Helpful Advice From Wells Fargo

Yesterday we finally got our letters in the mail from Wells Fargo, officially letting us know that they had closed our business credit card accounts.  The letter is ridiculous, and I thought I’d share it with you all.  It’s good for a laugh anyway.  They mention that they closed the accounts and that they understand that we will have questions about why this happened and what steps we can take now.  The letter goes on to say “to save you time and give you the most direct path to the answers you need, we have included “The Guide” on the reverse side of this letter.  It provides you with the information that we believe you will find most important and useful”.

So I turn over the letter, wondering what brilliant insights “The Guide” will offer.  First, it mentions the supposed reasons why the accounts were closed (as I described in my last post, their reasons don’t make much sense, but it’s convenient for them that the reasons are purely subjective, proprietary, and impossible to fight).  Then, they included some advide that they say will increase the likelihood that they will someday be able to reinstate our account (thanks, but I think we’ll pass on that).  Here are their words of wisdom:

• Ensure all accounts are handled satisfactory.  Unsatisfactory performance may include untimely payments, items returned for insufficient funds, involuntary closures or overdraft occurances (um, excuse me, but does what you just did count as an involuntary closure?  Just curious)
• Work to preserve your credit and avoid building excessive additional credit balances.
• Make sure there are no late payments on any of your accounts.

I minored in math in college.  That advice from the helpful folks at Wells Fargo would be like someone telling me that I really ought to brush up on algebra.  Thanks guys – we’ll be sure to work on that.  In the 12 – 15 years that we’ve had credit, neither of us have ever had a bounced check, overdraft, late payment, etc.  We pay off our credit card every month, and have always done so other than the couple years after we started our business (late 2003 – 2006, during which time we carried balances but always paid far more than the minimum payment, and were always on time).

We’re a week out from finding out that our accounts were closed, and at this point I see a lot of humor in their letter.  If we had received it a week ago, it would have just made me angry, but staying angry doesn’t do anyone any good.  We are going to look at other bank options, but we’re not going to rush into a decision.  I like the idea of a credit union, but we want to make sure that we get one that has a local branch in the town where we’re hoping to move.  So we’ll see what our options are and weigh the pros and cons.  Switching banks will be a very time consuming process because of all the direct deposits we have to our business account and all of the automatic payments we have coming out of our accounts.  It’s not something I want to do without comparing a lot of options, but it is something that I’m motivated to do thanks to this little episode.