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Wells Fargo customers scramble after deposits disappear from their accounts
- turnsout 3y agoI picture someone furiously reverting changes on a 2,000,000 line COBOL monorepo
- marginalia_nu 3y agoYou're optimistic if you think there's source control.
- jayski 3y agoLOL
- zamalek 3y agoI picture someone furiously unzipping WELLSFARGO_2023_V5-FINAL-3.zip.
- marginalia_nu 3y agoWELLSF~1.ZIP
- vidanay 3y agoNot ready reading drive A Abort, Retry, Fail?_
- rexreed 3y agoWhat the world needs is decentralization across the board. Finance, internet, media, and government.
- trilbyglens 3y agoYa crypto has shown how well that works.
- rexreed 3y agoNot crypto. At least not specifically. I'd be happy with a whole lot of regional banks that aren't going to just get acquired in a year. Consolidation isn't a friend.
- sneak 3y agoIt has done precisely that. You can now have near unlimited exclusive control over money that can be beamed to anyone on the internet cheaply in a very short period of time. Practically speaking, with some basic precautions, it is totally uncensorable and nobody can stop you. That was not possible before. Those are facts, regardless of anyone's personal emotions about whether or not cryptocurrencies are good or bad. It has so much crime associated with it specifically because it is functional and decentralized. You can't receive ransomware payments at a retail bank.
- nottorp 3y agoPersonally I don't have a problem with crypto because it's being used to move drug money or ransoms around. It's the exchanges that look to me similar to the people needing to move drug money or ransoms...
- Finnucane 3y agoIt used to be more that way. It was the deregulation of the 1980s and 90s that allowed the massive concentration of the banking industry.
- usefulcat 3y agoPerhaps unintuitively, smaller banks tend to be more susceptible to problems like the recent bank runs. Matt Levine has written about this in his column for Bloomberg, Money Stuff.
- pylua 3y agoWhat is the typical root cause of these issues ? Is it improper architecture / transaction management that only gets exposed when certain things that usually work become unreliable ?
- pavpanchekha 3y agoEvery large bank is the merger of thousands of banks, and the it systems are just strapped together.
- pylua 3y agoI get that, but Wells Fargo didn’t just have a major merger did it? The real problem with the mergers is that the system are too complex for the analysts and architects to understand, and the software mirrors that. The knowledge is also distributed across a huge array of people that have no reason to change the status quo to keep their knowledge valuable to the bank.
- baz00 3y agoFunctionally it's usually an edge case somewhere or someone doing something stupid. Recently where I reside there was an overflow scenario of a registration number and the powers that be decided to add another digit. Of course to maintain "compatibility" this number is a string and they added "0" to the start of it. Some organisations treated it as a string, some as a number. Ones who treated it as a string ended up with two orgs defined as "01234" and "1234". Of course org "1234", now known as "01234" wondered where the hell all the integration data went. Even worse someone registered an org "045" when "45" already existed which means that the wrong org got the integration data. This manifests itself as stuff being missing usually. At that point, the outsourcing managers adopt the spiderman pointing pose ( https://i.imgur.com/ypYY6yg.png https://i.imgur.com/ypYY6yg.png ) and try and establish blame. This takes forever to resolve due to a Mexican-standoff scenario, usually broken by one of them getting hungry which can take a few hours. Eventually blame is assigned and a team is set upon it. Because staff turnover is so high due to the low salary, no one at the outsourcing outfit knows anything about some rancid bit of COBOL/REXX/RPL or if you're really lucky Java which is holding all this together. In a panic, only initiated after someone informs them that they are going to have to pay a hefty compliance fine, the management team start running around like headless chickens. Eventually they bump into someone they forgot to fire who can remember who the original engineers are who wrote this. Delving into an ancient HR database, they find the mobile number of the last guy who touched and call him. His widow answers and informs them that Bob died 3 years ago but his old colleague Terry is still alive and you might want to call him. They call up Terry who is on a golf course somewhere. Terry is concerned but not that concerned about the situation because he knew what a steaming shit show the org was and moved his money well away from it. Eventually the manager starts waving daily rates around meeting the "I can be bothered" level of interest. Terry finishes his game, throws the clubs in his car and heads into the office to look at it. After 3 hours of unsuccessfully trying to work out how to get Terry an account on the mainframe again without having to involve the outsourced helpdesk, which is currently down due to a huge mudslide, he sits at someone else's terminal and stares intently at the problem. He utters a few words, edits a few characters in one file and resubmits the job. Several minutes later, the phone lines stop ringing. All is good again, Terry made $1500 and the org only lost 2% of its customers compared to the 0% it should have lost if they hadn't outsourced everything. Now imagine this in 20 years with Kubernetes!
