Thoughts 20 Aug 2007 03:42 pm
Wells Fargo problem
I stopped at Albertson’s a few minutes ago and deposited my paycheck in the Wells Fargo atm.
While I was standing there waiting for my receipt, I overheard one of the bank tellers telling a woman that all the branches in town were down.
The handwritten sign said that $200 was the max you could get in cash with a check deposit. I didn’t bother to read the rest.
I only pulled $100 with my deposit, so I don’t know if the limit applies to atms or just to teller assisted deposits.
A woman was talking to her friend and swearing that the bank was out of money and that it was all because of bad mortgage loans.
When I got my groceries, and paid with a debit card, there was no problem. The checker said that the bank had been down since sometime yesterday afternoon and she thought that the system had been set to approve any atm card.
I just went online and checked my account. The site seemed to be working fine, but it showed no recent atm activity on my account.
Whether this indicates that the problem is strictly local, or simply that the site feeds off whatever is in it’s database regardless of the status of the rest of the network, I can’t say. But I’d bet on the database approach.
I tried to call the bank, but I got a fast busy signal. This indicates that a machine is overloaded, not just that a single line is busy.
This is the problem with relying exclusively on computers for business.
I just found this online:
San Francisco Business Times article.
But no answers yet.