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from the how-far-did-Wells-Fargo-go-to-far? dept.
NPR reports:
This month federal regulators fined Wells Fargo $185 million for opening checking and credit card accounts on behalf of customers who had no idea that was happening. The bank has promised to try to make restitution. [...] In some cases, Wells Fargo employees would transfer funds into the new accounts from one of the customer's existing accounts. That could result in late fees or fines for insufficient funds. Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, says that would have had a direct impact on someone's credit score. "You may not have qualified for a mortgage or you might have been dinged by getting charged a little higher interest rate because of what was reported wrongly on your credit report," he says. But the potential impact goes beyond the customer's finances. These days, credit scores are routinely checked by potential landlords, by employers — even by cellphone companies. Wu says someone who has racked up too many overdraft fees because of unauthorized accounts may have trouble getting another checking account.
The U.S. Labor Department will launch a review of complaints related to Wells Fargo:
U.S. Labor Department Secretary Thomas Perez on Monday pledged to conduct a "top-to-bottom" review of all cases, complaints and other alleged violations that the department has received concerning Wells Fargo in recent years. Perez's announcement, outlined in a Sept. 26 letter to Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, comes after Warren and other Democrats asked the Labor Department last week to launch a probe into possible wage and working-hour law violations involving Wells Fargo tellers and sales representatives who may have stayed late to meet sales quotas.
Previously:
Wells Fargo Fined Over Unauthorized Accounts.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday September 27 2016, @02:11PM
Credit in the US is a rather fucked up system at all ends. Issuing companies, reporting companies, collection companies. I've never liked the cred reporting companies and the scams they seem to run, my personal favorite is putting a freeze on your account with them but that costs money but they will sell your information to every entity out there. Then add in that they reporting agencies also offer "credit monitoring" services to keep your credit report clean but don't do fuck all to clean up obvious fuck-ups. Thankfully I haven't had to deal with that mess but have had to deal with some fraud but American Express quickly resolved when they tracked me down even though I wasn't a customer but someone had taken out a card in my name. My personal experience with the shit end was having had to deal with debt collectors who can't figure out that I am not the person they are looking for as the debt they are trying to collect is older than I am.
With the most recent one I managed really put the screws to them. They would call multiple times a day and caller ID would show their phone number and list them as "Toll Free Call". Eventually I answered the phone, said hello and then got to hear their PBX system click and eventually it hung up on me. I googled their number and it came up with nothing so I figured they were some scam operator. After that I started answering their phone calls stating that they are to never call this number again and that this is harassment and must stop now and demanded to know who was calling. Each time I would hear their PBX system click and eventually it would hang up on me. During all of this I had been diligently documenting every call they had made and recorded the ones that I had answered. Without making any headway figuring out who or what this company was I contacted the MN Attorney General to file a complaint against this unknown entity that was harassing me. A few days later I got a response back indicating that they were a debt collector and that they had every right to be contacting me because they were a debt collector and that they would open a case on them but if they hadn't done anything illegal there wasn't anything they could do. I was however given information on how to deal with an overly aggressive debt collector if I felt they were in the wrong and that in that case I should file complaints with the MN department of commerce and Federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). So I filed a complaint with each one and in a matter of hours received a confirmation form the CFPB that they had sent written notification to the debt collector to no longer contact me by phone and that that notification had been received.
I continued to receive calls for a a couple of additional days and on the second day I filed additional complaints with the CFPB and MN department of commerce as well as provided additional information to the MN Attorney General as now they were violating the law as they had been told in writing that there were to not contact me by phone. I provided copies of the CFPB confirmation notice indicating when they were told and a copy of my phone call log show their continued attempts at illegal contact. After I received the second confirmation notice the calls stopped.
A few days later I received a letter from the collection agency as well as documentation on the loan. The problem is that this was in response to my first CFPB complaint in which I had provided my information that is to have been used by the collection agency to determine if the loan was mine or not. I responded back to them indicating that I am clearly not the person that this loan belonged to and that would have been clearly obvious had they done their due diligence (not even a close birth date, the loan was older than I am, the person who the loan belonged to lived in a state I have never been in, social security numbers weren't even close, only the first name was a match) and that I should have never been contacted in the first place and then should defiantly not have been contacted after I had provided my info to the CFPB. I informed them that at this point they had willfully violated the law by disclosing information about an outstanding debt to an unauthorized 3rd party and that I would now be filing additional complaints with the CFPB, MN Department of Commerce, and MN Attorney General and that I would be including this communication.
