Consumer complaint received 2021-08-05
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
State: SC
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
On XX/XX/XXXX I received a call from who I though was our XXXX XXXX ( XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX ). They confirmed account numbers, service address and names on the billing statement. They stated there was a billing issue and they had changed platforms for billpay and our utility bill had been coming out on the old platform and not the new one so they were contacting me to see why I had not called them to set up payment through the new bill pay platform. This has happened with another utility company in the area - changing billing platforms. So this seemed legit and also because they had my account number, address and both my name and my husbands name on the account. 

The customer service rep stated that we could go through XXXX in order to use billpay through Wells Fargo and walked me through setting up the account - when they gave me the number for the transfer it popped up as XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX and they gave me reference numbers and work order numbers. 
I had to complete two transactions - 1 to take care of the bill for XXXX and the second was an amount to initiate the billpay. They gave me a reference number and said to call the utility company tomorrow and confirm payment went through and they would refund the deposit amount back to my account. 

I called my utility company the next day and provided the information and they stated that they had multiple people calling about this issue and it was actually fraudulent and that they were not sure how the scammers had gotten all of the information they had but recommended I contact my bank Wells Fargo to report the fraudulent transaction I called and spoke with customer service for Fraud through XXXX. They took all this same information and said they would take up to 10 business days to check that it was fraudulent and refund the money back to me. They stated that misleading charges would be taken care of. 
I called twice to check on the status of the claim and they stated they needed more time to look into the issue. I called again on XX/XX/XXXX and was told that they were not able to refund any money because they actually do not stand behind the XXXX money transfer program through their app and bank. That they do not have a customer gurantee to back anything through this app and since they could not track the fraud through their app they wouldnt be able to get the money back for the bank so they were going to deny my claim. I asked why they didnt disclose this when I filed the claim and she said they only will support transactions they can get the money back from. 
I feel that this is very misleading. Other money transfer and pay options like XXXX will always stand behind their customer and I have had purchases that were fraudulent that XXXX has backed up 100 %. I have been a loyal customer of Wells Fargo for years and they are encouraging the use of a program that they do not stand behind. 

Transactions Through XXXX - XX/XX/XXXX {$130.00} Wells Fargo Reference Number for Claim : XXXX Wells Fargo Reference number for claim : XXXX for {$360.00} on XX/XX/XXXX Thank you.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation