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History of Wells Fargo Bonus Payouts
Wells Fargo has a long history of offering checking account bonuses. Have you participated in a past Wells Fargo checking promotion? If you have, did they pay the the bonus as promised? Please take my poll to answer this question.
Since Wells Fargo continues to come out with new promotions, I decided it would be useful to have a poll for readers who have participated in past Wells Fargo promotions. It asks if the bank has paid the bonus as promised. If they did pay, did you have to call or visit a branch to get the bank to pay? If they didn’t pay, was it the bank’s fault for not paying (You think you should have been paid since you met all of the bonus requirements.)
The results of this poll should help readers decide if current and future Wells Fargo checking promotions are worthwhile. If many people report not receiving the bonus, you might not want to waste your time on the promotion. It’s common for readers to leave comments when the banks didn’t pay, but it’s less likely for those who did receive the bonus to comment. Hopefully, the poll will encourage both sides to respond.
The new Wells Fargo checking account promotions do have requirements like debit card purchases. If the customer fails to meet these requirements within 60 days of when the account was opened, no bonus will paid. Some past promotions had very little requirements, and there were still reports of customers not receiving a bonus. One DA reader described his problems in a comment. Here’s an excerpt:
I tried this $50 bonus deal. After 4 months of no bonus (accruing ridiculous service fees), several phone calls to the specific customer service rep who created my account, and additional calls to the "Exec Office" I was never given the $50 bonus. They claimed I had exceeded the 45 day window to notify them if I didn't get the bonus. The fact that I had called 6 times (most assuredly at least once within that window) didn't seem to matter.
Even if you receive the bonus at Wells Fargo, you may not come out ahead in the long run. You have to be careful that you avoid monthly service fees.
Bank Bonuses
To view polls of other banks’ reputations with honoring bonuses, please refer to this list of bank promotion polls. These include banks like Chase and Bank of the West.
You can view my latest bank bonus blog posts in this bank bonus page. I and DepositAccounts.com readers often post on bonuses in the bank deals forum.
About 2 years later, I noticed on one of my online (paperless) statements--in fine print--that a monthly fee was about to be charged starting the next month. In order to avoid the fee, I needed to confirm that I was still attending college.
To sum things up, I decided to dump the WF account since I was a little gun-shy over the small print fee disclosure that I almost missed. I will NOT pay a fee for checking when several credit unions around here offer FREE checking.
Then, to top things off, I was always getting phone calls and emails from WF offering me "deals" and "special offers" for things I didn't want or need. It was annoying. But, one email asked me to complete one or more online bill payments for a credit of $10. I figured, "sure, I'll do that." After 90 days, I still never received the credit for having done the bill pays, and that was the last straw. I called WF and they said they had no record of the bill payment offer, but I had a print out of the email offer and the URL was legit, so I figured WF was not meeting their end of the bargain.
So, I dumped WF. Too many fees for EVERYTHING and you have to keep both eyes open ALWAYS to make sure they don't hit you with some hidden fee. NO THANK YOU, WELLS FARGO. Done with you forever!