Wells Fargo Bank closing accounts!

[Kirk W]

2 hours ago, Chalkie said:

Wells Fargo, however, tends to skirt the law, pushing the envelope until they get caught. 

While we no longer are with WF, we were for more than 15 years and have no complaints.  We still have several friends who have continued to do business with WF and none of them have mentioned any problems. What was your experience with Wells Fargo? I do wonder if the impact of that ruling last April may have brought extra examination by regulators over the Patriot Act requirements for customer identifications? If you read that story again you will see that it has nothing at all to do with customer address issues.

On another forum there have been posts of this happening at a couple of other financial institutions as well. I have wondered if there may have been some new regulations issued or increased enforcement to others.

Edited January 27 by Kirk W

[DanZemke]

3 hours ago, Chalkie said:

Wells Fargo, however, tends to skirt the law, pushing the envelope until they get caught.

And Well's Fargo's bad behavior wasn't limited to just 2023. 

From Wikipedia: "On February 2, 2018, the Wells Fargo account fraud scandal resulted in the Federal Reserve barring Wells Fargo from growing its nearly $2 trillion asset base any further until the company fixed its internal problems to the satisfaction of the Federal Reserve. In September 2021, Wells Fargo incurred further fines from the United States Justice Department charging fraudulent behavior by the bank against foreign-exchange currency trading customers. Bloomberg L.P. reported in March 2022 that Wells Fargo was the only major lender in 2020 to reject more home refinance applications from Black applicants than it approved."

I will never be a Wells Fargo customer again.  I paid off my mortgage early and closed my checking account and credit cards.  WF - never again for me.

Edited January 27 by DanZemke
clarity

[Chalkie]

3 hours ago, Kirk W said:

What was your experience with Wells Fargo?

My experience? My folks had WF accounts and when my Dad passed we wanted to close the accounts. Well, I never imagined the difficulties in doing that, nor the sheer incompetence that they showed in the process. They supposedly closed one account but somehow managed to keep a monthly fund transfer going from it. That then generated overdraft charges. They were unable to explain it adequately to my mother, who by the way was Head Teller of a bank for 25+ years and knew a bit about banking. I had her get me a POA so I could talk to them and they refused to honor the POA even though it had been drafted by an attorney, notarized, and filed with the court. That took an in-person visit from the attorney only he went to the regional office which was over the local branch we were dealing with. Anyhow, we finally got the accounts closed after several months of fighting with them. I will bad mouth WF at every opportunity I get.

[Kirk W]

12 hours ago, Chalkie said:

I will bad mouth WF at every opportunity I get.

I hope that nobody believes that they have a bank that cares about them. Pam worked in banking much of her working life, being employed by 5 different major banks (WF was not one of them) and all operated pretty much the same way. If you look at a list of the 15 Biggest Compliance Fines ($1Billion and Above), you will find that the two Wells Fargo incidents are numbers 8 & 9 on that list. The largest fines were by Bank of America in 2014. Unless you choose one of the small, privately held banks they are public corporations whose only reason for existence is making a profit for the investors. Privately held, small banks do still exist, mostly in small agricultural communities but they are slowly disappearing. 

Publicly held corporations do not have ethics, only the profit/loss statement matters. You may find a few employees who have ethical standards and seem to care about the customers, but only profits matter to the investors.

Edited January 28 by Kirk W
Add information.

[Chalkie]

1 hour ago, Kirk W said:

