Working at Wells Fargo — Reviews by Employees

What happend to the Link Region???

OHHHHHH WELLS F*CKIN FARGO....where do I begin. I worked for Wells Fargo Financial for 3 years, during my 3 years I earned employee of the district and employee of the region several times...I had the little cheap trophies and laminate certificates all over my desk and my cubicle. I began my career at WFF in what was then called the Manley District. My DM was Mike Manley, a sincere and honest guy that was genuinely a nice guy, after about 2 years of production and after the market crashed WFF as a company began to struggle and the slimey upper management forced Mr. Manley into retirement after 30+ years of honest hardworking commitment to a company he believed in. After he was forced out I had an opportunity to speak with him and he expressed to me how utterly disgusted he was in the company and how he cannot believe how they would turn their back on him after all those years of service. His replacement was a peice of trash named Chad Hatchel...a Spencer Prat look alike that right off the bat thought he was a hot shot and showed absolutely no respect for anyone, from not even saying hello to his employees to trying to insult and berate them into getting more production. On several occassions I was present for Chad Hatchel using intimidation techniques to scare employees into trying to close more loans...a moronic technique in every sense of the word, pitiful. This guy is a loser from the word go...went to a pathetic little liberal arts school, played division 3 football and road the pine, the way he talks you would think that he played in the NFL...clearly was ALWAYS hopped up on some sort of drug, his eyes were always glossed over and his pupils were constantly jumping around. After Hatchel came on he made several attempts to get rid of employees he didn't like because they weren't afraid of him and didn't lick his a$$...since he could not let them go because of production he did some seriously unethical things such as telling them at 5:30pm on a friday afternoon that on monday they would be moved to an office 50 miles away. When asked why he just kept repeating "so your gonna be there on monday ok?! so your there on monday ok?!" with a smirk on his face like "what are you going to do i just screwed you" basically leaving the employee no choice but to commute 500 miles a week. After a week of commuting to this black hole of an office 50 miles away for a week they told my DM that they weren't able to do this commute and if he could make a change...he told them "no i'm not doing anything or talking to the RM to get you more compensation i thought about it and this is how it is" they were forced to call HR on this f*cking tool and the HR person was outraged by his action and they were moved the next day to an office closer to their house. I worked in several offices myself... in my last office the manager there clearly had a drug habit and would sell drugs out of the back door TO OTHER STORE MANAGERS! and snort cocaine like it was going out of style, but because this guy was closing car loans he was jacked up like he was the man...good people right? laughable. THE COMPANY HAS NO ETHICS!

The upper management at WFF has absolutely no clue about REAL financial products...NONE of them have ever worked in real finance NONE OF THEM...looking at rates on the daily market is frowned upon because it shows how sad the products really are. Pushing 160% LTV car loans at 25% to 700+ fico scores is a JOKE, a credit card product WITH INCOME VERIFICATION (who has ever heard of that!) that NO ONE gets approved for and NO MORTGAGE.

When i left WFF i had at least 10 mortgages pending in FHA for over 6 months.....at that point they claimed they were changing their underwriting process and that it was going to be another few months before anything closed....8 months for a mortgage at 5 points on every deal...that is just a laughing stock. Anyone that works in the real financial world LAUGHS HYSTERICALLY at WFF. The store managers are trapped...they make pitiful money...they all know that they hate their job but constantly regurgitate what comes from morons like chad hatchel and Ryan Wall and tell the pitiful kids that they hire straight out of college that KNOW NOTHING at all about finance and are BRAIN WASHED into thinking that WFF products are actually good products...its laughable. While working at WFF i made twice my annual salary closing mortgages outside of wells fargo as a broker. While i was being told that I wasn't closing enough loans i was closing twice as many loans as ANYONE in the district...probably more than the entire district as a whole.

