OPEN LETTER TO WELLS FARGO ONLINE:
ATTENTION: Trinh Haye
Store Manager
NMLSR ID: 524789
MAC R0123-010
3700 Calvert St NW
Washington, DC 20007
Tel: 202 637 2514
Fax: 202 637 2786
800 TO WELLS
trinh.haye@wellsfargo.com
CC: Pete Kuszmaul
Service Manager
pete.kuszmaul@wellsfargo.com
Re: Overdraft Fees Dispute
Dear Trinh Haye,
I regret to inform you that I am now starting a tentative boycott of all business with Wells Fargo in D.C., due to the concerns that your Service Manager gave me that Wells Fargo is seeking predatory gain from me rather than seeking to foster a relationship in which we support each others mutual capacities to thrive. This precisely the issue I campaign tirelessly against on my blog, as I believe the communication revolution we are experiencing now can ultimately rectify this problem and many others in the world during my generation just as this same revolution recently torn apart abusive and unjust regimes recently in the middle east. If you want to read more about how I believe this can take place precisely, you may wish to read the first posting I made in launching my campaign online at the following address:
www.puttheotherfootdown.blogspot.com
However, I will make my point simple for you here even if you don't have interest or time to delve more deeply into my commitments to reforming the flaws I find in our social architecture in my more extended writings online. My philosophy is simply this. Unfairness and rip-offs in business dealings represent a social cancer just like cancer in the body that threatens to destroy our whole way of life. If I feel a business has ripped me off, as a matter of principle, I will not stand for this in the least until either the business presents me a convincing argument that they were not unfair to me or until they rectify the problem. Allow this to pass without consequences in our ongoing relationship is in effect my voting with my actions and economic activity for the same destructive practices to continue in our society. I believe it is everyone's personal responsibility to shun and starve out any and all forms of cancerous social behavior that grabs things and rips-off things from others unfairly until we eradicate all such forms of corruption. The bottom line then, is that I will not do any more business with Wells Fargo in D.C. until this problem is dealt with. The bank will not earn any more fees from my use of your cards when I shop. I will keep my accounts at the minimum levels that I can without being charged extra fees. And finally, I will blog online, email and fax any and all Wells Fargo managers and offices, and protest against this unfairness in any and every legal way I can until it is dealt with.
This is what I find so unfair. On 04/23/12 the Wells Fargo Claims Assistance Center in Charlotte, NC wrote to me regarding claim reference number 10125121114 regarding my dispute with some charges that I did not authorize billed to my account. Ironically, even though the company that made the charges has concluded in their own investigation that these charges were in error and that they would refund the charges to me, Wells Fargo concluded the opposite and stated that this letter was being sent to me to notify me that the money would be taken back out of my account. Specifically this is what the letter stated on 04/23/12, and I quote (with emphasis in capitalization mine):
"The $143.84 temporarily credited to your account ending in 8582 HAS BEEN REVERSED as of the date of this letter."
I was aware that this might happen and I had been keeping plenty of money in my account to cover such an eventuality. Just to be on the safe side, and to provide a little grace period even though the letter said the credit already HAS BEEN REVERSED, I keep plenty of cash in my account until the end of the month making an extra cash deposit of $1000. However, I both trust that when Wells Fargo wrote me a formal letter saying that a banking action HAS ALREADY TAKEN PLACE using explicit terms HAS BEEN REVERSED AS OF THE DATE OF THIS LETTER, I trusted that this was behind me during the nest calendar month and went on with my life not spending even more of my valuable time looking into this unhappy issue. Then, on May 7th, a full 15 days after the letter I received MISLEAD ME into believing that a transaction had already BEEN REVERSED as of the date of a letter last month, after those full 15 days I was blindsided by two overdraft protection fees that hit me when Wells Fargo transfer money from my savings account into my checking account to cover this credit reversal.
When I complained about having been mislead to your Service Manager, Pete Kuszmaul, he would not acknowledge anything misleading about the letter sent to me stating that the reversal had already BEEN executed on the DATE OF THE LETTER, nor did he show any respect for my time. I had made a personal trip into the bank to rectify an error that the bank had inconvenienced me with by misleading me into accidentally keeping funds in my savings account that I needed in my checking account. I spent my time on this for principle! And yet, Pete insulted me over my investment of time even further saying that I should have checked my banking history to make sure that the reversal had already taken place before I left the money I needed to cover it in my savings account. In effect, he said I should not have trusted the bank's letter to me and I should have spent MORE OF MY OWN TIME LOOKING INTO THE MATTER to protect myself. He implied to me in effect that it was my own fault that I got ripped off because I didn't spend more time reading the fine print in accounting for everything in my relationship with Wells Fargo when I trusted something simple in a one page letter sent to me in the mail that I read which said EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what was really going to happen. The letter said the fee reversal HAS BEEN when the truth of the matter at the date of the letter was that the reversal WOULD BE taking place two weeks in the future at the date of the letter.
Pete didn't care about this or acknowledge any error in communication on the part of the bank. Instead, he insisted I was responsible for taking more time out of my life to protect myself from the bank when it sent me misleading letters. If the bank wants me to protect myself from it by spending more time--if that is the message you want to stand by Pete in sending to me--then trust me, I will spend a lot more time on this. In fact, I am dedicated to spending a life time on warning people away from you if that is what it takes. And by the way, count up the debit card fees you've gotten from stores. How long has it really taken you to earn $12.50 off of my business in a fair way that I was expecting. I know I and every other bank-card-using-American pay part of the money spent in every shopping transaction to our banks in a convenience fees built into the price of everything. That is why some gas stations charge so much less for cash payments. I will never let Wells Fargo get another penny from these fees from my choices at gas pumps or grocery stores so long as this dispute stands. Is that really a great business decision for you? Won't you loose money on my fast enough from my choice to boycott you?
If you don't change your mind, I'll start making running calculations on my blog every week of how much my personal boycott seems to be costing you in lost shopping fees. Maybe that will help you see the light. Or if I'm wrong, and you have some great principle to fight for that is worth more than money to you as my principle is clearly worth more than time and money to me by that amount of effort I am investing in this, then explain it to me. What makes you feel that Wells Fargo ought to defend the right to mislead me in a business letter and then charge me two $12.50 overdrafts fees for failing into a trap as the result of believing what the bank hand told me was already in the past when I was in fact going to be hit with it much later in the future? How does that seem fair to the bank? Refund me or explain it to me please. Otherwise, let my readers of my blog give me there opinions now into the rest of my life as I calculate every week for them how much my boycott is able to cost you.
Sincerely,
Sky Coon
No comments:
Post a Comment