Apartment/condo dwellers who rely on coin-op laundry with no on-site change machines.
Invalid analogy. Plenty of other banks have no account requirement to issue change. Wells Fargo is the only one I’ve been in which does.
See, this I’m NOT okay with. But that’s not what Skywatcher was talking about. Just some dude coming in asking the teller if they can break a 20 is something WF shouldn’t be expected to be bothered with.
Neighboring mom & pop shop owners can be a real nuisance constantly coming in and wanting change to run their business.
Most banks around will gladly make change, even for non customers. I’ve even gone into random banks and bought unusuals, such as 50¢ pieces, $1 coins, and $2 bills. Maybe the change isn’t “needed” per se, but it is often amusing to pay for things with them, especially when the cashier is young and inexperienced.
Exactly. WF not doing so while trying hard to make a customer out of a non-customer reeks of their employees being pressured into finding new accounts.
When you’re a cashier evaluated on metrics like credit card signups, savings account signups, whatever, and the customers don’t want what your bosses are telling you to sell, it must be tempting to do a little fudging to get the bosses off your back. (Said fudging may not seem like a big deal to you if you’re not privy to the comings and goings in a given customer’s account.)
I saw this in a much lower-stakes way in my last retail job with a free “rewards” program - cashiers would sign customers up with fake email addresses/phone numbers. Data analysis caught them - patterns emerge when you’re faking even a few percent of your transactions.
The linked article says that the 5300 firings have happened over several years. The first five or ten employees who felt pressured into doing this should have set off alarm bells about 1) the pressure front-line employees felt to create new accounts and 2) the lax security that allowed them to do so without customer consent.
TLDR: Without excusing the employees who did this shady, shitty stuff, the blame probably falls on the corporate management that created the pressure and lax environment to let this happen.
A valuable public service!
I wonder how many new openings they have in the data security department?
You’re overqualified. So am I. And him, her, that guy over in the corner…
If this happened over several years, then I expect you’re right. If simply for no other reason than surely they would’ve closed the security gap that kept allowing it to happen, or at least monitored it enough to prevent it from getting this far out of hand.
At one point, the software written for the finance division of the State Department allowed anybody to go in and change entry data on the spread sheets. It’s the equivalent of allowing accountants to do their work in pencil.
I get it, you did what you had to get by, and I can’t hold it against you that you worked for Wells Fargo. Just tell me that you moved on to a more benign enterprise, like human trafficking or three-card monte. Scheiße porn, even, if it’s the tasteful kind.
This is why I use a Credit Union.:smack:
“I may be a little coward, but I’m a greeeedy little coward!”
- Daffy Duck
I “got by”, working at the co-op. I whored myself out for weed and video games.
Yes, but the article says a lot of the money came from overdraft fees and the like. Overdraft fees that were caused by the bank. It seems strange that nobody ever reported that to the bank.
That is what I was wondering. I would notice such a thing instantly like many people would because I never generate overdraft fees. Anyone should be able to see if money got moved from their account without their permission. It would be even easier for credit cards because they would start showing up on countless people’s credit reports if they were associated with real people. That should have triggered a massive fraud investigation a long time ago. At the very least, the auditors should have seen that something was wrong and be held accountable if they didn’t. It is all very strange.
My mortgage is with Wells Fargo through no choice of my own. I think I am going to move it now because that is an incredible amount of fraud and incompetence on the part of a major bank and I don’t trust them anymore. I hope that at least some people go to prison for it.
Good luck! My sister refinanced away from WF twice, spending thousands of dollars to do so. Both times they purchased the new note within 6 months.
True dat. Shag, note of caution: suspenders and a belt. Get expert advice and make them sign a note says that if what they tell you ain’t so, you get to shoot them.
Yeah, I can see you playing a video game. What was your favorite, Woody Guthrie’s Whack-A-Facist?
WFB is famous for “cross-selling” - selling new products to existing customers.
I was involved in one such product. The sales reps made $5 for each customer they signed up.
A browse through a branch showed that the “For Bank Use Only” field on a “Fill this in to Enroll” coupon was pre-filled.
It was the employee id of the person who made the sale.
Yeah, those folks were keen to cross-sell.
That’s pretty fucked up. When you have confidential information, and it gets out, it’s the fault of the people who let it out. And if the most sensitive information you care about in your company is how much everyone makes, and not things like customer data or trade secrets, then your priorities are screwed up. I hope the 200 found better jobs and the company folded.
A lot of poorer people do. They won’t have bank accounts and smaller denomination bills make it easier to budget.