- phpisthebest 3y agoI will say it 1000 times. Everyone should have an account with a local community credit union as your primary daily expense account If you are living paycheck to paycheck this is doubly true. Never trust your ability to buy food to a commercial bank
- viraptor 3y agoIs there some report that confirms the higher availability of local credit unions on average?
- bombcar 3y agoThe smaller the credit union the more likely you can get it resolved during the next business day - mine is small enough that I'm often served by the bank manager just because she's the one on duty - and the main office is only a few miles away. When you can personally talk to someone who has basically "full control" lots of issues can go away quickly. Though I've personally never had an issue.
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoI’m not sure how this is better than WF. The article says they resolved the issue by noon that day, which is pretty fast I would think.
- viraptor 3y agoSure, that's the impression. But does it actually hold up in practice for everyone, beyond anecdata?
- Dalewyn 3y agoI would trust a bigger bank more than I would a smaller bank, simply because the former has more money (or should, anyway...). Really though, the moral here is to not put all your eggs in one basket. Keep another checking and/or savings account at another bank, big or small, with ample funds so your finances are redundant in the face of freak incidents. And if you are really paranoid or just have bad luck with these things, keeping some physical cash at home for true emergencies certainly wouldn't hurt.
- rthomas6 3y agoBetween stuff like this and the fraud, why would anyone still use Wells Fargo at this point?
- kid64 3y agoAbsolutely. Remember, 7% of all American adults believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows [1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/15/seven-percent-of-americans-think-chocolate-milk-comes-from-brown-cows-and-thats-not-even-the-scary-part/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/15/seven...
- fastball 3y agoThe idea that 7% of American adults like lying on surveys is more believable to me than the idea that people think chocolate milk is not from added chocolate.
- kid64 3y agoThat would be a relief. The number of customers that will continue to bank at Wells Fargo, however, suggests not only that the respondents didn't lie, but that the model was likely too conservative.
- rgoldste 3y agoThis is technically correct (the article notes this). Milk of all kinds comes from all cows. Some fraction of chocolate milk comes from brown cows.
- sfmike 3y agoAren't some cows brown?
- ravenstine 3y agoOnly if you're an existing customer and don't want to go through the effort of switching. However, I am now going to switch. I feel like an idiot for not switching earlier. There is nothing redeeming about Wells Fargo, other than they might have your money available for you. Other than that, it's shenanigans every few years, pushy customer service, a crappy website, and an even crappier mobile app.
- Someone1234 3y agoThis is absolutely unacceptable, and I'd like to see regulatory fines. A worse version of this that I've read a few times is banks suddenly "security" flagging your accounts and disabling everything for sometimes up to weeks at a time while they "investigate." I've tried to protect myself from a single banking point of failure with this setup: - Paycheck into local Credit Union Checking - Partial automatic transfer from Credit Union Checking into online Bank Checking - All bills are paid from the Credit Union except Credit Cards, which are paid out of online bank Ultimately if either the Credit Union or online Bank has problems, I just use the other one. I'd then move my next months Paycheck if it was the local Credit Union that was problematic. This setup is actually simpler than I am making it sound, two checking accounts and a single automatic transfer (then splitting your bills appropriate). Nobody should have to do this to have a good banking experience, but prudence never hurt.
