I had a problem that showed up on a credit report with the wrong dates, potentially implicating my x-husband in credit card fraud using my SS#. I went to the local Wells Fargo bank to verify or resolve the problem. The local bank manager was great but, that is where any resemblance to customer service ended. I tried to get hold of anyone to file a complaint, and no one can do that at Wells Fargo. Their customer service is sooo bad that you can't even get anyone to file a complaint about their customer service. No email addresses are readily available either, although I am still looking. I removed any of my money from Wells Fargo years ago and will now encourage my current spouse to remove all of his accounts with Wells Fargo as well. I certainly think anyone should think more than twice about using them as their financial institution.

Here is the short version of what happened:

I opened a small business with my business partner and we were starting from scratch (neither of us had a large amount of money). I had been banking with Wachovia for years and had no complaints. After a few months our Wachovia account was transferred to Wells Fargo and this is where the problems began...

We opened up out business account and I was immediately approached by Dodie Schmitt the Merchant Service rep about a mobile merchant processing account. She verbally told me the equipment would be much better than the rates of our current online service (paypal @ 2.7% +$.30/transaction) and she handed me a bunch of paperwork and circled some numbers saying she was waiving all of the set-up fees and our new rate would be 1.7% +$.2/transaction. This sounded great and I briefly looked over the contract and signed - worst decision ever.

After a week I received the mobile merchant equipment in the mail with a billing statement that was clear as day that Wells Fargo would charge $55 per month for the service and the merchant equipment leasing company would charge $45 per month plus to transaction fees per transaction. I was outraged and immediately pulled out my contract. After combing through I found in the fine print a box with the following information " Lease 48, $38." When I signed I was told the $38 was the set-up fee and there was absolutely no indication that, "lease 48" meant 48 MONTHS with a monthly charge of $38. I was outraged and immediately tried contacting Dodie Schmitt to get out of the lease, return the equipment and cancel the service. After several failed phone calls and e-mails she reffered me to her superior where I repeated the process of failed phone calls and e-mails.

All of this was over 5 months ago. I have finally found that in order to cancel the service through Wells Fargo I must pay a $500 early termination fee and in order to cancel the equipment I must pay out the remainder of the lease, which totals to $1, 830. This is over $2, 300 in charges for a piece of equipment that has NOT been used and I have already paid over $500 to sit in a box in my closet.

We are a small business trying to get off the ground and I feel punished and abused by Wells Fargo. I have always known to read the details and fine print before signing everything but the contract I signed with Wells was deceptive and very unclear.

Does anyone have any tips, hints or comments on how I should pursue this further?

You would think that a large financial institution such as Wells Fargo bank should have their business under control. Yet again, Wells Fargo’s Business Direct, which is Wells Fargo Business Credit Card Department that reportedly employs forty bankers, screwed up.

I first opened a Wells Fargo business credit card account for my new business back in 2006. It was a brand new enterprise, and thus I was offered a secured credit card. The credit card limit would limited by the amount of the collateral that I was required to put in the bank in order to have said secured credit card. I applied for a secured credit card with the credit limit of one thousand dollars, which was secured by opening a separate savings account at Wells Fargo as collateral and by depositing one thousand dollars into said collateral account.

In the beginning of 2007 I decided that I no longer needed said secured credit card and I went to a local Wells Fargo branch to request closure of the credit card account. The trip to the branch was useless, as branch personal advised that because the credit card was in fact a secured credit card that required return of the collateral, the only way to close the credit card account and to get the collateral refunded was to call a toll-free number on the back of the card.

Upon returning home, I called the number on the back of my credit card. The Wells Fargo rep that I spoke with said that for some strange reason she could not close the credit card account over the phone and that in order to close my credit account she needed to send me some paperwork for me to sing. She said the paperwork would be arriving in the mail within a few days. At that time the card was already paid off.

I waited and waited. No papers from Wells Fargo ever appeared in the mail. I went to a retail branch again. Needless to say, that trip was as useless as the first one was. Once again, I was advised to call the number on the back of the credit card.

I called. The rep on the phone put me on hold for a long time. When he returned, I was told I would be transferred to someone else. That someone else was in fact the first person who was somewhat helpful. The first thing that he said to me was “I don’t understand why they couldn’t do it at a branch.” Well, that was a relief! After apologizing profusely, that someone else assured me that the credit card was now closed. However, while I was waiting for the promised paperwork since the first time I called to have the account closed, I incurred an annual fee in the amount of $25, which was now bringing my credit card balance to $25!

