Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/12/nightmare-at-wells-fargo-customer-battles-fraudulent-charges-for-months-until-ny-times-shames-the-bank-into-helping-him.html
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So many people don’t realize that the BBB is as legit as a Who’s Who listing.
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This is especially weird because the card brands (Visa, Mastercard, etc) have operating rules that banks have to follow for handling chargebacks. Chargebacks for fraud are so incredibly common I really don’t understand why this was treated differently. Was it because it was an international transaction? Was it a debit card?
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At this point, why would anyone still trust this bank with their hard-earned money? At this point, why would anyone still trust this bank with their hard-earned money?
I submit the final paragraph as a record-setting re-Boing. 
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But it’s a really good question that probably should be asked repeatedly of any existing WF customer!
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I read the first one in a normal voice and the second as incredulous shouting.
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Why anyone still uses any of the big national banks and not their local credit union is the real question.
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My husband and I had an account at Wells Fargo. We opened it in 2011. Just last year we walked away from the account because no matter how much money that we deposited our account was in the hole. We had the account for 12 years and never had an issue until last year. They are ripping off there customers and don’t care.
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There needs to be jail time for the executives and banned from working in finance industry for life. Only and if only then, memory retention and learning ability will return.
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I got a solicitation e-mail from them a couple of decades ago.
At that point, I knew it was a scam.
Publicity and prevalence.
Credit unions also used to be limited as to who could join.
That may still be true in places.
Fuck banks.
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Not least because most of them fund the fossil fuel and/or arms industries.
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Even though WF never defrauded me, I was forced unwillingly to be their customer. My mortgage lender decided to sell my mortgage to WF at some point, over my protest. I mean, one should have a choice when selecting a mortgage lender, and my choice was negated. At that point, I got VERY serious about meticulous record-keeping, suspecting WF would try to fuck me over down the road.
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I wish I could stop dealing with them. They bought the mortgage on my house from another bank, though.
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Posting this mainly for one quote in the article.
“Wells Fargo holds employees to the highest standards and does not tolerate unethical behavior,”
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DING DING DING DING!!!
Bias: has been a member of their local credit union since 1993, was an employee there for a few years, and even though we parted employment on poor terms, they’ve kept me as a customer all this time.
Filed under “There ought to be a law about that…”
Not Wells fargo, but my mortgage bounced from GMAC to Chase (which I hate about as bad as WF) and from there to “Rushmore” (aka RIghtpath aka Mr. Cooper aka Nationstar), whom I hate even worse than Wells Fargo. All without my consent, either.
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even my credit union based mortgage is owned by … someone else. it’s standard at this point for mortgages to be bundled off, no matter where you go. the one blessing is that the cu will forever manage repayment of the loan, so i don’t have to worry (as much) about getting f-d over.
and private prisons. 
want to talk about incentives for undermining low earning customers? get them off to prison and you can make your customer a real profit center
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Wells Fargo lost my safety deposit box! In one of those WTF moments I went in to check on things and was told it was moved to another branch in a different town. Never heard from anyone so I went back and they found the box but they can’t show it to me because it’s “really not there”. Long story short next time I’m back in that state I have to make appointments to get my things. It’s all about paperwork that error was made.
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I’ve had this sort of thing happen twice in a year from the same bank card, and they absolutely canceled the card, canceled the debt, and issued me a new card both times. It’s not the victim’s fault for being scammed.
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Even with a card present transaction, chargeback rules are pretty clear and Wells is obligated to follow their issuer agreements with respect to dispute resolution processes on Visa/MC networks. Not clear if this was a credit or debit transaction or if the merchant disputed the chargeback (article is paywalled so can’t tell what steps were or were not taken). If it was credit, the law specifies that the maximum liability to cardholders for card-present fraud is $50.
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Interesting. Chase bank somehow goofed and my mother’s account was overdrawn by… $999,999,999,999.99 after playing silly buggers with her SS checks when her husband died. The news got involved and bailed on the investigation when Chase got litigious. Yes that number is in billions.
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