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Wells Fiasco Online Banking

I was a happy Wachovia customer who is being frustrated by the Wells Fargo transition.

I live in PA, I understand the transition of Wachovia customers, and even accounts is progressing piecemeal and by state. Sometime last year my Wachovia Visa account was transitioned to Wells Fargo. That transition cost me two points of convenience: First, I could no longer download transactions via Direct Connect, and second, I could no longer transfer funds from my checking account to pay my Visa bill. Wells Fargo customer service told me then I could restore the ability to download transactions by reconfiguring my account for "Express Web Connect". I did that and at least that part of my relationship with my bank was acceptable.

This week however, my Express Web Connect for my WachoviaVisa from Wells Fargo stopped working. I never received any proactive notification from Wells Fargo, it just failed with a OL error. I called Wells Fargo this morning and after finally getting to one of their online banking software experts I learned that Wells Fargo changed a server this week (Tuesday) at least to service Visa accounts in PA. The very polite Customer Service rep informed me that Wells Fargo no longer supports "Express Web Connect" but I could continue to get the transaction downloads by configuring for "Direct Connect". Well, that is a bit confusing since it was at their insistence that I switched to Express Web Connect, but, who knows, so I reconfigure for "Direct Connect" and sure enough, it worked. I thanked Ruth (the polite CS person). And we hung up.

No sooner had the phone connection clicked off, I got an email welcoming me to the Quicken® Direct Connect, and informing me I had subscribed to their $3/month service. Well, I have never paid for Direct Connect with Wachovia, I had never been warned I was entering into a chargeable service agreement with Wells Fargo, and I was now very frustrated. I called Wells Fargo Online Banking back and after learning almost nothing useful from the new CS person was transferred to a manager. The manager, also very polite, and thankfully a native English speaking person, confirmed that Quicken Direct Connect support is only offered on a subscription basis. The $3/month fee can be waived if I have a relationship worth $150k among all my accounts. Well, I don't and I won't.

So I asked her to confirm that the acquisition of Wachovia by Wells Fargo has so far resulted in the loss of my ability to transfer my own money from one account to another (confirmed until the rest of my accounts are transitioned to Wells Fargo), and that to continue to get the bare minimum transaction download will now cost me $3/month. She told me I can always use their online website for free, and I can, with enough patience and enough clicks download my transactions to a file on my PC and then import them into my Quicken. Or I can also just manually type everything. I added a third option, I can switch banks.

I asked her if she had any idea when the rest of my Wachovia accounts (checking, savings, HELOC) would be transferred to Wells Fargo, and I will lose free transaction tracking for them too. She told me she thought it would be 1Q11.

Everyone was polite, but this bit of customer disservice just aggravates me. I asked her if she had a forum for communicating to her management that at least one customer was very unhappy with the deterioration of service from my bank. She said she did, and would forward her notes.

At no time have I ever received any communication from Wells Fargo informing me of the transition process, the negative impact to my accustomed service, nor the introduction of service/subscription fees, nor even that capability was changed on unpublished schedules.

I don't make idle threats about leaving banks, because it is a painful process. And, I understand from reading forums like this that most Financial Institutions are implementing nickel and dime fees. If I change next month, my new FI may implement the same egregious fees and service lapses as the one I am leaving.

Anyone have a relationship with an FI they have reason to believe will not soon be charging for basic Quicken Direct Connect service.

Reply to
JMc
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Hi, give a look to pnc.com. I just opened a checking account a few months ago and have Quicken Direct Connect plus online bill pay from within Quicken with no fees on their "free checking".

Reply to
Tim Conway

TD Bank North, if it's in your area, has free direct connect, download and all that. There may be a minimum; but, if there is, it's less than

10K. And, if you do direct deposit, that disappears, too.

K. Becker

Reply to
Ken

On Sat, 18 Dec 2010 17:31:20 -0500, "Tim Conway" wrotG:

They will also hit you with a fee for printing check images on your statement. Wells Fargo is determined to turn Wachovia back into the old First Union disaster. My Wachovia in Florida hasn't converted yet, but I got hit with the download fee a couple of months ago. There is a Crown Classic account available to those over 50 or 55 which avoids the Quicken download fees.

Reply to
Howard

Thanks, and I suspect that my Wachovia Crown Classic account might be why my Wachovia Direct Connects have been free. Are you saying you think that Wells Fargo will continue the waiver of fees for something they call Crown Classic for 50 (or 55) and older customers. The polite Wells Fargo lady never mentioned any alternative (besides maintaining a $150k relationship) for fee waiver.

Thanks for some ideas, Jere

Reply to
JMc

On Sun, 19 Dec 2010 11:27:33 -0500, "JMc" wrotG:

Yes. The banks here in Florida are still called Wachovia. But Wells Fargo is running the show. I started getting charged for the downloads and went to the bank to complain. The very nice customer service rep said they had created a new category called Crown Classic. The requirements were basically the same at the Crown vanilla accounts, but they were exempt from the download fees and check printing fees. So she converted me to Crown Classic and refunded the fees.

Go to your bank and speak to customer service. There are two kinds of Crown accounts, one of them exempt (Crown Classic) and one of them not. The telephone reps are worthless.

If you get paper statements and have them print the checks you will also get hit with fees for that. You need to set your account so that the check images don't print on the statements. You can go online and print three images per month. After that you pay. Or if you want the images to print on the statements, you pay, even if there are less than 3 of them.

Reply to
Howard

Express Web Connect still works for me.

I have been promised repeatedly that I will not lose any of my Wachovia Crown Classic benefits as a result of the conversion to Wells Fargo. If that's a lie and I have to pay to get free online services through Quicken, I will be apying a different bank to do it.

Reply to
nobody

We have those accounts and have been assured that Wells Fargo will not reneg on any of our benefits

Reply to
nobody

That's what WF has been telling me.

Reply to
nobody

If you log into the WF creadit card account at WF (directly otr through the link in your Wachovia account list) you can transfer funds from a wachovia account to the WF credit card.

Reply to
nobody

Thanks, I know that, I've been doing that since the transition. It just aggravates me that a perfectly easy transaction from within Quicken has turned into this web based process that takes entirely too many navigations, clicks, userids and passwords.

I will go to my Wachovia branch and spend some time with an office manager to get their take on what Wells Fargo is charging for. Maybe my problem is that none of my Crown Classic (savings, checking, HELOC) accounts have transferred yet, just my Visa. At least I can hope.

Reply to
JMc

I may be naive, and there might be factors involved that I don't know. So saying that, two words - "Credit Unions". Run by members, for members. Commercial banks are run for profit by others that do not care about anything unless the bottom line is maintained. Why not change to a type of institution that cares?

Reply to
Andrew

I used to belong to two credit unions. One offered direct connect for a time, then canceled it. They also instituted verification screens that made express web connect unworkable. Neither wanted to provide any help or advice. When their interest rates dropped lower than Wells Fargo, I moved most of my money out. Then, one of them decided to close the branches in my city, and lay off all of the workers. That was when I closed my accounts. I explained to the teller that if they didn't want to provide jobs in the area, I didn't want to do business with them. I wished her "good luck" in finding another job, but she was not very hopeful. She said that she had been closing accounts for days as others did the same thing.

In theory, they are run by members, but in reality, they are just like a big bank in every way, just less competitive in their offerings.

Reply to
Jim H

With Crown Classic, I have been told that Wells Fargo wil be honoring all the benefits. We'll see.

Reply to
nobody

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