After leaving WFF i've found myself in a rewarding career that actually makes me feel good on a daily basis...After leaving these people that were propped up like they were incredible producers have all been fired by compliance...they were all creating income documents and producing fake mileage sheets to get auto loans approved....pitiful. The people that work at WFF sacrifice morals and ethics to keep their jobs and are forced to swallow their pride and be talked down to and constantly be in fear of getting fired...it truly is sad to look back and see the good people that worked their and how they were treated. At any other job these people would have been applauded for the hard work and dedication to the company at WFF it is never enough and you are NEVER good enough even if you are the best person in the REGION as chad hatchel put it ...the region just wasn't good that month thats why you got that award......f*cking incredible. DO NOT WORK FOR THIS COMPANY!! ITS A TELEMARKETING SCAM!!

WFF is awful

Facts
That is what I am reading here East coast -west coast all the same

As a former district manager for years witht this company I can honestly say the best business decision I ever made was to leave. Upper management is a joke and the ethics does not exist. In an industry known for lack of ethics I can say that Wells Fargo Financial is the worst of the bunch. Upper management very openly tries to lay everything they can get their hands on with the assumption females can screw their way to the top. It is a joke above the manager level where all the real deals are made behind close doors. If you chose to go into the finance world and it can be lucrative never ever consider WFF as a career move... The clowns have ran this company into the ground and refuse to admit there is no future left!!

Five true stories from my time at Wells Fargo Financial:

1) Customer and her daughter come into my branch with the sole purpose of refinancing her daughter's free and clear car in order to get cash for said daughter's wedding. I sent the car up for a refi and it was turned down because of inadequate equity.

Like the good little WFF CM that I was, I looked at their larger financial picture and noticed that refinancing their house for cash out would be the best plan for them. Unlike the majority of the other mortgages I did, this looked like a legitimately good deal. I would reduce their term and payment and give them cash out for the daughter's wedding. My customers loved this idea and I felt really good about the loan. The customers gave me one stipulation- I was not to touch their auto loan with a local credit union, as it was at 5%.

When it came time to close the loan, the closing paperwork had the auto loan with the credit union paid off. I checked my plan and the mistake was on their end, not mine. When I told my manager, I was told that the customer was to sign the loan anyways and we would issue an "in-lieu-of-check" at the end of the recision period.

If you're not familiar with the recision period because you've never sold mortgages before, the customer has three days after the closing to change their mind, after which they're basically screwed.

At the end of the recision period, the checks printed with a check to the credit union. I told my manager, who called my DM, who called the underwriters. The underwriters said something like "too bad, we told you no before the loan even closed." Thanks for telling me.

I took a very late lunch that day because I couldn't face that customer when she came in to collect her checks. I felt sick for months afterwards and prayed she would never call me nor would I run into her anywhere; I still feel awful for her.

2) Because my branch was in an undesirable location, we had trouble getting and keeping managers. We went weeks without managers. During those weeks, sometimes assistant managers from other branches would come and "help us out" under the DM's urging to "check us out and see if they wanted to work at our branch."

In English- these managers had no desire to work for our location in the middle of nowhere but would come over and use our branch in any way possible in order for them to "look good" and be "promotable" in a better store.

One particular AM, I'll call him Douche, came to visit for two weeks. Managers look better the more loans they have and given that this man wanted to be promoted, he encouraged us to send up anything and everything even if there was no chance it would be approved.

One customer I contacted via e-leads had no equity in his house, but I took an app anyways, so Douche and my DM would leave me alone. When I got his house value, I saw no room for a refi, but Douche told me that there was room, and to get the customer's documents.

Customer's documents were extremely complicated and him and I both had to run to the end of the earth and back to obtain them. Douche told me to tell the customer there "absolutely would be some way that we can help him." I asked Douche to explain to me, and he said to trust him. I told him, verbatim, "my manager says 'there is absolutely a way to help you.'" Customer was excited.

Douche leaves back to his branch and DM comes for a visit. As DM is looking through my loans, he asked me what my intentions were with that particular loan. I told DM that Douche insisted I send it up. DM asked me what the product was and I told him I didn't know, and then told him what Douche told me. DM was stern when he told me I had wasted my time as there was no equity in his car or house and he was not approved for anything. Who got in trouble? Me. I got in trouble for listening to the boss, for doing what I needed to not be reprimanded for insubordination.

I don't know if Douche was ever promoted, but I wouldn't doubt it. Slippery politics are not uncommon at WFF.