However, the rep explained that he was going to take care of the annual fee by reversing it, which would make my account balance zero. He said, however, that would take some time and that while the fee was refunded, the credit card account could not be closed. He assured me though, that once the annual fee was reversed, the credit card account would be closed.
Later on I received a letter stating that my credit card account was closed. Yet, no refund of collateral was issued. With the letter that I received from the credit card department I went to a local branch. Local branch personnel was not helpful (as always) until I insisted that they make the necessary phone calls. I expressed in a polite manner how frustrating it has been doing business with Wells Fargo and how long it took to do a simple things such as closing a credit card account.

Branch personnel made a phone call to the appropriate department. The person on the phone said that for collateral account it takes up to thirty days to issue a refund check. I was assured that I would be receiving a check within thirty days, but no later them thirty days since the day the credit card account was officially closed.

Thirty days went by. Still no check. Another ten days went by. I went to the same Wells Fargo branch again. A personal banker that I spoke with said that she had no access to see what went on with my credit card account, since the account was closed. Again, she advised that I call the number on the back of the credit card.

When I told her the whole story and how painful it had been to deal with Wells Fargo regarding this issue, she started pointing at her computer screen frantically repeating over and over that she had no access to said credit card account.

“Look, ” I said, “I don’t care how you handle that. Wells Fargo owes me money. If I don’t get resolution of this problem today, the next call your bank will be receiving with regard to this matter will be from my attorney.”

“I can call the business credit card department, ” she said.

“Please, ” I said.

The banker dialed a number on the phone and after speaking with someone she was transferred to another department. Finally it was the department that handles business credit cards. The banker explained the situation. After hearing what the Business Direct rep on the phone replied to her, the banker offered the telephone to me.

What I heard was beyond audacity. Business Direct representative told me that my card was NOT a secured credit card.

“Excuse me?” I said. “Are you saying that there was never a collateral to the account?”

“No, ” she said, “it wasn’t a secured credit card.”

“But how could that be?” I exclaimed.

“There wasn’t a collateral, ” she repeated. “I don’t show any note on the account that it was secured.”

“But I know it was!” I exclaimed. “I gave Wells Fargo a thousand dollars to have this secured credit card open for me!”

“Well, ” she stammered, “if there was a collateral, it must have been taken to cover the unpaid balance on the card.”

“But there was no balance, ” I said, “I paid the card off long before it was closed and I did not charge anything else on it.”

Now when I think of it, it was even stranger since even if Wells Fargo tried to pull this on me and take some money for what they claim the unpaid balance was, there was no way that the alleged unpaid balance would be exactly the same as the credit card limit.

Wrapping up my conversation with the Business Direct representative, I asked if she had any idea of how we could proceed toward the resolution of this problem.

“I will look into that and have the department investigate the reasons why your collateral was not returned. Give us a call at this number sometime tomorrow and we’ll tell you why you did not receive a refund. If there was an error on our part, we’ll let you know; or we’ll let you know why you are not getting any money back.”

To summarize, I first attempted to close this credit card account in March 2008. It has been four months since, and it doesn’t look like I am ever going to get my money back. It is interesting to me and I am very curious, how in the world does Wells Fargo do its accounting. If money comes from somewhere, it should go somewhere. The collateral account was on my name and I wonder what kind of creative accounting one should do to have a thousand dollars magically disappear? Imagine this; you take a thousand dollars and put it into a bank account. When you come back to draw your thousand dollars from your bank account, the thousand dollars is gone. I wonder if self-proclaimed “accounting professionals” such as this financial institution in fact ever studies accounting.

