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Comment by doug1001 | Hacker News Reader

isn't it also theft?

From a memo sent today to WF employees: "At Wells Fargo, when we make mistakes, we are open about it, we take responsibility, and we take action"

the sentiment expressed in that memo is difficult to reconcile with this WF memo to its customers:

We regret and take responsibility for any instances where customers may have received a product that they did not request"

that sounds like an apology if a clerk accidentally sent to a few customers a leather checkbook cover and charged them for it, even though the customer never ordered it.

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Wells Fargo's remedies are pretty much limited to firing the guilty, giving them true references, and making the list of them available to the authorities. And they say they're making their customers whole, although I'm sure it's a bit late for a lot of them.

The memo, though, yeah, if someone created an account with money taken out of an existing one, and that caused them grief, and I think we're only talking about which degree of grief....

One reason to always keep at least two banking arrangements in place at all times, so you can, if necessary loudly in the bank lobby, close all your accounts and take all your money out on a moment's notice. No doubt without the drama, my father had to do that not many years ago at a bank where the account was set up for him in the '30s, I think, back when he was a pre-teen. Or not much later.

> if necessary loudly in the bank lobby, close all your accounts and take all your money out on a moment's notice.

Wouldn't you do that on Instagram or Twitter now?

Ah, you do have a point. I'm old fashioned enough not to use either, but why not embrace the power of "and" and do both?

In the real world, your targets includes the banking staff, who's attachment to their jobs might not be all that sticky, especially bank tellers who have no influence over policy but can relatively easily move to another bank.

They are talking about new accounts in the customers name. The banker isn't stealing the money for themselves. The bankers are doing it to meet quotas

But isn't the employee still committing a felony, like some sort of fraud? Shouldn't they all go to jail, or at least pay large fines?

not keeping the money but taking it for the sole reason of financial gain (bonus tied to quotas) is close enough, it seems to me, to "stealing money for themselves"

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