Wells Fargo Bank Review
I was just looking over my Wells Fargo statement online, and discovered that they have hidden (not indicated clearly at time of service) fees for everyday banking activities. I was charged $1 to check my balance on one of their ATMs, and I was charged $2 for accessing my account over the phone. Oddly, these sorts of fees will simply lead most people to go into a branch and occupy a banker, costing Wells Fargo more than if they just let the customer use the ATM.
The bank also automatically transferred $25 from my checking to my savings, untold to me when setting up the account (and I read everything!). This seems like a nefarious scheme concocted to make people bounce checks… I only keep what I need for a check to clear in my low-interest checking, leaving my savings, well, in savings. Here they go moving $25 out of checking into savings as some sort of favor to me, and had I written a check it would have bounced, leading to fees and hassles. As a further kick in the stomach, WF deducts any fees from your checking instead of your savings, also in an apparent effort to get you to bounce a check.
Now that I’ve been bitten by them three times to me in as many months, I will no longer do banking with Wells Fargo. That’s their loss, particularly when I leave before they recouped their investment in me, and warn potential customers in this review. I’m moving to E*Trade bank after next month’s rent check is taken care of. E*Trade will reimburse my ATM fees anywhere, and has the highest checking (3.25 APY) and savings (5.05 APY) interest rates in town. I guess I’ll be moving my ING account, which hasn’t kept up interest-rate-wise into E*Trade as well. At this point I have no idea how brick-and-mortar banks will survive much longer now that online banks are better across the board.
August 20th, 2007 at 11:50 am
I work for a credit union, so I’m a bit biased. But credit unions offer lower fees and better interest rates. Plus credit unions don’t have stockholders to pay. The money they make goes back to their members. Most credit unions are open to anyone in a state or large regional area. Why give your money to a big corporation?
August 26th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
I agree that credit unions give better rates than brick-and-mortar banks, but they still pale in comparison to the online banks. I see that the highest money market APY your credit union offers is 2.07%, which requires a >$100,000 balance. E*TRADE will give you 3.75% APY on it. Five years of letting a $100,000 account just sit there is $20,209 vs $10,757, nearly a factor of two.
October 4th, 2008 at 2:07 am
I got a call from Wells Fargo saying that I had fraud trying to access my online account, so they recommended me getting a new account number and new debit card. I have only had this account for about 6 months, but I took their advice. WRONG IDEA! When I got my new account, my banker “didn’t see” some pending requests from my old checking account, and transferred too much money over to my new account. Therefore, I was charged with $128 dollars of overdrafts fees, which would never have been there if she wouldn’t have moved too much money out of my old account before the purchases went throught! This was so much of a hastle. They charged the OD fees to my credit card. I called my banker once and she said she would get the fees reversed. A few days later, the fees were off. Then, a few days after that, they were back on my credit card! It was VERY frustrating. I called and left a message with the banker, and finally the fees were cleared up. I thought, RELIEF! and NOW, there is another fee of $77 that they put back on there…this makes me so mad that I almost want to switch banks, but I’ll stay with Wells Fargo for now because they have so many locations. If anything happens like this again, I will definately be giving WElls Fargo a piece of my mind, and switching banks!