Comments on: Wells Fargo “closed” my PMA account

By: indexfundfan

indexfundfan — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:34:41 +0000

I don’t think Billpay is what’s causing the PMA checking account to be flagged as dormant. Rather, billpay requires a funding account, and if the funding account becomes dormant, billpay triggers an email to be sent to the client. This is actually good because then you will at least get notice that the account is dormant and take appropriate actions.

By: Nicky

Nicky — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 05:45:43 +0000

I opened my account in Feb, have only had 1 transaction, that was a debit card purchase in March nothing since then, I’m in NYC so no branches here, I love this account, I’ve made good use of the free trades, I’ve used half of mine up already, I don’t care that they don’t have streaming quotes, I get my quotes from Scottrade, I transfered everything from Scottrade to Wellstrade, but thankfully I can still log into my Scottrade account, even though it’s at a $0 balance, I hope Wells Fargo doesn’t close my checking account, I don’t believe I signed up for billpay, I never even ordered checks, all I care about is the brokerage account, I don’t even know my PIN # to my card, I made a purchase using the credit option, rather then entering a PIN, lets see what happen come 2/09, One thing that I dislike is that it will not let you set stop limit sell orders for stocks under $5, besides that this is the perfect account, already saved $350 in commissions for the year and counting.

By: jd

jd — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:28:22 +0000

How interesting! I got the exact same message you did with the same date etc. I never use my PMA checking account as there is no WF in my state, although I have on occasion ACH’d money to the account.

I called them yesterday, got a very nice ‘banker’ CSR who said he would reactivate the account, said it would take a few days to show up online and was very nice. I also told the CSR that I do not remember ever signing up for billpay as I knew I would not use the account for that purpose and asked him to cancel the billpay. I did receive a message today cancelling the billpay. Hopefully, that did not cancel the whole account. I guess we’ll see if it does show up in a few days. As I don’t believe in check cards, I will not use my card (where ever it may be), so what I’ll probably do is write myself a check every month or so for $1.00.

By: indexfundfan

indexfundfan — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:07:15 +0000

Updated 8/6/08. Account is re-activated.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:24:40 +0000

Yes I actually looked into TradeKing a while a go. According to them they started implementing specific trade under “MaxIt” a few month ago. However it does not show up on their default page. See my post to ask this question in their forums (scroll to the last post for information from TradeKing staff):

http://community.tradeking.com/forum/topics/324/forum_posts

The process seems rather convoluted and at the end of the year I’m not sure how well the tax information is prepared if you start doing specific lots. According to everything I’ve read Fidelity has the best system however their trades are more expensive ($10.95 for $50,000+ account or $8 if you have $1mil)

I hope the Wells Fargo thing gets resolved because you can’t beat free trades. I’m on the East Coast and there aren’t any branches near me. If it’s not resolved I may just go with Fidelity for the superior service since I trade once a month tops

By: indexfundfan

indexfundfan — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 20:15:57 +0000

dimension, thanks for your comments. Actually if this does not work out, I am looking at TradeKing which I believe provide specific tax lot tracking. Also, they give a sign-up bonus and/or will reimburse your transfer out fees from Wells Fargo (taxable account only). Their trading fee is $4.95.

By: dimension

dimension — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:58:48 +0000

i have a pma account too and i worry now if i will run into the same problem.
however, what i wanted to say is WF has the worst trading platform and execution efficiency i have ever seen. u have to load a couple pages in order to check your share price, see charts, and make transactions. i told WF the problems and they said they were going to re-design a month ago but i still see nothing. i guess if nothing changes within this year, i will use other service at the next tax year.

By: indexfundfan

indexfundfan — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:46:00 +0000

Updated on 8/25/08.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:56:28 +0000

I wonder what types of transactions are sufficient to keep the account open. For example, would it be sufficient to make a small transfer from brokerage to checking (then back to brokerage)?

Also, I wonder if this is somehow related to BillPay. I haven’t touched my PMA checking account since it was opened over a year ago, and it hasn’t been closed yet. I don’t use BillPay, and it seems that most of the people getting their account closed have been using BillPay.

By: indexfundfan

indexfundfan — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:58:14 +0000

Yucks.

I hope my account will be re-activated tomorrow.

By: thad

thad — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:02:44 +0000

Yes, I have (3) transactions EVERY month, but they don’t count as “external” activity, maybe because they are all electronic, with no action required on my part? If you use the bill-payer, and log on each month to enter the payment, that might be sufficient, but if its an auto-payment that is the exact same every month, maybe not. Either way, I think it’s a bit of a crock - I don’t know why they can’t count accessing the account online as activity - I do that every month to download the electronic statements, and it’s easy enough for them to verify.

By: indexfundfan

indexfundfan — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:36:32 +0000

Thad, are you saying that you have three transactions on a WF account every month and yet they de-activate it? If so my plan to generate activity using their billpay service in future would probably also fail.

Maybe WF decided to crack down on all the people who are using their free trade program for free. I might have to start looking elsewhere soon.

By: thad

thad — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:14:02 +0000

I don’t have the PMA account, but have run into the same trouble with Wells Fargo. Just recently, they shut my account down/inactivated it because I didn’t have “activity”, even though I have 2 monthly direct deposits to the account and 1 monthly debit to my student loans thru WF. Apparently that isn’t enough, and I need to either write a check or change my address - even though I haven’t moved, but that is sufficient to keep it open. They also gave me the option to visit a local branch, even though there are NO branches near me - closest is probably a 3 hour drive. I also ran into trouble just talking with the CSR - apparently they’ve set up my account with a phone password, and will not let me talk about certain things without the password - even though I didn’t establish the password, have no clue what it could be, and can easily verify any questions about my identity or the account. All in all, a whole lot of BS to deal with just to get a 0.25% discount on my student loan interest rate. I even have my mortgage with them, but they don’t give a discount for that, so I autopay that through my other bank.

All told, though, my dealings with WF on this make me very hesitant to even consider trying the PMA package to get the free trades. Good luck with your re-opening of your account. I’m going to make a note in my calendar to transfer some cash from ING or write a check every few months to avoid this problem the next time.