Consumer complaint received 2021-12-02
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
State: TX
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Other transaction problem

Complaint:
This complaint is about Wells Fargo Bank. 

I have attempted twice now to send a domestic wire transfer from my Wells Fargo account. I followed the bank 's instructions, but they cancelled my transaction within 24 hours with no prior notice and without explanation as to why. I was notified of the cancellation by email replicated to the bank 's online message center. I replied to the email only to get a response telling me to reply through the message center. However, when I went online to the Wells Fargo Message Center, the email function reply had been disabled. In fact, there was no way to contact them in writing at all.

Only after more than 2 hours on the phone with the bank ( being shuttled between various departments as well as being cut off twice and having to restart the phone call each time ) I was told the transfer had been flagged for fraud. But Wells Fargo had made NO attempt to contact me to verify if the transaction was legitimate before cancelling it. Every other financial institution I deal with has a system in place for quickly verifying with customers whether they recognize a specific transaction. 

At the bank 's instruction I resubmitted the same transfer online. However, the fraud specialist who recommended this course of action also stated he did not know the reason the transaction had been flagged and could not guarantee it wouldn't happen again. So this time, I tried to head off any issue by calling the bank a few hours after resubmitting the transfer, only to be told it had AGAIN been flagged for fraud. Then I was told I had to wait for a callback from their fraud department sometime in the next two days (! ), and that they could not tell me when they would call, even though I explained that I could not take personal calls during working hours. I then spent another hour and a half on the phone with them before finally being escalated to a manager who could release my money.

While on the Wells Fargo site, I investigated their " security center '' to see if there was any way to inform them that my transaction was legitimate. There was not. All of their online options for security alerts allowed consumers to report suspected fraud, but there were NO options to allow consumers to verify that a transaction was legitimate.

My complaint therefore has two parts : 1 ) Wells Fargo ( unlike other financial institutions ) has no system in place to quickly verify with the consumer whether or not a specific transaction is genuine. 
2 ) Wells Fargo has made it impossible for an online consumer to contact them in writing to verify a transaction or even to get an explanation about why a transaction was declined. ( I suspect this is intentional ; it leaves no paper trail and also leaves the consumer at the mercy of their so-called " customer service '' phone system, which in my experience functions more as a maze to cut off unwelcome conversations and prevent consumers from reaching anyone with authority. )

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