My experience with Wells Fargo's takeover of Wachovia

[CreekDog]

I had a nice money market account with Western Financial Bank which got eated by Wachovia. Surprisingly, Wachovia basically maintained an interest rate higher than most competitors, they dropped it of course over time, but were still the best deal in town. They gave me the same kind of account and deal that I'd had with the previous bank. Despite the merger, Wachovia did okay by me.

Then Wachovia starts listing and the Feds get involved and Wells Fargo emerges with Wachovia and my account. Okay, at least I'll have branches nearby since I'm at Ground Zero for Wells Fargo. (you know I still can't get over seeing Philly's sports complex called Wells Fargo with the stagecoach and all. :wtf:...but I digress...

Wells Fargo turns my money market account into a standard savings account. All this time, I'm using Wachovia's website and think I still have a money market account. Little did I know Wells Fargo turned all Wachovia accounts into Savings accounts.

Wells has been paying 0.15% APY for a Premium High Interest Money Market Account
Wells pays 0.10% for a Regular Savings account

So in changing my account, they netted a puny 0.05% APY off me --it took me a while to realize this.

I realized this while on the phone with them when they tried to sell me a minimum balance account, that would ding me if I suddenly found a better deal.

I told them I thought it was pretty petty of them to switch me into a lower interest account without my knowledge to profit off giving me the worse of 0.15% and 0.10%...really worth nothing to me, but across all those Wachovia customers like me? It adds up. In fact, whichever genius at Wells Fargo thought of this probably got a bonus for doing this.

So I'm going to close my account at Wells. I never wanted them anyway but was willing to hang around for a while. 0.15% sucked almost as bad as 0.10% but the main reason I'm moving is because they played a game with me and despite their claimed ignorance (well, we didn't know what kind of accounts folks from the merger had so we just put them into Regular Savings accounts)...it seems like they put us all into the lowest possible interest rate.

So I figure staying with Wells means that they will try to make money off me in some other way that I'm not anticipating. The pennies difference is not important to me --it's playing along with their game that bothers my conscience.

Bye Wells Fargo. Except for the horsies, I hope that stupid stagecoach drives off Devil's Slide.

Sincerely a San Francisco native who watched your commercials all my life and now will have nothing whatsoever to do with you ever again. Congratulations. Hope you enjoyed your 0.00416666%/month interest off your financially savvy move from my account. Hope it was all worth it to you --it certainly was not to me!