Dear Wells Fargo: If You're Going To Demand Guy Pays His Bill, Make Sure He Owes You

Back in November, Dominic Maier of North Carolina started getting calls from Wells Fargo Bank demanding he start making his mortgage payments again. He owed them, he ought to pay.

Wells Fargo is being sued by a North Carolina man
because the bank has been too lazy or stupid, apparently,
to stop calling him about a mortgage he doesn't have.  

There's only one problem: Maier has no mortgage with Wells Fargo and has never done business with the bank, according to the Charlotte Observer. 

OK, that happens. Mistakes happen. No big deal. Somebody at the bank probably keyed in the wrong number during data entry, and mistakenly put in Maier's phone number. Easy to fix, right?

Not so, it seems when you're dealing with one of these huge banks. In a case unfortunately familiar to many, it seems once somebody puts your phone number in the system at these places, nobody is willing to get rid of it.

So Maier's cell phone kept ringing and ringing for months with Wells Fargo demanding he pay the mortgage. They kept asking for a man Maier never heard of. He asked Wells Fargo to stop calling. He put his phone on the "Do Not Call" list.

Still, the phone kept ringing. Predictably, he's suing.

Why, then, did the bank let this go that far? They could have easily investigated, figured out they were screwing up, and gone after the right person.  Instead, Wells Fargo is getting sued, again.

According to the Observer:

"This is not the first time Wells Fargo has been accused of repeated illegal phone calls. Well agreed to pay $17 million in 2012 to resolve a class action lawsuit claiming people received unwanted calls on their cell phones, causing them to incur charges.

The bank also pledged that it had set up a system to ensure people only received calls on their cell phones if they actively gave the bank permission to use the numbers."

Or not, apparently.

As is typical in these cases, the Charlotte Observer tried to get a comment from Wells Fargo, but were unsuccessful. Kind of a "f**k you from Well Fargo as they are apparently arrogant enough to figure they can do what they want with impunity.

Even if they screw up.

I hope Maier's lawsuit is successful. If somebody at Wells Fargo was too lazy to fix incorrect information and let a database error continually torture the guy with robocalls, they deserve punishment.

I've not been able to find anything on line,  in a cursory search anyway, why it is so difficult to get wrong information about oneself in some corporate database corrected.

This is how bad it gets: I was involved in a minor car accident in 2005. I was to get a small settlement from an insurance company for the damages to the car I incurred in the crash, which was the other driver's fault.

I'm still trying to collect. In 2007, I moved from the address I was at when the crash occured. Here it is seven (!!!) years later, and after repeated entreaties to get them to correct my address in their database, mail is still going to my old address.

So: Are some sectors of corporate American trying to set world records for stupidly or laziness.

You decide.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/02/10/4681657/davidson-man-sues-wells-fargo.html#.UvpdMSgx_FJ#storylink=cpy