Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to The New Coffee Room. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
  • Pages:
  • 1
  • 2
Wells Fargo's stupid scam ...
Topic Started: Sep 10 2016, 03:08 AM (642 Views)
jon-nyc
Member Avatar
Cheers
Steve Miller
Sep 10 2016, 10:13 PM
What are we to think of bank management who let these practices
continue for 5 years without doing anything about them?
They did a lot. They fired 5300 people over the course of a few years.

In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
TomK
HOLY CARP!!!
jon-nyc
Sep 11 2016, 01:14 AM
Steve Miller
Sep 10 2016, 10:13 PM
What are we to think of bank management who let these practices
continue for 5 years without doing anything about them?
They did a lot. They fired 5300 people over the course of a few years.

One would think that this was a major ongoing internal problem for the bank. Management obviously know of the situation and I'm sure they knew it was illegal--but instead of changing the sales goals for tellers they just fired ones that were caught red handed. It just seems ridiculous.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Steve Miller
Member Avatar
Bull-Carp
jon-nyc
Sep 11 2016, 01:14 AM
Steve Miller
Sep 10 2016, 10:13 PM
What are we to think of bank management who let these practices
continue for 5 years without doing anything about them?
They did a lot. They fired 5300 people over the course of a few years.

That strategy did not work and you'd think they would have figured long before year 3.
Wag more
Bark less
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Luke's Dad
Member Avatar
Emperor Pengin
TomK
Sep 11 2016, 04:19 AM
jon-nyc
Sep 11 2016, 01:14 AM
Steve Miller
Sep 10 2016, 10:13 PM
What are we to think of bank management who let these practices
continue for 5 years without doing anything about them?
They did a lot. They fired 5300 people over the course of a few years.

One would think that this was a major ongoing internal problem for the bank. Management obviously know of the situation and I'm sure they knew it was illegal--but instead of changing the sales goals for tellers they just fired ones that were caught red handed. It just seems ridiculous.
What's wrong with sales goals?

My understanding is that it wasn't so much employees trying to keep their jobs as it was employees trying to hit that next bonus level.
The problem with having an open mind is that people keep trying to put things in it.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Luke's Dad
Member Avatar
Emperor Pengin
I still think that there should be criminal prosecution. We are talking about identity theft, here.
The problem with having an open mind is that people keep trying to put things in it.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Aqua Letifer
Member Avatar
ZOOOOOM!
Luke's Dad
Sep 11 2016, 01:24 PM
What's wrong with sales goals?
This! This thing that just happened! That's exactly what's wrong with sales goals!

But hey if that doesn't do it for you:

Posted Image

That guy. Matter of fact the entire theme of the play shows what's wrong with sales goals, they're foul.
I cite irreconcilable differences.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
TomK
HOLY CARP!!!
Luke's Dad
Sep 11 2016, 01:24 PM
TomK
Sep 11 2016, 04:19 AM
jon-nyc
Sep 11 2016, 01:14 AM
Steve Miller
Sep 10 2016, 10:13 PM
What are we to think of bank management who let these practices
continue for 5 years without doing anything about them?
They did a lot. They fired 5300 people over the course of a few years.

One would think that this was a major ongoing internal problem for the bank. Management obviously know of the situation and I'm sure they knew it was illegal--but instead of changing the sales goals for tellers they just fired ones that were caught red handed. It just seems ridiculous.
What's wrong with sales goals?

My understanding is that it wasn't so much employees trying to keep their jobs as it was employees trying to hit that next bonus level.
They have to be reasonable and do able. they have to make sense to the people trying to achieve them and to the overall organizational goals.

They can't be fluidly random as those from WF appear to be. No one in management was paying attention to the plight of the workers (you have to figure there are at least GOOD people doing bad. What kind of hell is that? when you force good people to do bad things to save their jobs?)

Edited by TomK, Sep 11 2016, 01:58 PM.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
jon-nyc
Member Avatar
Cheers
jon-nyc
Sep 10 2016, 08:36 AM
Luke's Dad
Sep 10 2016, 05:28 AM
I imagine that there's jail time ahead for some of these guys?
I doubt any of the authorities involved are interested in prosecuting bank tellers.

What's more likely is to see more jurisdictions pile on Wells Fargo for negotiated settlements. Why should Los Angeles have an exclusive? They have branches in lots and lots of states.
So far three US attorneys offices and the state of North Carolina.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/business/dealbook/wells-fargo-investigation.html?_r=1
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
George K
Member Avatar
Finally
jon-nyc
Sep 10 2016, 02:07 PM
Actually the vast majority - over 95% - of scam accounts didn't even have fees associated with them. For the most part the employees tried not to affect the customer at all. They didn't want the customer to notice.

They were scamming their employer.
Today's WSJ says that Wells Fargo did not benefit.

Quote:
 
It (Wells Fargo) rewarded employees for signing customers to new accounts, so some employees—in pursuit of bonuses or job security—created fake accounts or signed up customers for credit cards they didn’t authorize.

The funny thing is, Wells Fargo itself gained nothing from this. In most cases, when a fee appeared on their statement for a service they never authorized, customers rejected it. Wells Fargo bore the personnel and paperwork cost of opening the account and then the personnel and paperwork cost of closing it. The employee got a paycheck, possibly a bonus. Wells Fargo got nothing but additional costs.
...
The big difference here is that Wells Fargo was defrauding itself—via incentives it gave its own employees to treat Wells Fargo the way many companies treat their customers.

No, a solution to this latest banking scandal is not more regulation—as if making what’s already illegal more illegal will stop it from happening. (Notice, it doesn’t work with murder.) As numerous media reports make clear, the bank’s sales force consisted of workers making less than $12 an hour. Many were obviously there for a paycheck and benefits, not a career, which perhaps made cheating to meet a sales quota seem a reasonable trade-off.

