Wells Fargo

I am a student and am behind on my child support because of the loss of my job. Children services has placed a lien on my checking account instructing Wells Fargo to send any "Income" to them that got deposited into my checking account. After paying my tuition and board of 1 month, my financial aid office gave me a check for the net proceeds of my financial aid from the federal government. As a requirement of the agreement for this loan from the government, I am NOT permitted to use the funds for anything other than advancing my education, or it is considered a felony. When I deposited this money with Wells Fargo, I made this perfectly clear to the teller, who did nothing to earmark these funds as such. The fact is that Wells Fargo's system is not set up to prevent this chain of events from occurring. I was forced to undergo great stress in straightening out this neglect by Wells. First, my rent check bounced and I was threatened with eviction before I even took my first class. Talk about a rocky start! $35 bounced check charge from Wells as well as from my landlord. $70 total! In addition, a $5 processing charge from Wells for their trouble of sending the funds to Child Support. Now I'm at $75 loss! Next, I had to ask my brother to send a check to my landlord via overnight delivery service (another $20). All told, $95 of costs were incurred. This did not include my pain and suffering which included 1)major stress and fear of being kicked to the street before my first class even began 2) at least an hour of phone time talking with children services before they agreed to return my money (which by the way was the first time in history that they have done so...I feel blessed in that regard). 3) At least an hour waiting on hold and explaining the circumstances to Wells' legal department. After waiting a week for their response and getting none, I was forced to call again and escalate my anxiety to "supervisor" level. 4) Three failed attempts to reach the Branch Manager Julian Serna. I left two messages for him to call me in regards to these fees and he claims that he never received either of my messages. On my third attempt, I was placed on hold for 40 minutes before I gave up and proceeded to walk 1.5 miles to see him face to face (the legal department told me that I had to resolve my issue at the branch were the transaction took place...talk about passing the buck!). 5) After waiting for an hour and a half to see the branch manager (his appointment with the prior customer took an hour and a half!) and being the final customer of the day (the bank was closed by this point) he proceeded to invest about 90 seconds reviewing my case on his computer screen and stated that he didn't think Wells did a thing wrong and said "no credit of fees". That's all I got from him AFTER I explained all the hassle he had caused me, the lack of returned phone calls, etc. Do you think I felt like an important Wells Fargo customer at that point? I have never been more humiliated in my entire life! Having had some quality managerial/customer service training in my employment background, I proceeded to explain to Julian how a professional Branch Manager should have handled the situation. That lesson alone was worth $75 to him so now I was even a deeper state of loss to Wells, cause now I was training their employees for free! (sarcasm emphasized!)

Our corporate culture in America has decayed to such a pitiful level. I did not give up in my pursuit of recovering these fees, and ultimately recovered $35 so far. But why did it have to get to this level of bitterness? Wells is now $35 poorer and they STILL have someone that is bitter towards them and willing to pass negative judgement at every opportunity! When instead, if they had nipped it in the bud at the onset, they would have a happy customer. It seems that most large companies nowadays make it their policy to deny ALL claims initially so that a certain percentage of the complainers give up. They they make it extremely difficult for those that persist and another batch of victims give up. Finally for those dumb enough to never say never, they finally give in and provide a refund. (I had a very similar experience with UPS which damaged some merchandise and tried to say that the manufacturers original packaging wasn't sufficient enough to protect the goods) This protocol of claims denial is ludicrous. Corporate America had better wake up and begin paying attention to their customers and treating them with more respect or they will continue to waste advertising dollars trying to recruit new suckers instead of taking care of the customers they already have.