Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Wells Fargo not returning a client's money

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.

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