Dear Ms. Trinh Haye,
I really want to get to the bottom of what Wells Fargo policy and intention is in the bank's relationship with me. It started with a dispute with Pete Kuszmaul in your branch yesterday about a $12.50 overdraft protection fee charged to me for money transferred from my savings to my checking that I insist was due to an error caused by a miscommunication made by Wells Fargo in a letter that the bank set to me, but it is grown into much more than that. It has become a matter of determining for me whether Wells Fargo, on a national level, really stands by its motto of "together we will go far" and its promise of always "working together.
When I used to live in California, I never had any problems with Wells Fargo when I brought errors to the bank's attention. In fact, recently I started getting charged fees on my account even though I had formally been charged no fees because of automatic transfers every month from my savings account to my checking account. When I went into your branch earlier this year to ask your banker Mariam about this, she said that nothing could be done and I'd have to pay the fees. I was also told the same when visiting a branch in Virginia. Luckily, when I went back to California on vacation and spoke with a manager at the old branch I used to visit there, the manager corrected the problem for me immediately by adjusting the label on my account type and refunding me all the fees I had been charged without my even asking him to do that or arguing with him for this assistance. I felt like I was visiting a friend who wanted to work with me and who was on my side.
On the other hand, Mariam and now Pete Kuszmaul--both in your branch--have done nothing but entrench in their positions that they were not interested in either listening to, nor responding to, nor rectifying my concerns about my service with Wells Fargo. When I came in to ask Pete Kuszmaul if he had received my email that I had sent you and him yesterday, Pete Kuszmaul told me point blank that he would not talk about my overdraft with me anymore even though he never answered my question about whether or not the bank mislead me in a letter it wrote to me about a reversal of a past credit to my account. His words yesterday were, "I will not quibble with you about grammar," in respect to fact that the letter said a credit was reversed in the past when in fact it was going to be reversed two weeks into the future. Today I asked him if he simply didn't have the authority to reverse my overdraft fee and if it was simply a matter of policy that I had to talk to the branch manager or if he disagreed with my assertion that I had been mislead by the bank's letter to me, and he still insisted he would not make any comment to me or answer any question related to this topic. And yet he never answered my initial question in the first place yesterday when I came in the first time and asked him whether or not he could see my point that the letter the bank sent me was misleading. How, I ask you, is this living up to Wells Fargo's promise to its clients of always "working together" to insure that "together we will go far." This is what I read on your website and it just doesn't make any sense in terms of how Mariam behaved with me earlier at your branch or in terms of how Pete Kuszmaul behaved so dismissively with me yesterday and again today. I quote the following from this Wells Fargo website:
https://www.wellsfargo.com/invest_relations/vision_values/4
Our brand
Our brand is what people say about Wells Fargo to their friends and family. It’s how they feel about doing business with us and how they describe those feelings. Our brand has economic value. One published study estimates it’s worth almost $25 billion. We have a strategy to protect our brand’s value. At the center of that strategy is our brand promise. It says what we stand for, how we differ from our competitors, and why customers should care. Our promise to our customers is this: We’ll take the time to understand your complete financial picture. Together, we work with you, now and over time, to provide the best information and guidance about the products and services you’ll need to help you reach your financial goals. We sum up our promise in two words: Working Together
Our brand also has a personality — traits that describe how we want customers and team members to think and feel about us:
Our brand is what people say about Wells Fargo to their friends and family. It’s how they feel about doing business with us and how they describe those feelings. Our brand has economic value. One published study estimates it’s worth almost $25 billion. We have a strategy to protect our brand’s value. At the center of that strategy is our brand promise. It says what we stand for, how we differ from our competitors, and why customers should care. Our promise to our customers is this: We’ll take the time to understand your complete financial picture. Together, we work with you, now and over time, to provide the best information and guidance about the products and services you’ll need to help you reach your financial goals. We sum up our promise in two words: Working Together
Our brand also has a personality — traits that describe how we want customers and team members to think and feel about us:
- Reliable. We want to be seen as consistent and dependable. People can count on us.
