Consumer complaint received 2022-02-03
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
State: CA
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Other transaction problem

Complaint:
Date : XX/XX/2021 My wife was contacted by text from a registered Wells Fargo number that asked if she authorized a transaction of {$3500.00} to a person we don't know through the XXXX real-time-payment app Wells Fargo offers. The text provided a number to call if she didn't authorize the transaction. 

She phoned the number and the person on the other end started walking her through a process of " undoing '' the transaction by sending the money back to herself in increments starting with {$1000.00}. It sounded sketchy so she hung up, checked our account, and I immediately phoned Wells Fargo to alert them to stop any transaction. While I was on hold waiting for an agent, my wife contacted a customer representative through the chat function on our online account. 

After explaining the situation, the chat representative indicated that Wells Fargo did not contact my wife, checked the account, told her everything was fine and that we had nothing to worry about. All of this took about XXXX minutes while I waited on hold. Once we had been assured everything was okay. I hung up and felt relieved we had averted disaster. 

I looked to see if I could learn about a scam like this online and saw the exact same scam was happening to XXXX XXXX XXXX customers in XXXX. Then I logged back into our account to make sure everything was okay and found that the scam transaction was in process as if my wife sent money to herself through XXXX and we were out {$1000.00}. 

I immediately phoned Wells Fargo, waited for an agent, who recognized the scam, told me the online chat customer service agents have no way to recognize or stop the transaction and that if I would have contacted them by phone, it could have been stopped ( assuming I could get through before the transaction went through ). The agent had me file an online claim and indicated that the situation would be resolved in XXXX and was mostly a matter of investigating and ensuring we weren't scamming Wells Fargo before they restored our funds. 

At the beginning of XXXX, we received a letter from Wells Fargo dated XX/XX/XXXX indicating the claim was closed and that Wells Fargo doesn't guarantee the XXXX services it offers, XXXX offers no guarantees or insurance, and they were unable to stop or reverse the funds. 

I immediately contacted Wells Fargo on the phone and the agent apologized for " confusing wording '' in the letter and assured me they were still working on the claim. The agent indicated that since we were hit after the scam was well known for several months, XXXX had identified the recipients and Wells Fargo was having luck restoring funds through the third-party XXXX app XXXX I was advised to give it a few weeks and follow up and told if I used the phone number on the letter when we initially got scammed, I would have been able to get right through and top the transaction. 

After hearing nothing outside of a customer feedback survey for a month, my wife phoned Wells Fargo to follow up on the claim. She was told that : 1. She authorized the transaction. 

2. It wasn't their problem that scammers used the Wells Fargo customer service phone number to initiate the scam. 

XXXX. Their real-time payments partner, XXXX, doesn't guarantee or protect any transactions and it was more of a XXXX problem than a Wells Fargo problem XXXX even though Wells Fargo promotes XXXX services in customer online accounts ). 

4. The money was already transferred before she hung up the phone with the scammers. 

5. The customer service online chat agent that indicated they checked our account, everything was okay, our concern was noted, and we had nothing to worry about was an unreliable bot that couldn't check or know anything. 

And we are out of luck. They refused to refund our account or indicate any responsibility for the situation. They blamed us for falling for it and XXXX for carrying it out.

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