A little more than a week later I get a letter from the debt collector demanding that I contact them to resolve this issue and setup some sort of repayment plan otherwise they will accessing liens against my property and suing me in court. They also claimed that they had indeed stopped calling me when they received the written notification from the CFPB. In response I sent them another letter where I stated again that I am not the correct person pointing out all of the obvious discrepancies. Additionally I told them that any further attempts to collect this debt from me will be viewed as harassment and a criminal attempt to defraud me and that even if they are not the party attempting to collect the debt I will consider them as part of a conspiracy to defraud me. Furthermore I demanded that for me to consider the issue resolved the company would have to deliver to me a letter stating that I was not the owner of this debt and that they had made several mistakes and undertaken several illegal actions in their attempt to collect this debt. The letter was to be notarized and delivered no later than 2 business days after receipt of my letter and that it would be delivered by certified USPS mail with delivery confirmation. After I had received their letter I was to never be contacted about this debt by them or any other company otherwise I will immediately be filing a criminal complaint against them and who ever else may be attempting to collect the debt as well as a civil suite against the same entities for harassment as is my legal right as written into the fair debt collection practices act. My final demand was that the tract down the actual owner of the debt and inform them of their illegal activities, the disclosure of personal information (seriously I could open tons of accounts in this person's name with what I got) and that person's rights under the law which happened to mean that the debt is no longer legally collectable. I also stated that I would be forwarding copies of their letter as well as my letter, the final letter they were to send me and all of the supporting documentation that proves that they have continued to lie and take illegal actions in collecting this debt to the CFPB, MN Department of Commerce, and MN Attorney General. Yes I did do this.
3 days later I received my notarized letter from them profusely apologizing and stating that this was all a misunderstanding and begging that I don't provide anything to the CFPB, MN Department of Commerce, and MN Attorney General. Problem was I am a dick and had already sent copies of all that I had off to them. I then sent off copies of this last letter because fuck them I'm going scorched earth since they screwed the pooch really bad and just happened to find someone who was a vindictive ass hole who was entirely in the right. About a week after sending off that last letter I got letter back from the CFPB, MN Department of Commerce, and MN Attorney General all stating that they were starting investigations into this debt collector withing a few days of each other. The letters thanked me for my patients with the system and also congratulated me on the quality of the evidence I had provided. The CFPB and MN Attorney General were likely looking into the criminal aspects while the MN Department of Commerce would be looking to stop them from operating in the state.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday September 27 2016, @04:01PM
So sorry to hear of your story. Thankfully [crosses fingers] I've never had to deal with an inaccurate debt collection attempt myself. But I always find it sad to hear how many times consumers have to resort to contacting governmental agencies just to get some small action or reasonable review from a company these days. Four times in my life so far I've had to escalate things to government agencies when I've been incorrectly charged by utilities. In two of those cases, the companies' own records showed they were wrong (and they admitted so on the phone to me), but they just never seemed to correct the errors and I just kept getting statements each month with the charges (and even more late fees) piling up.
Come to think of it, it's really hard to recall many disputes I've had over charges that have ever been resolved painlessly, even when there was an obvious error. Maybe 2 times I've actually had a customer service person say, "Oops... okay, I can fix this," and they actually do it. The vast majority of the time they either ignore you, refuse to fix the error, or say they'll fix it but don't. Generally, I have to resort to at least threats of escalating to another level (government agencies or something other external body that exert influence).
All I know after reading your report is that I'm glad my disputed charges have never been sent to a third-party collector. That would have been a nightmare.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday September 27 2016, @06:10PM
I think a if a few more people would go scorched earth on them we might start to see some actual resolution to these poor behaviors but far too many people just take it. When I had to deal with American Express several years ago that was painless as they tracked me down to collect a late payment and actually believed me when I told them I didn't take out the credit card and didn't live in New York. I do encourage people to know their rights especially when it comes to debt collectors now since I think we are seeing a resurgence of the really scummy ones since I am sure the backlog from 2008 is being worked through.
I usually try to resolve things in a reasonable fashion first but once the other party acts unreasonable I tend to go all nuke form orbit. I did a similar thing to an insurance company that didn't want to pay fair market value for a wrecked car and there I took them to small claims court and won. At the time I was just out of college and didn't have a job (guess who graduated just after the .com bust) so I had the time to fight it. The car was valued at $3100 or $3150 in the NADA and KBB guides but the insurance company claimed it was only worth $1200. Long story short I won and the judge basically scolded the insurance company stating that it should have never made it this far as what I was asking for was completely reasonable. So instead of paying out some value in the $3100 range they instead paid for an independent appraisal that they didn't like the results, storage of a wrecked car for 6 months, court costs to have someone show up in court, $35 for my filing fee, and $3150 for the value of the car.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:14PM
Well done sir! I applaud you. 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:24PM
Thank you for your service.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:25PM
Bravo! You are my hero!
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:41PM
Holy shit, they should give you an award and the key to the city for this one. Hopefully they'll lock those fuckers up for 10 years and seize all their business and personal assets too.
My hat's off to you. You've done a wonderful service for humanity.