- Confident. We want to be seen as thoughtfully prepared. We’ve done our homework.
- Down-to-earth. People should feel comfortable doing business with us.
- Eager. We want to show an active interest in our colleagues’ and customers’ needs. We want to respect their time.
- Supportive. We want to show we care.
We also have what we call a “signature” for our company, to help show how our brand is different: “Together we’ll go far.” It means we want to guide and advise our customers so they’ll be more confident about their financial future. As a result, they expect to “go far” in their financial journey.
*
I want to ask you a simple question Ms. Trinh Haye, and I ask that you work with me on this. Can you or can you not see how the letter Wells Fargo Claims Assistance Center sent to me on 04/23/12 was misleading? In that letter, the bank stated that, and I quote: "The [amount of money] temporarily credited to your account ending in 8582 HAS BEEN REVERSED AS OF THE DATE OF THIS LETTER." (emphasis mine)
I had been expecting that this credit reversal was a possibility. I had been trying to make sure I always kept enough money in my account to cover this liability should it occur. Instead of having all of my money in my savings account, I had been keeping extra money for this possibility in my checking for months. Then when I got this letter from Wells Fargo in the mail, I found out the dispute about the charge on my account was decided upon, or so I thought, and that Wells Fargo had reversed the credit as stated on the date of the letter. I then personally took my fight over this old dispute to the company that had billed me erroneously, and I won. I have since received a letter from that company saying that I am being refunded this charge. However, precisely because Wells Fargo had told me that the credit HAD ALREADY BEEN REVERSED IN APRIL -- on the precise date of April 04/23/12, according to the letter from Wells Fargo in fact -- I assumed, based on communication from the bank that was FALSE that it was safe to leave my money mostly in savings in May and to charge purchases onto my Wells Fargo credit card to pay off at the end of the month when I needed to.
Pete Kuszmaul refused to work with me on understanding what the bank meant in its letter to me, and he refused to consider my request for fee wavers based on that. He has been dismissive and cavalier with me two days in a row. And I am shocked, because I used to think based on all of my experience in California that Wells Fargo wanted a mutually beneficial relationship with me and that they did honor their promise to always work with me. When Mariam earlier told me that your branch couldn't help me with a past surprise about new monthly account fees unless I set up direct deposit, and when I later found out with persistance that she was wrong, I thought that it might have just been her, and not the bank. Now however, since Pete Kuszmaul has been so shockingly dismissive and cavalier with me on top of being incompetent in finding a way to at least answer my concern if not entirely reach an agreement over it, I am at a loss to know if Wells Fargo's promise of working together still holds true.
At least Mariam told me earlier that she thought the bank no longer had an account type to meet my needs. I wasn't happy with her answer, and so I closed two of my five accounts with Wells Fargo and started preparing myself to close all of them until the banker in California showed me the bank could provide what I was looking for--but now I really don't know about Wells Fargo anymore. Is it just your branch, or is pretty much the whole bank? I really want to know? Are you going to address my concern? I ask you to do one of three things please:
1) Tell me how the letter "re: decision regarding you claim number 10125121114" was not misleading about when the credit to my account was going to be reversed, since the reversal actually happened 15 days after the letter stated it had taken place,
2) If you can't explain how the letter was not misleading, then please refund me the remaining $12.50 overdraft fee that occurred when money was transferred from my savings account to my checking account; or
3) If you are unwilling or unable to do either of those two things, please put me in touch with your regional manager or whoever you report to so that I can take this up with him or her and get to the bottom of whether Wells Fargo's signature promise of always "WORKING TOGETHER" is only dead at your particular branch (if you yourself as the branch manager can't reach a simple solution in option 1 or 2) or whether is a more widespread problem in the company now.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Sky Coon
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