Consumer complaint received 2017-11-09
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
State: PA
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Managing an account
Sub-issue: Banking errors

Complaint:
My wife and I were married on XXXX/XXXX/XXXX and set off on our honeymoon on XXXX/XXXX/XXXX. 

On XXXX My mother-in-law went to a Wells Fargo bank to deposit our wedding checks.. The teller ran the checks through her machine and then told my mother-in-law that because the checks did not have my wife 's signature on them, the checks would " bounce. '' She next told my mother-in-law that my wife would need to sign the checks before they can be deposited. The teller handed the checks back to my mother-in-law. 

On XXXX after my wife and I returned home, my wife signed the checks and my mother-in-law attempted to deposit the now wife-signed checks again. This time, a different teller told her that " no, the checks need to be signed by my wife in front of the teller. '' My mother-in-law explained that on XXXX the first teller had told her they just needed to be signed, not brought to the teller. The teller relented and ran the checks through her machine. She did not hand us back the checks. 

On XXXX the amount of the deposited checks was removed from my account. No error was listed. 

Between XXXX and XXXX I called Wells Fargo four separate times. On the first time they told me that the issue was that my wife had not signed the checks, I told them that she had. Then they told me that she had not signed it in front of the teller and thus the amount would be rescinded. On the first call they promised they would send printed copies of the checks so we could redeposit them. The next 3 calls over the next two months were me following up about the printed checks which never arrived. Wells Fargo consistently told me that the checks would be coming and consistently explained that the issue was due to my wife not signing. Finally, on the 4th call an employee told me that if I went to a bank they could " print the checks for me in person '' On XXXX I went to a Wells Fargo location sat down with a banker who told me that " whoever said that on the phone was lying ''. The banker called Wells Fargo and pushed my issue up to a corporate hotline. After talking to someone on the corporate line they told me that the issue was NOT in fact due to a missing signature. Instead, the checks HAD gone through on XXXX/XXXX/XXXX despite lacking my XXXX 's signature at all. The teller then returned the checks to my mother-in-law so that when she deposited them with my wife 's signature the checks went through a second time. The XXXX removal was to remove the second deposit of the checks. 

Not a single person I talked to on any of my calls told me this. They all lied to my face or simply had no idea what they were doing. The tellers were both reckless, either lying to my mother-in-law, being completed uneducated on the rules, or negligently returning deposited checks. No one at Wells Fargo had any idea where my money was and seemed willfully negligent in the most basic functions of being a banker. 

And then two weeks after my conversation with the corporate person, low and behold the printed copies of the checks arrive in my mail. So now I have print copies of all the twice deposited checks, so if had not finally figured out the issue this could have been thrice-deposited checks and be even worse for myself and my friends and family. 

This was an incredible story of mass-ineptitude by multiple bankers. Wells Fargo incorrectly deposited checks into my account without my wife 's authority ( per their stated policies XXXX, then they handed back the deposited checks, then 4 so-called bankers had no idea what they were doing for two months, and finally they then sent me the already deposited checks in the mail once again.

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 non-monetary relief