Back on June 7, my Wells Fargo checking account was closed because of being overdrawn for a long period of time.
On June 9 I received a phone call from their overdraft collection department and we set up a repayment program with the first payment (of $10.00) on June 16 and the remainder ($119.10) on July 1.
I was told that I couldn’t even open a new checking account until the old overdrawn balance was paid off. They also insisted that my employer could send me a check instead of a direct deposit, which is untrue. Odesk pays via PayPal, Moneybookers, bank wires, direct deposit, and Payoneer debit cards. Perhaps some Wells Fargo employees need to get into the digital age!
I was a bit frustrated on June 16 as I’d had to pay $1.00 to get paid from O-desk (my online job) through PayPal rather than into a bank account (would have been free). Then PayPal charged me $1.00 to withdraw the money from an ATM, and my bank charged another $3.00 for an out-of-network ATM withdrawaal for a total cost of $5.00
I went in the bank and talked to a personal banker. He allowed me to open a new checking account immediately and waived the overdrawn balance on my savings account (they started charging me monthly service fees once the savings account was no longer linked to an active checking account).
I’d withdrawn $20.00 from the ATM rather than just $10.00; that was force deposited into the closed account which left me owing $109.10. Because I now had a open checking account I could transfer my Odesk paycheck into (with no fees), I was able to withdraw $100.00 from the ATM on July 1 (and do a cash transfer of $9.10).
When I went to the ATM on July 1, my PIN number wasn’t working. So I had to go talk to another personal banker and get the pin reset. Not only did he get it reset within less than 2 minutes, he went with me to the ATM (in the lobby of the bank) to make sure that it worked.
The entire overdraft balance was paid off within less than a month and the whole process was made painless by the staff at my local Wells Fargo branch.
Customer service that goes above and beyond is one of the reasons I have been a satisfied Wells Fargo customer for over 10 years now.