All companies operate on incentives and systems that are not perfect. Comcast means for its “retention specialists” to win back irate customers, not bully them in ways that end up on YouTube. Yet it happens.

The media and politicians also operate on systems of incentives: See the pundits who, confronted with the Wells Fargo snafu and the need to fill space or airtime, run out formulaic demands for resignations and regulation that they run out with every corporate scandal. See Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in Tuesday’s hearing, in Trump-like fashion distorting the nature of the Wells Fargo scandal as if truth and logic don’t matter.

Mr. Stumpf, in his mea culpa on Capitol Hill, correctly apologized for not moving more quickly but also correctly insisted there was “no orchestrated effort or scheme” to encourage sales practices that only hurt the bank. Though two million possibly unauthorized accounts over five years sounds like a lot, remember, this is a company with 8,000-plus branches and 268,000 employees, whose customers hold hundreds of millions of accounts of various kinds.

Unfortunately the problem with any incentive system is that it can be gamed—people cheat. Wells Fargo is not the first and won’t be the last organization to struggle to patch the in-built cognitive biases in its systems that invite employees to act in ways that serve their interests but not Wells Fargo’s.
A guide to GKSR: Click

"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... "
- Mik, 6/14/08


Nothing is as effective as homeopathy.

I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles.
- Klaus, 4/29/18
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Horace
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
That's just an opinion piece. An apologist one at that. And this is just absurd:

Quote:
 
The funny thing is, Wells Fargo itself gained nothing from this. In most cases, when a fee appeared on their statement for a service they never authorized, customers rejected it.


So, after 5 million of these frauds, "most" of which customers caught immediately and reported, it was still a practice in the institution?

How dumb is Wells Fargo supposed to be, anyway?

I wonder how many degrees of separation that apologist has from bank money.
As a good person, I implore you to do as I, a good person, do. Be good. Do NOT be bad. If you see bad, end bad. End it in yourself, and end it in others. By any means necessary, the good must conquer the bad. Good people know this. Do you know this? Are you good?
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
jon-nyc
Member Avatar
Cheers
There were 2MM fake accounts and well over 95% were not fee generating.

The bank has nothing to gain from fake accounts that customers don't even know they have. The individuals who gain are those who are compensated based on how many accounts they open.

I really don't see why this situation is so hard for people to understand. It's such a straightforward, almost boringly predictable display of human primates responding to incentives.

Actually, that's not true. I do understand. People have a good vs evil heuristic through which they see most human events and bank execs fit squarely on the evil side. They simply *must* have orchestrated this, because they are bank execs, and bank execs are evil.
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Horace
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
jon-nyc
Sep 22 2016, 12:41 AM
There were 2MM fake accounts and well over 95% were not fee generating.

The bank has nothing to gain from fake accounts that customers don't even know they have. The individuals who gain are those who are compensated based on how many accounts they open.

I really don't see why this situation is so hard for people to understand. It's such a straightforward, almost boringly predictable display of human primates responding to incentives.

Actually, that's not true. I do understand. People have a good vs evil heuristic through which they see most human events and bank execs fit squarely on the evil side. They simply *must* have orchestrated this, because they are bank execs, and bank execs are evil.
Oh, well played. But then again you gravitated to what you gravitated to.
As a good person, I implore you to do as I, a good person, do. Be good. Do NOT be bad. If you see bad, end bad. End it in yourself, and end it in others. By any means necessary, the good must conquer the bad. Good people know this. Do you know this? Are you good?
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Horace
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
Jon will never talk about money. I remember the thing so far back where he was just a boy-nyc. Obviously not capitalized, just like jon. But he accidentally let slip that he didn't consider it an important amount of money to buy a Bosie. While also accidentally making it his avatar.
As a good person, I implore you to do as I, a good person, do. Be good. Do NOT be bad. If you see bad, end bad. End it in yourself, and end it in others. By any means necessary, the good must conquer the bad. Good people know this. Do you know this? Are you good?
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
jon-nyc
Member Avatar
Cheers
I think you need to confront two facts in order to maintain the belief that this was orchestrated by C-level execs of the bank:

1). The bank has no incentive to open dummy accounts that don't bear fees and won't be used, since the customers don't even know they exist

2). If this *was* orchestrated, yet management still fired 5,300 employees for essentially doing as they were told, why couldn't the CFPB or the LA district attorney get any of them to talk? Share a memo? Anything?


Of course, if that's too hard you could always just resort to ad hominem arguments against me.
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Horace
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
jon will never talk about his money and where it comes from. I'm not sure where my money comes from but I believe it comes from a good place. I hope he believes the same. I'm not sure he could believe that quantitatively.
As a good person, I implore you to do as I, a good person, do. Be good. Do NOT be bad. If you see bad, end bad. End it in yourself, and end it in others. By any means necessary, the good must conquer the bad. Good people know this. Do you know this? Are you good?
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Aqua Letifer
Member Avatar
ZOOOOOM!
Horace
Sep 22 2016, 01:56 AM
jon will never talk about his money and where it comes from.
Mysterious.

I personally couldn't give a crap. Jon's awesome to share beers with and that's good enough for me.

As to this issue, I don't know if this meets the definition of fraud but the triangle test seems pretty clear here. Opportunity and rationalization seem like slam dunks.
I cite irreconcilable differences.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Create your own social network with a free forum.
Learn More · Register for Free
« Previous Topic · The New Coffee Room · Next Topic »
Add Reply
  • Pages:
  • 1
  • 2