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoIf they resolved this in just a few hours (as the article states) why should there be fines? Unless there was some kind of negligence involved anyone can have a technical issue. Software is just too complex now, especially when you are supporting legacy code from 50 years ago
- option 3y agofew hours or days, whatever. The fine should be proportional to damage done to customers (more if days, less if hours)
- me-vs-cat 3y agoIs your paycheck direct deposit? Have you considered splitting that into deposits at each of your banks instead of your partial automatic transfer?
- bjacobt 3y agoIf that happens to you CFPB[0] is your friend. Chase closed my account because I deposited a valid check, but chase fraud dept closed my account with close to 13k in it. I made a lot of trips to the bank, countless hours on the phone and what I found is different departments don’t communicate or share data. Every time I call or go to the bank the first agent would say a check was mailed and I should wait for it in the mail, but wouldn’t give me an ETA. After I insist they never mailed anything, I get transferred around and finally someone says they have not received the requested document - which I had submitted in person at a local branch. This process repeated few time and got escalated to their “executive office” twice - which restarted the process. It felt like I would never get my money and after two months found out about CFPB and filed a complaint. About 3 weeks later chase magically found all the documents and mailed a check for the balance. [0] https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ https://www.consumerfinance.gov/
- sys_64738 3y agoWell, it is Wells Fargo who are one of the most garbage banks on the planet. A mattress is safer.
- FredPret 3y agoWhen you deposit money, it's no longer your money. You've now lent the money to the bank. That bank may or may not be worthy of your trust, and there are likely rafts of laws protecting you. But ultimately it's a loan to the bank. All you own is an acknowledgement from this institution that they owe you $x. On the other hand, if you buy shares in the bank, you now own a chunk of it. Of course this isn't a feasible way to keep your day-to-day cash; we all need checking & credit accounts. But anything above the minimum is a risk, and a lost opportunity from investing returns you could've gotten from shares, bonds, or even the money market. For that minimum expense float we all need to have, cash under the mattress is not that terrible of an idea, assuming you live in a safe place. Something to keep in mind!
- usefulcat 3y agoAlso, if you loan money to a bank and the bank becomes insolvent, the FDIC will pay you back (up to at least $250k). OTOH, if you bought shares in the bank, in that scenario you’d probably lose everything you invested.
- reducesuffering 3y agoWell, the US Government actually reneged on only $250k. Now, if you are politically connected enough, blessed with "systemically important" status, you may get your billions $ payed back by FDIC...
- usefulcat 3y agoHence "up to at least $250k"..
- FredPret 3y agoUnless the bank is too big to fail
- Arubis 3y agoWells Fargo does something unethical, damaging, and arguably unforgivable every couple of years. It boggles my mind that anyone would knowingly and willingly do business with them.
- gameman144 3y agoMy local mortgage lender wound down right after we bought our house and sold our mortgage to Wells Fargo. I'd been avoiding them for ages; I guess sometimes there's just no escape.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dimal 3y agoAt what point do we say, “Ok, we’re revoking your corporate charter. Please wind down your operations and liquidate your holdings.” A corporate charter isn’t supposed to be an eternal grant. If the corporation continuously breaks the law —lies, cheats, and steals over and over — there’s no reason why it should be allowed to exist anymore. As a bank, their first responsibility is to secure their customers’ money, and it’s clear that they are incapable of that. Wells Fargo has shown that they cannot reform itself. Time to pull the plug.
- golemotron 3y ago> At what point do we say, “Ok, we’re revoking your corporate charter. Please wind down your operations and liquidate your holdings.” I think we do that at the moment that the government decides to make the shareholders whole. And, that's expensive. Nothing short of that is politically feasible.
- sixothree 3y agoMaybe they should buy into a more reputable company.
- Kamq 3y agoPresumably the liquidated assets would go to the shareholders.
- djbusby 3y agoNot shareholders, they took a risk and lost. The customers should be made whole first. Then liquidation where those proceeds are distributed to shareholders.