I hope that nobody believes that they have a bank that cares about them. 

~~~

Publicly held corporations do not have ethics, only the profit/loss statement matters. You may find a few employees who have ethical standards and seem to care about the customers, but only profits matter to the investors.

This is a pretty jaded outlook, although it may not be entirely inaccurate. Any company, whether public or private, really only cares about profit or loss at the end of the day. Even "non-profits" (unless generously funded by donations) have to make a profit to cover overhead. I happen to bank with the largest bank in the US and I have never found them to be uncaring, just opposite actually. I get a number of perks from them and I fully understand that they are intended to keep me happy and, more importantly, keep me as a customer.

[Kirk W]

JPMorgan Chase? I too am banking with Chase Bank, as they offer premium accounts without any fees to all veterans & active duty people.  My investment funds are elsewhere to avoid putting all eggs in one basket.

JPMorgan Chase To Pay $1.7 Billion To Madoff Victims  (2014)

[DanZemke]

I also have a Chase account.  I opened it to get 5% off on my Amazon purchases.

The size of Federal fines, for financial institutions, is poorly correlated with retail banking customer satisfaction. IMO, it's not a useful factor in determining where folks like us, should do our banking.

Edited February 1 by DanZemke
clarity

[sandsys]

The small, private bank we used when first married did not want to finance our car purchase because Dave was in the military. I persuaded them to do so but it did take having some leverage. (Reminding them that Dave started banking with them while still in high school since that's where his father banked and that we would be moving back when Dave's enlistment was up so I was sorry they no longer wanted our family's business.)

We now bank with USAA. USAA started as a group of Army officers self-insuring one another because no one else would. They have always given us excellent service in both insurance and banking and we are still using them more than 50 years later.

Linda

ps. The small, private bank went out of business many years ago.

[Deezl Smoke]

 Just more fuel for this type of fire.

 

[MizzMarzBar]

Wondering if owning a small piece of land that's been assigned a street address by the local post office would meet the physical address requirement? 

[Kirk W]

5 hours ago, MizzMarzBar said:

Wondering if owning a small piece of land that's been assigned a street address by the local post office would meet the physical address requirement? 

In most (if not all) parts of the US the addresses are assigned nowadays by the 911 service and the registered with the USPS. The following comes from the USPS website.

The Postal Service neither assigns addresses nor designates an address as Residential or Commercial. Land use and zoning information can be found at your local government office.

Street addresses are created by the local government office that has jurisdiction over the area where the streets are located.  There is usually an office located in each unit of local government.  However, there are instances of combined local government offices such as a joint county - city municipal building.

Since it is the federal banking regulators who make those rules, at present it would be acceptable as long as they can send mail to that address and you receive it. 

[sandsys]

7 hours ago, Kirk W said:

Since it is the federal banking regulators who make those rules, at present it would be acceptable as long as they can send mail to that address and you receive it. 

Just be sure to install a BIG mailbox and visit every once in awhile.

Linda

[Chalkie]

16 hours ago, Kirk W said:

Since it is the federal banking regulators who make those rules, at present it would be acceptable as long as they can send mail to that address and you receive it. 

And therein lies the rub, one can send mail to a PMB address and the individual will receive it, but that is not acceptable unless the bank does a deep dive into the Patriot Act. 

[MizzMarzBar]

The big issue isn't a mailing address, it's a physical address that isn't a PMB or a POBox.  Correct?  So a small lot with a street address would satisfy, theoretically.  Escapees mail service would still be acceptable as the mailing address.  Am I understanding that correctly?

[Kirk W]

15 hours ago, MizzMarzBar said:

Am I understanding that correctly?

The address that they ask for would probably need to get mail to you as they would probably use that to verify its validity,but I really don't know for sure, you need to ask the financial people that you are dealing with. The law does provide for alternative if they dig into the banking regulations as propagated in the CUSTOMER IDENTIFICATION PROGRAM via the US Treasury department. The problem is that many financial institutions are not willing to spend the time and effort to develop a set of rules under the alternative allowed because it would be expensive and time consuming and they do not believe that it is cost justified for the relatively small number of customers involved. I suggest that before you go to that much trouble and expense, you need to get their answer and in writing. The issue is not as much what they could do as what they are willing to do. It is easiest for them to just require everyone to have home address like most citizens do. The addresses are required to be verified and the easiest way of doing that is by sending all communications to that address. 

Edited February 27 by Kirk W

[sandsys]

5 hours ago, Kirk W said:

The issue is not as much what they could do as what they are willing to do.

This!!!