging me a fee to use my own debit card. Fortunately, you thought
better of that move real quick. But then you decided to charge a fee for all
checking accounts. (Even student accounts. I've seen your fliers, I know what
you were doing! That's just low.) "Oh, you're fine!" you told me.
"The fee gets waived if you have a high enough balance or if you're direct
depositing enough money every month!" This did not reassure me,
considering you decided to begin this program just as I finished school and
started looking for jobs. Meaning my direct deposit would be stopping, and
there was a chance I might actually deplete my account below the threshold. (As
an aside, I can pretty easily see why it's so difficult for poor people to work
their way out of being poor. If your employer requires you to be paid direct
deposit, and you're not making enough for the fees to be waived, you're not
only having to worry about stretching your paycheck to cover rent and food and
transportation and everything else, you have to worry about paying rent for
your money, too!) And, y'know, it's kind of the principle of the thing. I'm
allowing you to use my money to make money, and you're charging me for that
privilege. I call shenanigans. And this doesn't even take into account the
treatment I got at the branch when you were first informing people of this fee.
(Short-ish version: I get a call and set up an
appointment with a guy at the Clemson branch because they have something
important to discuss with me. I go in on the day of the appointment and the
person I'm supposed to see is, apparently, not available. I watch the teller
calling workers at the bank, trying to figure out what to do with me.
Eventually a banker is able to see me, and tells me about the new fee, and
tries to convince me to upgrade my account or open a credit card or do
something that allows Wells Fargo to take even more of my money. But it's not
really leaving a good impression to treat your customers like they don't
matter, which is the message I get when you forget an appointment that you yourself requested.)
I'm fortunate
enough to be able to join a credit union, so I began making plans to shift my
banking.
And then your
customer service got even worse.
My debit card was
set to expire at the end of August. I called just before the end of July and
found out that a replacement had been sent to South Carolina - just before I moved away. Alright. I'll accept the blame there. I probably should have informed
you of my change of address earlier. But then I was informed that, for the card
sent to South Carolina (which ended up who knows where) to be cancelled and a
replacement issued, the current card (the one I was still using, the one that
expired in August) would be cancelled. In what world does this make sense? Is
it really that difficult to tell your computer system, "Don't activate the
inactive card, and issue a new card to the correct address, but keep the
currently active card."? I didn't want that happening, so I went into a
branch. Where they gave me a temporary debit card and ordered a new card to be
sent to me in the next week or two. Supposedly.
After about two
weeks, with no new debit card arriving, I called you again. Turns out, when I
went into the branch, they didn't actually order a new card for me, and they didn't
cancel the card that got sent to South Carolina. So at this point,
there's a debit card with my name on it floating around who-knows-where, ready
to be activated. What. The. Hell. But this time, that card actually got
cancelled, and a new one actually was sent to me. (Minor flaw: apparently the
temporary card I was issued got cancelled or disconnected from my account or
something at that point, because I couldn't use it, even though I specifically
asked whether it would still work and was told it would be fine.)
So, finally, after
all this hassle, I'm at the point where I can close my accounts. First, I had
to empty the account, so I wrote myself a check for the balance and put it in
my credit union account. Honestly, I would have expected some sort of alert to come
from you about that transaction, because I wouldn't consider completely
emptying an account "normal" activity. So that doesn't make me very
confident in your ability to protect my money. Then I closed my accounts.
(Online! It was super convenient, so props to you for that.) My savings account
closed the same day; awesome. You told me my checking account would close
within two days, to allow any pending transactions to be completed, and a
message would be sent to me when it actually closed. Two days later, I received
an email that an important message regarding my request was in my online
banking message inbox. The online banking that I can no longer access because I closed all my accounts. Seriously?
You're sending me messages that I can't read? That is the most supremely
unhelpful thing ever. In order to confirm that my account had truly closed, I
decided to go to a branch instead of calling. The teller noted that I could
have called the 800 number, but I feel a better use of my time was the five
minutes I stood in line at the physical bank, as opposed to the 10-20 minutes I
would have spent trying to reach a live person on the phone. (Also, they require
you to put in your account number when you call, which makes sense for them
looking up active accounts, but is not at all useful for people who don't
currently have accounts.)
Basically, your
customer service these last few months? Awful. And I really won't miss you at
all. My credit union not only doesn't charge me fees for using my debit card or
having a checking or savings account, they actually pay me interest on my accounts.
Farewell, Wells
Fargo. I hope you don't treat all of your customers with the same level of
service I received.
Sincerely,
Katherine
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