Grand theft once again. Will anyone go to the jail for white collar people?
"Codel, who reports to new CEO Tim Sloan, said disclosing the auto insurance findings several months ago would have made dealing with customers’ complaints more difficult, since they were still working on a remedy."
“When we go public, customers start calling, wanting to know, ‘Hey, I had that, where is my money?’" he said. “It’s hard to say to them, ‘Well, we’ll get to you in four months.’”
I guess it's easier to steal from them.To be fair, no one has been found guilty of criminal acts so far.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-28/wells-fargo-does-it-again-this-time-with-unwanted-car-policies
"Grand theft once again"
In just glancing at the press coverage and without knowing what was in the loan terms, it seems to me this may be more in the category of a mistake than a crime.
Yes--intentions or lack thereof are hard to prove. Millions upon millions of dollars in mistakes that benefitted the account of Wells Fargo, repeatedly, is something peculiar, though.
I do think "fraud" exists in the sense the a company will deliberately misstate the scope of work done or services provided in order to charge more than is warranted under a contract. In fact, I am reasonably sure I have been a victim of such a practice recently.
However, in the case of large public corporations, much of what happens is simply human error, a failure to develop adequate systems to minimize the chances of the customer being overcharged, and inadequate quality control checks. On the other hand, in some amazing way, companies tend to more effective in ensuring they do not undercharge. Quite extraordinary.
When I was growing up my family and most of our neighbors shopped at a Mom and Pop store where the owner's wife was a charming and very friendly lady. People loved her but thought she was not too smart since she frequently made errors with change.
I tested this out and found it to be true. Interestingly, all the errors were in her favor. Of course, that is does not imply "bad intentions."
Mistakes: Several years ago when supermarkets were investigated for overcharging their customers at the checkout line when items were sometimes scanned at higher prices than were listed on the products, the markets said it was scanner mistakes caused by errors in programming. Yet the wrong prices scanned almost always benefitted the markets and not the consumers. I guess if one is going to make mistakes, it is only reasonable that one should error to the benefit of one's employer, if one wants to keep one's job, but in the long run, maybe not.
Oh, and I do think all of us have been victimized by being overcharged or charged more than we in good faith bargained for. And in most cases where a mistake or error has occurred, it is usually, I would bet, to the detriment of the consumer, with the possible exception of an ATM machine gone wild that keeps spitting out thousands of dollars of paper money, which is quite rare. And in such a case, the company and consumer recognize the error quickly.