Wells Fargo: Once a crook, always a crook
Wells Fargo: Once a crook, always a crook
(Mar. 4, 2022)
Wells Fargo has been notorious for their nefarious behavior for decades. Unfortunately, for the average consumer, we didn’t get a real glimpse of the illegal activities going on behind the scenes at Wells Fargo until fairly recently.. 2017 in fact. My intention for writing this article however is not to detail the numerous incidents and web of scandals that Wells Fargo has been caught in.. it is simply ask why Americans are still banking with these crooks?
Wells Fargo is supposedly a bank that originally set out a goal to put an emphasis on “customer relationships”. Now if it’s one thing I will give Wells Fargo credit for, they definitely have put an emphasis on customer relationships, in the worst ways. In fact, Wells Fargo employees had such great relationships with its’ customers that they began to order debit cards for customers without their consent. This illegal behavior was not just limited to the average everyday customers; even a top Wells Fargo executive experienced the same situation with his wife.
Wells Fargo employees ordering debit cards without customer consent was just the tip of the iceberg.. employees routinely pushed and persuaded customers to open multiple unwanted accounts as well as sign up for completely unnecessary services such as services like pet insurance. Since more times then not the customer never needed these services or accounts to begin with, they would be charged with multiple fees and even had their credit reports damaged. I should mention however, that Wells Fargo employees (at least at the branch level) were repeatedly coerced by upper management into carrying out these horrible tactics on customers.
After several branch closures, billions paid in fines, 2 CEOs stepping down, and a massive amount of employee turnover, Wells Fargo has sneakily tried to rebrand itself and even had the nerve to run a half-ass ad centered around “Earning Back Your Trust”. I’m never one to kick someone while they are down.. but this is laughable at best considering their board of directors is currently made up of 6 directors who served on the board during the 2017 scandal. These directors have been on the board as far back as 2009 in fact.
It can easily be argued that since the aftermath of Wells Fargo being exposed for the crooks that they really are, they’ve done just as much damage to themselves reputation wise and financially as they did to their customers. Recently, Wells Fargo had to face fraud claims by their own shareholders claiming that they deceived the shareholders about their own ability to rebound since the 2017 scandal. As of Feb. 23, 2022, Wells Fargo faced another class action lawsuit accusing them of repeatedly requiring employees in Florida to work overtime hours without any pay.
Wells Fargo just doesn’t seem to even give a damn that they were caught in one of the biggest bank scandals in U.S. history just 5 years ago. The question begs, why the hell would anyone continue to bank or conduct business with them when they continuously prove that they don’t care about their employees, shareholders, or themselves?