donutz's Journal: Why Wells Fargo pisses me off...

Wells Fargo pisses me off.

A good month or so ago, I noticed a certain number kept appearing on our voicemail. That's where the saga begins...

I dont feel like rewriting it all, so here's a letter I emailed to them which pretty much sums things up:

---

Dear Wells Fargo Representative,

I'm writing to express my dissatisfaction with Wells Fargo. In summary, I find your company to be the embodiment of the impersonal, unfriendly image that the commercials of your competitor Washington Mutual commercials portray other banks to be. Yours fits the description to a T.

My recent dealings with your bank began as such: Every day for a week, I'd see the same 800 number showing up on my caller ID, but no message on the answering machine. Finally, sick of deleting this entry from the caller ID unit day after day, I called to find out who it was. Wells Fargo, the voice on the other end told me. I pressed to find out why they were calling me constantly but leaving no message. Indeed, without Caller ID, I'd have no knowledge whatsoever that any attempt was made to reach me. I tried to explain this to the lackey at the other end of the phone, but she told me that they only call to speak with a person.

Ah, but soon I would learn the truth. I suspect that you have caller ID on your end too, for before I concluded my questioning of the folly of calling and leaving no message, I got a call waiting beep. I considered the thought that the lackey wasn't as dumb as I suspected -- she'd said they only call once a day, and yet, here was another call. Had she prompted the system to dial my number again, now knowing that someone was indeed home. Who was it calling me this time? I got my answer: "Please hold for an important message from Wells Fargo." Aha! And I was forced to wait on hold for upwards of 5 minutes before one of your representatives got on the line to speak with me.

I find this practice to be despicable and ugly, no better than automated faxed advertisements or undesired calls from companies pitching their latest credit protection services. I find no "human interest" in your company at all, indeed, the automated phone dialing system shows it all.

Let me be explicit in my complaint here: If I have an account with a financial institution, and they have an urgent need to speak with me, I would expect them to call me, and if I don't answer, leave me a message that there is an urgent need for me to call them back. I now know that I can't expect that from your company, and so once my wife's student loan is paid in full, I will be glad never to do business with your institution ever again.

Sincerely, Adam Howard

---

Well, that wasn't the end of things. My wife's parents are taking care of paying that loan back, and had arranged for the payments to be automatically deducted from a bank account of theirs. Except that somehow, Wells Fargo screwed it up. Twice. For the past week we'd been getting calls from some 605 area code phone number. I wondered who it was....I should have known...it fits the Wells Fargo modus operandi perfectly: strange phone number on the Caller ID, several times a day, several days in a row, no messages on the answering machine. If I didn't know better, I'd think they were trying to harrass us. Knowing better, I still feel like they're trying to harrass us. Now apparently they have nice, friendly helpful people who work at wells fargo, from what my wife tells me of her phone conversations with them. They've been able to fix whatever it was they screwed up. At least until they screwed it up again. But somehow the conglomeration of everyone and everything there makes the entire organization stupid. At least that's what I get from my dealings with them. I hate the company more and more every time I have to deal with it.

Ok, enough ranting.