Not a victim but our family did bank with WF for years because it was convenient. We canceled the accounts when they started charging too many fees.

Apparently Stumpf took a verbal beating yesterday.

I'm going to make a call to the guy that I talk to there about that situation very soon.

I've been with Wells Fargo since 1983, and have never paid fees for ordinary services since I keep a minimum qualifying balance. I figure that I am getting a better return on my balance by saving fees than I'd get in most savings accounts. We've seen our premium account erode over time, and I did have to pay a fee for a cashiers check last spring.

I do use tellers, and I get change at least once a month, 5's and 10's. Long ago, I got so disgusted with the teller looking at my balance and trying to sell me services. No I am not buying insurance or investing thru the bank! I don't need a savings account or another credit card. So I requested that my account be flagged to prevent the tellers from going thru their spiels (it's not their fault). It requires a supervisor to do a simple override, but that was just a pleasant time to comment on the weather or traffic or whatever small talk for a couple of minutes.

After we moved in May, I went in to change address and order checks (had to pay for those, and I use two a month or so), and I got a real hard sell from the branch manager. I was ready to pull my account right then, and I wish I had told him flat out that I knew about the upsell and to quit it! But I was polite and just kept saying no. It was obnoxious.

Come to think of it, that manager is no longer there. I wonder!

I do suspect that the people fired (all low-level people who had pressure to sell) might have been mostly branch managers and the like. I can't see a teller opening an account or churning like that.

Yes, it's disgusting, and Warren is my hero. But I'll keep my account for now for many reasons.... locations of ATMs and branches near where I live and shop, the online bill-pay (never auto-pay, I have complete control), and the hassle of changing a bunch of auto deposits to my account. But I monitor it like a hawk!

I think Hilary erred by not picking Warren for her VP. (If Warren was willing, that is.)

Our family has a small trust fund of about 200k that was transferred to Wells Fargo from Wachovia. They shifted to flat fees for managing it, which has meant the fund has been losing value every year. This is in years of a soaring stock market. It is enraging.

We left Wells Fargo in the early 80s after a series of incompetent gaffes pushed us out the door. We've been with a regional bank since and I think the reality is that most bank employees aren't very knowledgeable about what they're doing and most are kept on a short leash in any event. I seem to have a once a year encounter with my bank on things they blunder through and while I usually get THEM straightened out, it's always a shake your head and scratch your head experience, in amazement about how inept they can be.

I do all my banking remotely - over the internet from a PC or the smartphone app. It works fine. I'm probably not in a branch even once a year. Still with that, they screw things up from time to time.

Wells got caught being a bit too enthusiastic about certain efforts and promotions, which caused employees to do things they shouldn't have. I'm convinced they all do that in one form or another.

What I don't understand, and maybe I missed this, is how thousands of people were paying monthly fees on accounts that they didn't establish. Don't people pay attention to their accounts? If I saw money being taken out of my account on a monthly basis for something I didn't know about, I'd question it. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding something about this situation.

People don't pay attention to their accounts, that's a big part of it. People do not balance their checking accounts, they use auto-pay and don't even look at the bills, they use debit cards for every Starbucks purchase and don't keep track of how much they spend. They opt for online statements, and don't even look at them.

I'm not blaming the victims, but you have to be proactive every day in so many parts of your life.

For those of you thinking of moving ...

... maybe try a credit union?

Owned by the users.

Often more people-friendly.

ole joyfuelled

sushipup, I agree with your first sentence but not necessarily with the rest. Many don't pay attention, but the use of autopay and cards (of whatever kind) leaves more information for tracking and management than paying cash. Online statements are more easily accessed than paper ones. Whether people use the available information is a different story, and I agree that many don't. But very many do.

There's no added benefit to writing checks by hand. The only checks I "send out" are those the bank generates, why bother doing it manually when it's so easy to do online.

(Edit to add for joyfulguy post)

I have a credit union account for a particular reason but I would never switch the major part of my banking to one. To use a baseball analogy, if the large national and regional banks are Major League Baseball, credit unions in my experience are Single A teams in a small town. They may be friendly but they can be REALLY inept. That's been my experience with two different ones. I'm sure there are exceptions, and maybe those with simple banking needs can use them successfully, but oh my goodness, it's a step-down in capability from a level already lacking in capability.

I'm really confused as to exactly what is the crime scope. and how Can 5000 people be on it????

Elmer, I don;t mean that no auto-pay means paying with cash or check. You can go thru the bank's Bill Pay function and enter each transaction as you wish, and set it to pay out on whatever day you choose. This is not setting up the system to automatically pay. Problems abound with that. It can be very difficult to protest a charge or shut down an account. A recent change in a utility provider in this little township had folks with autopay getting double-billed.