3) Not nearly as bad as the previous two, but quite indicative of the environment you work in: I witnessed my DM telling another CM to sell a customer a refi on his auto. CM refused, DM insisted, and made him pick up the phone in front of him. CM refused and DM reprimanded him. The problem? The customer had a 1% auto loan and the DM wanted him to refinance it for 18% in order to get $500 cash out. Yeah freaking right.

4) My DM once stood over me while I called a customer into the office, instructing me to tell them I had "great news" for them. I was brand new so I did as I was told. The product he wanted me to solicit was wrapping up two credit cards with three lines of credit- all at a higher rate than their existing cards. Doesn't make sense, does it? When I told that to my manager, he said I was "thinking for the customer" and that I basically had to get the customer in the office in order to keep my job; I did as I was told.

I asked the DM to show me how he would solicit this loan by allowing me to watch him sell it to my customers; it didn't work. Needless to say, my customer looked at me as if I had two heads, stifled their laughter, and left the office, sans loan. I looked like a moron.

5) A manager insisted I sell a $40,000 second to a customer who had $10,000 of equity in their house. She was to come sell it with me (because I didn't want to take the blame when it fell through) and she dilly-dallied around the office, making me 30 minutes late with my customer. She never apologized.
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If you don't mind experiences like the ones I described, you'll do well.

Wells Fargo Online. I don't have any problem or complaint in regard to my job responsibilities, I help customers and then sell to them at the end of the call. Fine! But where I really take issue is the way the organization is run from the unrealistic expectations with sales goals, QA goals, Adherence etc etc. and how impossible it is to take PTO. Daily Ops is full of lazy, overweight, angry nazis who will do anything to keep you from taking PTO. I called in sick for all the PTO I have taken this year, and guess what....I was never sick, but it's the only way to get time off and I am sure I will do it again soon. Their PTO bidding process is a joke and if too many employees complain about it, they just hand out calendars and tell us to mark the PTO days we want just to shut us up, the calendars don't serve any other purpose, daily ops never looks at them. Think twice before accepting this position, no time off, busy busy phones, almost no chance of making any real serious money, lack of respect, constant threats from management over every little thing. It's tantamount to Modern Day Slavery.

This company is the worst company to work for. I have been with them for 5 years and just recently been out on short term disability and my manager decided to put in all my PTO time so now I have to pay back 2 grand. On top of that she tells me she will need to fire me if I continue to be absent. I went to the hospital for a medical condition which is a severe medical condition. I had to call out since I went to the hospital and I was told by my doctor not to go back till I get my labs back. When I called her wed and told her I would know when I was coming back thursday. she responded so your just gonna come back whenever you want to? I explained my medical condition is serious and I perfer not to die at work. I find it to be very difficult to keep from being stressed while Im on short term disability since I have a manager who is constantly harrassing me but yet you call HR and all they can say and what do you want us to do?

I went on here to actually look at another company, and went to WFF to kind of check the sites validity...

First of all, I'm not a manager. I'm a Senior Credit Manager, which is 2 positions below the manager. Basically a glorified sales rep.

The job has its pros and cons.

CONS: base pay is about 38K a year, and commission is very difficult to get. the VCP system is not only unit tiered, it's based on loan volume too. Honestly, they need to cut some of the fat out of other areas of the company and start paying their sales professionals like PROFESSIONALS.

Having said that, the job is pretty fair. I work in the Gaydos Region in CA, my RM, DM, and Manager are all very bright and competent. They pay is about in par with the work, but again the need to ease up on the VCP guidelines a bit. 97% of the company is probably make base pay, just like they like it...

Benefits and 401K matching are actually very good, and overall its a good company. I think a lot of the negatives on here are probably just whiners. If you don't like it, get out. Promotion is no cake walk, but it is fair: you sell more, you get promoted. I haven't seen favoritism play too strong of a role here.

Pretty professional and fun environment.

Well, I wanted to rant but it looks like everyone has said what I was going to say. Pretty much I was lied to at the interview. All they care about is "solutions" My DM does not care how I get them either but if I do something unethical, it is my butt on the line. I have been depressed since the 1st week I was employed by Wells fargo. I just hope I find another job real soon. I am at the point of taking a huge decrease in pay if that is what it takes to get out of here!