The first mortgage person I dealt with told me that I did not qualify for a conventional loan. His title was FHA Specialist, and that should have scared me straight now when I think of it in hind-sight. It turns out that I did not qualify for the FHA loan, for reasons that were apparent from the get go. Moreover, you would think that an FHA Specialist would know. However, I have since gotten a commitment letter for a 30 year fixed loan. The very product I asked for from the start. Now, somewhere in the process the first mortgage sales person (the FHA Specialist) got fired, or left. I did not hear anything from Wells Fargo for a good week. I actually called the FHA Specialist on his mobile phone finally to find out that my file was now with someone else with Wells Fargo. So I called this person. Let's call this person Ms. Unavailable. After a couple of tries on the phone Ms. Unavailable finally picks up the phone and tells me that she was just about to call me. Yeah, right. At this point I am in the middle of sending in some last minute documents, some of which had been submitted 2-3 times already, so that the Under Writer could review my file. It was virtually impossible to get Ms. Unavailable to communicate with me. She wouldn't pick up her phone, and forget getting a response via E-mail. This is now week 3 of Ms. Unavailable handling my file. I had enough and called the Brooklyn Wells Fargo Mortgage Sales manager, let's call him "I respectfully disagree" (IRD for short). IRD is my favorite over at Wells Fargo. After I fill him in on who I am and what my problem is he says "Yeah, I am not sure what the problem is with your file but there is definitely something wrong with it, I don't know how to fix it, and I couldn't tell you how long it is going to take to fix it. I was flabbergasted, and irritated. I started a long winded argument pleading with IRD to at least try wearing my shoes and understand that this was unacceptable. It’s unacceptable and I think that anyone that calls himself a manager of sort should be able to offer up a better approach to customer care than this. This conversation continued with IRD now taking offense to anything I said and started a counter argument where he was the victim and I was the adversary and, yes you guessed it, IRD respectfully disagreed with my point of view of not getting any help from anyone at Wells Fargo at the moment. I asked IRD for a person to speak with that would be of a better chance to assist me. IRD now gave me a person’s number from the Wells Fargo Manhattan office. Here I spoke with what I thought was a very helpful person, who obviously had no idea of the status of my file but at least seemed to have a clue in general. He told me that I would get a call from Ms. 10-miutes. Ms 10 minutes called me and told me that if I was willing to give her a day, she could solve my problems and have a commitment letter signed for me. From here and on my story may start sounding a little petty, I can understand, but keep in mind that I am now over 2 months down the line without a commitment letter and no central command handling my file. Ms. 10 minute does not get back to me, so I call her the following evening. She like everyone else at Wells Fargo says “Oh, yes, I was just about to call you”. Ms. 10 minutes proceeds to tell me that Ms. Unavailable is in the process, “as we speak” of E-mailing the commitment letter. Ms. 10 minutes tells me that if I don’t have the commitment letter in my E-mail inbox within 10 minutes to call her, and she will personally send it to me. Fine, I can wait 10 minutes. This is where I have to laugh at myself for being so naïve. I wait a good 30 minutes thinking that people at Wells Fargo may have other files that needs handling and I may not be their only customer so give it a “chill-pill” and wait for the darn E-mail. After all, Ms. 10 minutes said Ms. Unavailable is right on that task. 35 minutes in my chill-pill wears off and I call Ms. 10 minutes. She tells me that everybody left for the day, that’s why I didn’t receive that E-mail. Oh, well isn’t that nice. It is Friday afternoon and I am now at the risk of losing the house I am looking to purchase with this mortgage because it will be another 3 days before I can get back to my attorney with any news. Ms. 10 minutes says “Ok, since everybody left I will do it myself. When I come home from work I will send it over”. As the complete idiot I have now become I said “Oh, thank you so, so much Ms. 10 minutes. Needless to say I did not get that letter that night. Nor did I receive it on Monday, Tuesday, but on Wednesday the following week. I have no need to spike this story, it is simply put the most ridiculous thing I have ever let myself go through. There are quite a few things I have left out, but you get the drift. The only thing I keep telling myself is that I did it because I was afraid that if I started the process over with another lender I would have missed my deadline. Well I missed the deadline anyway. There are a few good things that come out of this debacle, though. First, it is very important to give yourself 60 days or more to secure funding in your contract. Second, shopping around for a mortgage company is not an easy thing, but you are now privy to what can happen if you don’t do your homework. You may end up with Wells Fargo. Third, as good, nice and convenient it is to do everything electronically it is very important that you have a mortgage person that you can visit, in their office. Can’t say enough about the importance of being able to hold someone responsible face-to-face. A handshake is much better than a “Best Regards” or a “Please Advise”.

Wells Fargo contacted me to refinance my loan back in Oct/Nov 2010. They first said it was a program by the Government, HAMP and they would reduce my interest rate. The documents that arrived in Dec were wrong. They then stated it was the HARP program. The Government had extra money and wanted to help homeowners. I didn't buy it but went ahead finally with signing the papers. I looked online for my Satisfaction notice and guess what? They filed the Satisfaction notice but reason number 2 stated that they had lost all of our loan documents and after due diligence, gave up.

No Wonder they needed our signatures. All Lies...BEWARE