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

Corprorate Death Sentence

[rossz]

It's obvious that Wells Fargo has deeply ingrained corruption that is harmful to consumers to such an extreme that the bank should be broken up and sold off. Wells Fargo should cease to exist.

Re:Corprorate Death Sentence

[drinkypoo]

It's obvious that Wells Fargo has deeply ingrained corruption that is harmful to consumers to such an extreme that the bank should be broken up and sold off. Wells Fargo should cease to exist.

Alas, that is the opposite of what will happen. Remember when WAMU was sold to Chase, possibly the most corrupt bank in America? I was a WAMU customer. WAMU was claimed to be insolvent, but they were doing a lot better than the banks we bailed out. When the going gets tough, the biggest, most politically-connected banks win. Wells Fargo is about as endemic an infection of a bank that the USA has ever known. The chance that there will be any significant come-uppance is nil.

Proposed law, 10 million = jail + firing.

[gurps_npc]

Huge fines for this kind of behavior should have direct legal consequences. If you do this kind of massive fraud, it is clearly illegal. The government should figure out who made the decisions, with the knowledge that deleting records = guilt.

They should figure out who was responsible and jail them for at least a year. Then double the fine if the convict's boss is not fired for cause. Because if he truly didn't know about the crime, then he has demonstrated incompetence. If he did, he should have gone to jail instead.

I am tired of seeing companies write these kinds of things off as the cost of doing business.