Only checks I am writing these days are to the gardener and the contractor who has been working on our new house. Both have requested checks, neither can process a charge card or ATM, and they appreciate having check in hand when they leave for the day. Oh, and the check to the grandson's school fund-raiser. I also refuse to put magazine subscriptions on a credit card, because the small print gives permission for them to renew automatically.

I have nothing against getting statements or bills online, but the bottom line is that whether it's online or on paper, you can't ignore it.

No. I did not have a Wells Fargo account.....but maybe other banks have this same problem...?

A woman in my yoga class quit her teller job. She said they wanted her to up sell and open accounts for people just trying to make small deposits or withdrawals with a long line behind them. She believed she should be helping the customer not selling them bank products they hadn't asked for.

Wells Fargo has been on my list for several years.

When my father died, he had accounts in three banks in Phoenix. As his executor, I went to Phoenix to get things in order. Two of the banks were compassionate and prompt with their work. Wells Fargo was not. I took me many months and several people who I dealt with to finally get them to release the money. When I challenged them at the time, they didn't even answer me. I got a stare (in person) or silence (on the phone). I was really put out by their complete in-house attitude.

Now they are in public relations trouble. However, they will persist and millions of people will still trust Wells Fargo and keep their money there. The only way to make a point is to remove their money.

It shouldn't be a matter of "he should resign". He should be in
prison, and be there long enough that the company would have no recourse
but to replace him.

I think there should be a certain amount
of jail time allocated (perhaps 1 month per account so opened), and a
certain amount of fine levied ( perhaps 10 times the amount of actual
financial damage caused) and then the fine and the total amount of jail
time could be divvied up between the employees who actually fraudulently
opened the accounts and any and all levels of management above them.
(perhaps proportionally to how the bonus money was divvied up.)

I agree with Elmer's baseball analogy of Major Bank : Major League Team :: Credit Union : Small town Single A team but I draw a different conclusion. To me Major League Baseball has long since discarded the notion that baseball is about the fans, or even that baseball is about baseball. Major league baseball is about money, lots of money, first, last and always, and the fans sole purpose is to provide as much money as they can be squeezed for.

Its the same IMHO with major banks, they don't see themselves as being there to serve the customers needs, they see customers as a source of income and otherwise as something of an annoyance.

So while a credit union may drop an easy fly ball once in awhile, (such as putting my deposit into someone else's account) at least they are not using aggressively evil "gotcha" tactics to provide as little service as possible while squeezing as much money as possible from their customers.

I've always banked at the credit union, have never paid anything in fees and am not required to keep more than a 5.00 balance. I can use the ATM for free at any Credit Union that is part of a sharing network, (99% of all CU's are members). They will upsell on occassion but I just say nope, not interested.

This is the first I have heard of the problem. Please tell me WF wealth management isn't involved in this mess.

We have had money in a credit union and at Wells Fargo for close to 40 years. Despite the constant up sell, annoying phone calls (to up sell) and emails, we stay with WF because they are walking distance to our home, my husband's office is in the WF building and overall they have given us good service.

Convenience means a lot, Jodi. We are big credit union fans, but we also use a local bank because it's on our way to everywhere.

Chisue, I love Elizabeth Warren's passion. This morning's paper made my day.

There was an article in our local paper that indicated the woman who was in charge of that division of Wells Fargo was allowed to resign within the past 2 weeks. She got a severance package of more than $1,000,000. Wow!

Warren's passion will not, has not put anybody in jail yet. It's talk. Politicians are owned by the likes of Wells Fargo.

REVOLVING DOOR
16 out of 19 Wells Fargo lobbyists in 2015-2016 have previously held government job.

Open Secrets

I don't have an account with Wells Fargo, but own some stock. The stock dipped a bit.

I do understand how this could have happened. I haven't heard that any customers lost money - just that their deposits were used in a manner not disclosed to them. There could have been extra fees; I don't know.

I fault management for setting up this situation. I saw something similar years ago in the company I worked for. We had a vice President who thought it productive (and fun to watch) to create competition and ill will among his working managers, the guys af the bottom of the management chain who are tasked with doing actual work and getting things done. It nearly wrecked the company. Instead of fostering an atmosphere of cooperation the company once had, it turned manager against manager. The production and maintenance engineers searched the system to find ways to shift costs to a different department. They found loop holes in the internal accounting system. One example: The factory ordered a batch of screws to assemble a particular product, however, due to an error in the orfering process, these parts were improperly heat treated and were useless, scrap in other words. Under normal circumstances, these parts would have been scrapped, new ones ordered, and the scrap loss would have been charged to the factory's budget. The factory was in one town and the development office was at another location 600 mile distant.

