not happy with Wells Fargo

[Toad]

Originally Posted by Dobick

They became something different the minute that they took money from the government to prop up their failing model in the whole "too big to fail" debacle.

Not intending to turn this into anything political, but seriously, they lost the right to hide behind capitalism the minute they took the bailout money

Funny thing about that is that the banks didn't have a choice. All big banks were forced to take the bailout.
Wells Fargo was posting a profit that year. Mainly because they were hard to get loans for in the first place, didn't lower their standards like other banks, and so were not hit as bad as other banks when people started defaulting on their loans.
I have family that works at Wells Fargo, and I remember them all complaining about how Wells Fargo was forced to accept the bailout.

[andyz]

Some banks are definitely gredier than others. But don't ignore the home owner whose value fell and they walked away from the loan "giving back" the house. That's a misnomer as the bank likely didn't own it before. In many cases the home is stripped and requires tens of thousands in repairs to get to a point where it is worth less than is still owed. Who pays for that - customers paying interest and fees. When a bank loses $10K on a loan, that is a lot of fees at $5 a month.

My point is there is risk, and the banks try to balance that. Some lean more on their side, sometimes there are good reasons for that, sometimes not.

[andyz]

Originally Posted by Toad

I have family that works at Wells Fargo, and I remember them all complaining about how Wells Fargo was forced to accept the bailout.

Treasury didn't want one big bank to look better than others, so they were all told they'd take the money. That is true.

[Toad]

If I may also point out 2 things...
1) Wells Fargo already paid back their bailout (that they didn't want in the first place)
2) Obama's Frank Dodd act, or Dodd Frank act, is the reason for all these fee increases. That act limited the fees that banks could charge to merchants, so the banks had to instead charge them to their customers. Just because they couldn't charge the merchants didn't mean that the charges flat went away.

That's probably touching a little too close to politics, but politics are affecting your bank fees that you are complaining about.

[surlynkid]

i am with wells fargo for checking, saving and mortgage. since i have a PMA account, they charge me nothing for anything pretty much. the smartest thing is to find out they will charge fees and not do those things.