Consumer complaint received 2022-05-05
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
State: CA
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Managing an account
Sub-issue: Fee problem

Complaint:
Recently, I have been on XXXX XXXX and my income has become unstable. I work for the US government and the US Department of labor is dragging out my compensation awards. Ive been a customer Wells Fargo bank since 1988. However recently I have been experiencing financial difficulties due to my XXXX XXXX issue and not receiving my award payments. So since XX/XX/XXXX Wells Fargo has allowed The companies who I pay with my debit card to post payments onto my account. With these companies Ive never signed up for recurring payments and I dont know why they saved my credit card/debit card information onto their systems. Because I have requested for them not to do that. Thats why I call every month to pay my bills directly with these companies. So recently all of these companies chose to debit my account with my credit card/debit card information which I never authorized them to save that information. 

However I made a deposit on XX/XX/XXXX for {$1000.00} into my account. The check that I deposited has been deposit before from my foster father many of times for the last 4 years. Ive never had any problems with any of the items that Ive ever deposited into my bank account at Wells Fargo no return items no reclamations nothing. All of my deposits usually are in direct deposit form except for my foster dads living trust account where he writes me a check from. So Wells Fargo has decided to hold the monies until XX/XX/XXXX which I feel under check 21 is inappropriate because theyre saying due to overdraft activity which just happened was the reason for this. I believe they took no consideration about me and my relationship with the bank over The last 28 years. So now I am facing a huge amount of fees totaling {$170.00} because Wells Fargo Chose to allow these debits to post to my account. I have never signed up or accepted to have their debit card coverage in case of overdrafts. But if I use my debit card whether its the debit or XXXX portion of it of a place that I regularly purchase things from such as XXXX supermarkets and theres not enough money in my account they will decline my transaction. So my major complaint here is the bias that they are using to charge me excessive fees. I believe their system and the artificial intelligence they use discriminates against me for the following reasons they will post a transaction that I did not initiate and then if I initiate a transaction they will declined it. So I think thats very unfair but also not a good business practice to generate fees off their loyal customers. 

The resolution I am seeking is for them to fix and clear my record with the bank because I did not overdraw my account these transactions I did not initiate. I never signed up for overdraft coverage. And the reasons I never signed up for it was to avoid being charged excessive and very expensive overdraft fees. Also besides that I want to be made whole and for them to return the fees they charged me in error. 

One more thing, I feel that the system they have in place is predatory and is used for the specific purpose to create fee revenue based off of my situation that took place. I dont understand why banks penalize their customers with such actions. I believe the consumer financial protection bureau should make banks to stop these type of transactions or using predatory practices to collect fees from their customers. I am an experienced banker with over 30 years of experience. Lastly, I find it appalling that banks are still practicing this predatory business model in todays world. And with the economy post Covid is pretty difficult right now. Specially for people like me that are going through disability issues and dealing with major health problems with the lack of income that I previously had. My conversation with Wells Fargo today proved to me that I dont meet their standards anymore as a customer. I find that unfair, Humiliating and discriminatory because of their predatory artificial intelligence system they use to decide whether to pay or not pay transactions for customers accounts to benefit them and collect exorbitant amount of fees that are totally unnecessary. And especially for those minute transaction amounts of less than {$20.00} is ridiculous.

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