I have one remaining Wells checking account, and look forward to moving it out of there. The hold up is that we are currently nomads living in our Motorhome, and won't be settling into a permanent nw address until spring. Consequently, I was doing an online change of address to divert my mail from the home we sold a few weeks back. As I completed the transaction, I was prompted to acknowledge the TWO accounts in my name, one of which was a brokerage account that I closed in 2010. Given all the account scam activity that has come to light recently, I though this was interesting, and wondered if the account was kept "alive" without any money in it, so that my old "investment advisor" or his department, could count it in their performance ratings?
This is where it got interesting. Customer service could acknowledge that the account was still active, but had a zero balance. They couldn't touch it, and that was the first of several employees who used the language of "removing the account from my online screen". which IMHO, is a bit different than closing the account. I then went through several transfers to different departments, and finally to the brokerage department. At that point I could hear the rep. as she was mumbling about being locked out, and unable to delete it. Eventually, she agreed to research the situation and call me back, once she succeeded. When she returned the call, she told me that she had "removed it from my screen" which I responded to by asking her to confirm that the account is closed, and not simply removed from my view. She then confirmed that the account no longer existed.
The whole situation was interesting, convoluted, and really kind of pathetic. Four employees, and a return call, to get them to remove a dead account that should of been removed years ago.
