Wells Fargo = FAIL
Congratulations, Wells Fargo. You’re no better than those annoying “Re: your account” spam e-mails that I unceremoniously delete from my spam folder every so often. A lot of you may already know this about Wells Fargo, but this was the hubby’s and my first personal experience with their sleazeball tactics. A short bit of background: when we first moved into our current home, we bought some new appliances and financed them through the store. This particular store happens to use Wells Fargo to handle the payments. That’s all well and good. We paid off the account and closed it a long while ago.
Well, last week sometime while the hubby was in Germany for business, a representative from Wells Fargo called Olga left 3 or 4 urgent-sounding messages about our account on his voicemail. She gave no specifics about what she was calling for, just a terse message to call back immediately. We thought this was strange since the account has been paid off and inactive for quite a while. Being worried about any fraudulent activity on our account, the hubby called back last Friday. Someone answered and said that Olga was already out for the day and no one else could access our account info, so he’d have to call her back on Monday. This already sounded pretty fishy to us, and we had come to the conclusion that this is likely some kind of scam call that has nothing to do with our account.
Today the hubby got another “urgent” message to call Olga back, so he finally did. When he got through, she started in on some schpiel, asking if he keeps track of his credit report, and how his score was such-and-such, and “what if I told you I could help you improve your credit score?” He interrupted her and asked if there had been any unauthorized activity on our account, or if there were any additional charges, or anything of that nature. She confirmed that everything was paid off and in order with our account. He then politely informed her that he had nothing else to discuss with her, that our credit score is none of their business, and he doesn’t appreciate companies that use this type of deception in order to drum up business (my paraphrasing). Instead of conceding that she would not get any business from him, she pressed on, blathering on about how they’re just trying to help, and asking if there’s a better time for her to call back, blah, blah, blah. The nerve! Yes, she’s just doing her job, whatever. “Stick to the script, make the sale,” to cop a line from an episode of The Office (US). The problem is Wells Fargo, not “Olga”.
I honestly don’t understand how a company expects to get any business from former customers when they prey on people’s fears of identity theft, which is exactly what we were concerned about. It’s more insidious than the spam e-mails with the subject line “Re: your account”, or all of the paper mail that are plastered with “Open immediately. Important information regarding your account ending in 1234″, because these are easy to spot and deal with on your own time. Opening and recognizing a fake letter takes a few seconds. It’s a huge waste of paper, and I would rather not have to sort through them and set them aside to be shredded later, but it’s something easily dealt with.
Phone calls aren’t easily dismissable, especially when the caller is not descriptive in the voicemails. There could very well be a problem with someone trying to use an old account, or billing discrepancies that need to be addressed right away. And because you have to call back the particular person who was assigned to your case (commission, anyone?), you could potentially waste a lot of time playing phone tag. Since we do not use a landline for a home number any more, these calls also count against our minutes, so we’re actually paying to deal with this inconsiderate disruption. Lovely. Luckily the hubby didn’t have much of his time wasted by this BS.
Does Wells Fargo really think that after someone goes through the trouble of calling back, only to find that there was no problem after all, that he’d be happy to sign up for whatever BS service they’re offering? Does this really work enough times to make the damage to their company reputation worth it?
Well, it didn’t work this time, Wells Fargo. And I’m blogging about this to warn anyone who’s searching on Wells Fargo, customer satisfaction, or customer reviews for this company. I’m never going to knowingly sign up for any service that Wells Fargo offers. I’ll refer anyone who asks me about this company to this post. It probably won’t make a dent in their bottom line, but I’m hoping this post helps someone trying to make a decision on whether or not to do business with Wells Fargo. Don’t do it! If they’re this sleazy about deceiving former customers, who knows what other crap you’ll have to deal with as a current customer?
/rant 
Successful Fry’s run
I have been searching for an N810 case for quite a long time now. I saw tips on the Internet Tablet Talk forums that people were using Nintendo DS Lite cases since the devices are similar in size. So I hunted online and locally for a good DS Lite slip case. It’s surprisingly hard to find non-ugly, non-crappy cases in stores around here. I would have thought that since the DS Lite is like the iPod of the portable gaming world, that there would be a huge selection of accessories, including cool cases. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be so!
I did find a nice DS Lite case by Waterfield Designs, but I still wanted to try to find something locally, preferably less expensive as well (though Waterfield Designs’ price was really not bad at all). Well, finally I found a decent case at Fry’s today by Case Logic that’s actually intended for a small portable hard drive, but I think it will work out well as an inexpensive slip case.
As you can see, it’s a bit bigger than the N810, but when the N810 is actually in the case, it fits more snugly than one would expect. The small amount of room that’s left could be used for a little memory card case, extra styli, or the N810′s micro-USB cable.
I might end up getting the Waterfield Designs case for the DS Lite later, but for now, I’m quite satisfied with the last-minute find from Fry’s. 
P.S. This blog post was composed on Maemo WordPy. I’m trying to learn about all of its features. So far I’m rather pleased about how well it works. I hope I didn’t jinx myself.
