Perhaps it is just my bank, Wells Fargo. I push a lot of money through them, they've got my mortgage and my student loans, and I put all my spending on my debit card. I've been a customer for over a decade. I've found that since a few months ago they have begun trying to steal my money constantly. They used to do it every once in awhile before, maybe a few times a year. Now it is monthly, on top of the $50 per month account fee they didn't used to charge me they hit me with random other fees all the time. As you can imagine I write long elaborate emails in which I castigate their sociopathic business practices, they reply with their arsenal of generic form responses. Inevitably the absurd dialogue ends when they apologize and reverse whatever illegitimate fees I've discovered. It's like this weird game I play, it used to make me so angry but now it is kind of fun.

It does actually. The banality of evil and all that...

What I find even more amusing is that we've given these fuckers our tax dollars too. I know Wells has gotten at least $25,000,000,000 in bailout funds. I think they must be run by some kind of Bondian supervillain. If not, I really wish they were because if I'm gonna get screwed out of my money I'd like to know there is some evil genius behind it rather than just a sociopathic corporate machine running on its own logic.

Yeah join a credit union, have fun driving 500 miles to an ATM and 500 miles back just to be the man who drove 1000 miles to fall down at your door

I've been a Wells Fargo (previously Norwest) customer all my life, and I've never had a problem...depending on your accounts, there may be a fee unless you arrange for something else to happen...let me explain...Right now I have checking (with a little interest), a savings account, and my student loans through them. When I set up my savings account they informed me there would be a fee with it unless I had a minimum balance, which at the time, I couldn't fullfil, or an automatic transfer from my checking account to my savings account. Since I didn't meet the minimum balance requirement, I opted for the transfer. Every month $75 goes from my checking to my savings automatically, I'm not paying them, I'm paying myself.

Recently, they also activated their rewards program that people pay for, but it's free for me because I have how ever many accounts with them...not even their employees get it for free...I dunno, just talk to a banker to see what they can do to get them to stop nickle and dime-ing you.

As for the bailout money Wells Fargo received...well, I think they pretty much wanted to pay it back right away, but they got it right around the time they acquired Wachovia...after the "stress test" they were forced to keep it and raise even more capital. It's not so much that Wells Fargo is evil and greedy, it's just more of the government fucking up the free market by taking our money and "loaning" it to companies that "can't fail"

I got USAA. Now get jealous, bitches!

hehe. That ugly green USAA card is the best thing in my wallet.

My accounts are set up to autotransfer $150 a month into my savings account. I autodeposit my paycheck. I manually deposit the rent I collect. I autopay my mortgage and student loans. I used to pay no fees. I refinanced my house and in the process my accounts were reconfigured by them. I explicitly asked if this would result in me being charged fees of any sort and was told no. Unfortunately that was not in writing.

Anyways, they are taking this shit to a whole new level in their most recent response. Here is my reply:

What does it mean when you say "you may want to contact your bank"? Wells Fargo is my bank. I have contacted my bank (that is you in case you forgot again already) in order to change the date my mortgage payment is withdrawn. Instead of changing it when I asked it was changed right after the payment was withdrawn. That account did not have enough money to cover the full payment thus incurring an overdraft charge. The payment was then reversed and my mortgage payment date was changed. I pay $50 a month for this stupid PMA account and you seem to continually be trying to get still more money out of me (and by you I mean my bank, because in case you forget again Wells Fargo is my bank). It's bad enough that your lies cost me $600 a year that I didn't used to have to pay, now I have to waste my time explaining this situation over and over again. Now you don't even know that you are my bank, doesn't that seem a little absurd? The Soviets had a less Kafkaesque customer service bureaucracy. What makes this even more awesomely ironic is that you (and in case you forgot again, you are my bank) got bailed out by me. My tax dollars are keeping you from collapsing due to your own sociopathic greed and incompetence. WTF?


So yeah, in their most recent reply they suggested I contact my bank about this problem. I have no idea what it means when you are dealing with your bank about a problem and they tell you to contact your bank about the problem to get it resolved. Yet again:

The saga continues:
In their latest response they claim I didn't make my request until after my mortgage payment was taken from my account yesterday. Except the idiots don't realize that their customer service software emails a receipt tagged with the ticket # and date when you submit anything. Of course I copy/pasted that into my reply :) I wish I could embed pictures in their forms because a giant ORLY? would of no doubt made someone besides me laugh at this shit.

So at this point I'm pretty much writing off the $35, they clearly want to fight to the death over it and Wells Fargo is immortal. So now it's all about extracting $35 worth of entertainment from them.

I see what you did.

That said, who uses cash? Get a card, you hobo. Mail-in deposit, direct deposit, these are all real-people things to do.