Embarrassing. Disgraceful. Unbelievable. Sad.
These are words that I have used to describe the banking system in the United States. Why might you ask? Well, the following incident happened a week ago. It has been so crazy and ridiculous I couldn’t even write about it till now…because it has finally been resolved. What happened…
THE BANK LOST MY DEPOSIT!
Now I don’t know about you, but I didn’t think it was possible for a banking institution to lose money into thin air. This is exactly what happened to me. Here’s how it went down…A week ago yesterday, I walked into a local Wells Fargo and cashed a pay check. I made three unique actions after cashing the check: 1) I made a deposit into my checking 2) I made a deposit into my savings and 3) I took cash back. I received two individual transaction receipts, one for each deposit I made, saying the cash had been deposited. I walked away from the bank as anyone normally would thinking everything went perfectly. When this past Monday came around, I received emails from two bills I pay saying my payments which were set to come out had been rejected. I found this very odd, so I logged into my online banking to see if something I hadn’t thought about had possibly been auto bill paid. Once in my account, I noticed something more than odd…none of the money from my deposit was there. WTH! So, before going crazy, I decided to look at the transaction history and see what that looked like. No RECORD OF A TRANSACTION OF MY DEPOSIT. Not the one in checking. Not the one in savings. WTF!!!!!
How was this possible? How could I have physical transaction receipts saying I deposited money into two accounts and then they are not there? I couldn’t and wouldn’t understand. Of course I had to call Wells customer service. For the next two hours that Monday night, I sat thru a phone call that was like out of a weird dream. The representative I talked to couldn’t find my transactions anywhere in their banking system. The representative actually went thru setting up a “missing deposit form” (which I didn’t know such a form existed) to get my money re-credited. The representative said that this type of incident happens occasionally. I seriously wanted to pull my hair out…but its so short I couldn’t do that.
After this phone call, I had to get on the phone with both of those bill companies and try to explain to them that a banking institution somehow lost money in thin air. The representatives I talked to at both of those companies had the same sound of disillusionment that I had. And I just had to let them know that unfortunately there was nothing that I could do. That’s a pretty sad feeling of helplessness to know that a place you depend on to manage your money and protect it couldn’t do that.
Sufficed to say that I don’t plan on being with Wells Fargo too much longer. I just can’t bring myself to depend on a place to watch my money when they can’t even handle it correctly. More than that, I think it just speaks to how much the banking system in this country is flawed. Transaction numbers on my deposit slip but not in your system? I call Customer Service and when you’re on the phone for a long time with one person, if something happens (like phone call dropped), you can’t get back to the person that was helping you. You Customer Service banking system is in real-time but the online banking system the customer uses is not? I just don’t get it.
I just wonder how many other people have this many problems with the banks in our country everyday. I’m sure it’s mind-boggling. Maybe it’s time to start storing the money under the mattress…