The factory would enter a drawing change request for something very minor like a small change in the plating formula. This often happens when a vendor has a slightly different process, but one that is yet suitable. The home office approves the change and marks the box to scrap the older parts thinking there was not many and not knowing it was an entire lot for a week's production. Bingo! The scrap charges goes against the Development Dept.'s budget instead of the factory. In the accounting system, the cost of making the product has been artificially lowered. An accumulation of such shenanigans over the course of a year alters the true cost of manufacturing the product and its profit, which in turn, skews management's decisions about selling price and whether or not to continue to make the product, or to begin planning for a replacement or redesign.

Upper Management was using certain pieces of data from the accounting system to calculate yearly bonuses to the line managers, and these managers were busily thwarting the accuracy of the system. It was a bad time to be working there. Thankfully, the executives caught on to what was happening and replaced this VP.

LOL we use WF and in all the TV hype I never once wondered if we got scammed!!

We have banked there for our entire marriage but I know our kids sure hate it. When my son was leaving for college he went to get his first credit card/checking etc. The gal told him to earn a credit rating by always leaving a bit of the balance...never paying it ALL OFF. It took us HOURS and HOURS to reprogram him, prove the $$ loss paying interest even "on a little". He could not comprehend they would lie to him for their own gain. He never trusted them again and found his own bank once he was no longer tied to us financially in anyway. These young tellers/employees as with all places of business are just not what they used to be!! We really should have marched him back there and had a sit down with that person and the Bank Manager...she should have lost her job. My son doesn't like scenes so we didn't.

I believe some WF customers paid fees. Possibly people not paying attention.

The answer to your pondering socks, LOADS of fees :)

The scope of the scandal is shocking. An analysis conducted by a
consulting firm hired by Wells Fargo concluded that bank employees
opened over 1.5 million deposit accounts that may not have been
authorized.

The way it worked was that employees moved funds
from customers' existing accounts into newly-created ones without their
knowledge or consent, regulators say. The CFPB described this practice
as "widespread." Customers were being charged for insufficient funds or
overdraft fees -- because there wasn't enough money in their original
accounts.

Additionally, Wells Fargo employees also submitted
applications for 565,443 credit card accounts without their customers'
knowledge or consent. Roughly 14,000 of those accounts incurred over
$400,000 in fees, including annual fees, interest charges and
overdraft-protection fees.

Roughly 14,000 of those accounts incurred over
$400,000 in fees, including annual fees, interest charges and
overdraft-protection fees.

That's $28.57 per account, on average.

ETA: Not making light of the amount, it's enough to cause problems if unpaid. Just that it's a small enough amount that most people might overlook if they even look at statements, much less keep track of their spending.

I venture to gain that peoples credit reports were pulled as well, without peoples permission. Generally when a new account is opened reports are pulled. That has not been mentioned yet that I'm aware of but it could also be an issue. If credit was pulled without permission, that's a major issue.

Brushworks, you must be unfamiliar with how Wash DC works. Or how lobbying works in state and local government. The vast majority of lobbyists of all interests are or work closely with former government employees in the areas being lobbied. An understanding of the agencies, systems and constraints from the inside is really essential to know what the current functionaries can and can't do and which points of view they may be open to listening to.

Congressional hearings are like old-time melodrama plays and the senators/congressmen perform for the cameras and the press. The only thing missing is the tinkling of a honky-tonk piano. If Sen Warren were to be really serious and effective, she'd author and work to pass legislation to accomplish whatever she intends. Don't hold your breath to see something happen in that regard.

I'm not saying that what Wells Fargo did was either right or excusable, but don't lose context. The bank has nearly $2 trillion in assets. The amount of the fine ($185 million), and the amount of the fees they wrongfully earned, are smaller than small. They're nothing, less than a pittance, less than a rounding error. People losing jobs - different story. But the amount of money involved is lost among much bigger numbers.

So by my proposed solution above, that would be about 2000000 months of jail time, to be divvied up amongst the 5000 employees involved and their doubtless hundreds of direct supervisors, managers , department heads, and VPs. That averages out to about 30 years, so maybe 1 month per illegally opened account would be somewhat draconian.

I'll bet however that not a single one of those thousands of perpetrators spends even a single day in jail, especially not any of the managers and department heads who instigated the quota and reward scheme. Further I'll bet that none of them pays any amount of fine, and any fine levied against Wells Fargo will be less than the actual damages their actions caused, less than a weeks profit for the corporation, and also less than the amount it will cost to prosecute them.

I don't think the company did anything wrong by initiating employee incentives. That's not exactly anything new or corrupt. That 5300 employees would engage in fraudulent illegal activities like that on customer accounts is what's shocking. They somehow managed to hire a lot of people with criminal minds and behaviors apparently. I'm not sure if it took too long for them to discover the problem, if they failed to have enough checks and balances in place.

A teller at my bank was selling great deals that did not exist. Now I have to wonder about whether it was an intentional error on their part to obtain a bonus, lol. I do run into a lot of errors with customer reps and associates of any sort though so typically don't take one person's word for things.