Wells Fargo Sued Again For Misbilling Car Owners And Veterans (reuters.com)

UnknowingFool writes: A new class action lawsuit from a former Wells Fargo customer claimed the bank charged loan customers for auto insurance they did not need. With auto loans, the bank often requires that full coverage auto insurance be bought when the loan is made. However, lead plaintiff Paul Hancock says that Wells Fargo charged him for auto insurance even though he informed them he already had an insurance policy with another company. Wells Fargo also charged him a late fee when he disputed the charge. Wells Fargo does not dispute that it did this to customers and has offered to refund $80 million to 570,000 customers who were charged for insurance. The lawsuit however is to recoup late fees, delinquency charges, and other fees that the refund would not cover.
NPR describes Wells Fargo actually repossessing the car of a man who was "marked as delinquent for not paying this insurance -- which he didn't want or need or even know about." Friday the bank also revealed the number of "potentially unauthorized accounts" from its earlier fake accounts scandal could be much higher than previous estimates -- and that they're now expecting their legal costs to exceed the $3.3 billion they'd already set aside.

And Reuters reports that the bank will also be paying $108 million "to settle a whistleblower lawsuit claiming it charged military veterans hidden fees to refinance their mortgages, and concealed the fees when applying for federal loan guarantees."

Comments

History repeating itself

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

And, just like last time, Fargo is going to claim that since the victims are existing customers, they've already signed a binding arbitration clause, which prevents them from joining class-action suits.
These guys are a bigger bunch of mindless jerks than the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.

I liked the part. . .

[quonset]

of the NPR story where the guy whose car was repossessed goes to a Wells Fargo bank branch with all his documentation, and the staff can't figure out what's going on. Then the staff starts calling the part of Wells Fargo involved in this loan and they keep getting put on hold for over two hours.

If the bank itself puts its own employees on hold when they're trying to get an answer to a simple question, it's quite clear the bank is trying to cover up its criminal actions.

Why people are still customers of this corrupt organization is a mystery.

Re:Corprorate Death Sentence

[oh-dark-thirty]

Couldn't agree more. I am currently stuck with them as my mortgage servicer, and they suck so hard it hurts. They screw up my escrow at least once a year and I have to fight them to correct it. I wish they would just sell my account to someone else, but they are known for hanging on to their loans so I don't see than happening. Gahd I fucking hate them.

Re:Corprorate Death Sentence

[merky1]

Curious if that was before the "forced" merging of good and bad banks. Buffet may have been talking about the older WF, and not the influx of sub-prime mortgage managing people.