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

[hord]

I've been watching this since the original reports of fake accounts came out. What blows me away is that right around the '08-'09 meltdown I specifically remember watching Warren Buffett talk about how solid the management is at WF. I don't know if its rotten straight up to the head but this is damn poor management no matter how you slice it.

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

[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.

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.

Re: Corprorate Death Sentence

[Anonymous Coward]

They did sell your mortgage. They retain the servicing because that's where the short term cash flow is. Your loan was in a CDO and sold within days of your closing.

As for the Wachovia merger, it depends on the scandal. Fake accounts was before the merger. Most of the car loan business was from Wachovia, the mortgages are some of both. Wells (really Norwest) took the completely full of crap Wachovia mortgage paper and dealt with it. Wells mortgages aren't all gold and pudding either but they aren't the complete shit Wackedoveryou had.

Wells is a company made of mergers. Norwest bought Wells Fargo and the bank ended up headed out of California. Guess where the account scandal started. Wells took over Wackedoveryou and kept way too many east coast slime bags on. It is causing rot from within. The midwesteners are being pushed out by greedy bastards who already ran one big bank into the dirt. It isn't done yet.

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.

Re:Proposed law, 10 million = jail + firing.

[rossz]

The fine should be no less than triple the estimated profits from the wrongdoing. So long as the fine can be written off as a cost of doing business and still leave a profit, the corruption will continue.

Jail time, too. Lots of jail time. The CEO is the captain of the ship and is ultimately responsible for all crimes committed. Throw a few rich bastards in jail for five years and watch what happens.

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.

Put wells fargo in prison

[plopez]

Corporations are people aren't they? Restrict its liberty and take away but a small fraction of it's income. After all, that is what happens to people with a history of fraud and theft.

WtF

[Xyrus]

The first rule of dealing with Wells Fargo is: Do not deal with Wells Fargo.

If you have a bank account with them,close and move to someone else. If you have a credit card with them, close it and choose another provider. If you have a mortgage with them, refinance with someone else. If they end up buying your loan, refinance again.

Wells Fargo is the shittiest bank I've ever had the displeasure of doing business with. They will absolutely go out of their way to screw you over. If you haven't been screwed over yet, it will only be a matter of time before they do so. I refinanced my mortgage just to get away from them after the BS they kept trying to pull with my mortgage. The final straw was when the deliberately STOPPED my automatic mortgage payments for absolutely no reason and never sent any notification of any kind, presumably so they could try and snowball late fees (this was years ago).

So all these scandals involving WF don't really come as any surprise to me. In fact, I suspect there will be many more. I wouldn't trust those assholes with a wooden nickel.