The California based banking and financial services holding company, Wells Fargo (WFC, Financial), has been blamed under a civil complaint filed against it for using unfair means and unlawful conduct by misusing customer information provided in their bank accounts. The employees of the company have been questioned for opening customers’ accounts without permission and charging them with "bogus" fees besides ruining their credit history. The lawsuits filed against the company has demanded
- immediate shutting down of the functioning,
- penalties as much as $25,000 for each violation and
- reassurance to affected customers.
Damage done
The highly reputed fourth largest bank in U.S. by assets and second largest by market capitalization, Wells Fargo, is also the 23rd-largest company in the country. In the past, too, the bank has undergone several controversies with the current one coming as a big blot. The company has put the blame on few "rogue” employees who did the wrong things. They not only opened the customers’ accounts illegally but also misused data. However, the complaint filed against the company has stated the involvement of the company in the "unfair, unlawful and fraudulent conduct" in a move to increase its sales. Wells Fargo hasn’t yet commented on this statement that can tarnish its reputation. The lawsuit was filed under an unfair-business-practices law, which enables the attorneys representing the cities of California to demand for justice for customers throughout the state.
Even though customers complained about the fishy behavior in their bank accounts, no heed was given to them by the bank and their accounts were not closed. The lawsuit has blamed the bank to an extent that it has called the current actions in talks to be harming customers, putting it on employees and in between all this, Wells Fargo is walking away with all the profits. The bank has decided to either sack or “appropriately discipline” such employees, but the city’s investigation found the bank sacking only a handful of employees to probably calm the customers’ angst. The employees of the bank have opened fake accounts and have charged fees to the customer for it, all for rigid sales quotas allocated to them, as per the lawsuit. The matter may become worse as some employees have even raided the customers’ account for money to open additional accounts. The lawsuit has also blamed the company of unpaid refunds, keeping the customer uninformed and providing logical solutions to the problem. Even worse, the customers with unpaid fees were put into collections data, which generally is very strict. Wells Fargo however has been denying all clauses and assures the presence of a well-managed functioning in the company with regular audits, training and committed teams to serve customers.
How the matter evolved
Feuer, said in a statement that he doubted the largest lender in the U.S., Wells Fargo, after learning about the company being under severe sales pressure across all its branches in Times report in December 2013. It was revealed that the bank has been long involved in malpractices –Â both lawful and unlawful to get more accounts. For instance, the employees in an effort to achieve targets were even begging their friends and family to open ghost accounts with false information. The paperwork was completed using forge signatures and if any customer was dissatisfied, his false number was put in records so that he was not contacted for Customer satisfaction surveys.
Parting words
Thus, the complaints had been running since 2013, and the lawsuit was an expected outcome. Even the internal relations are not working fine in the company with employee-manager’s conflict becoming quite frequent.
