Wells Fargo outage stokes customer fears over account balances, security

RICHMOND, VA (WWBT) - Wells Fargo said it was a power shutdown that lead to the system issues, but many customers are growing worried that they can’t keep track of their money.

Since Thursday, Wells Fargo’s online and mobile banking services has experienced widespread outages, so customers weren’t able to retrieve account info - leading to worries and frustration.

“I logged into the app and it turns out that my credit card account is temporarily unavailable," Wells Fargo customer Tyler Nguyen said, adding, "I want to see how much I’m spending. I don’t want to overspend, and I also want to see if I have room to spend.”

Friday, the bank indicated service had returned, but customers were left unable to access accounts without warning for more than a day.

The outage wasn’t just limited to online banking. Customers reported direct deposits were not appearing in their accounts.

In a tweet, Wells Fargo said the cause was a power shutdown at one facility after smoke was detected after routing maintenance.

In a later tweet, the company assured customers that the outage was not from hackers, saying that “this is a contained issue affecting one of our facilities, and not due to any cybersecurity event."

Things appeared to have been improving as some customers at the East Grace Street branch say they haven’t experienced issues at all this week.

“Couple people said something, they had problems accessing their account like that, so I came in here to make sure everything was legit. And I came in, everything was legit on my part," Thomas Haynesworth said.

As of Friday evening, a Wells Fargo rep said the direct deposit issue should have been resolved with transactions going normally.

She said branches will be open one hour longer Friday and Saturday.

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