Wells Fargo Robocalls Lawsuit Allege Bank Continues Calls to Mistaken Phone Number

A woman tired of Wells Fargo robocalls has filed a proposed class action lawsuit against the financial institution.

Plaintiff Lisa B. says that in 2016, she began receiving Wells Fargo robocalls on her cell phone. She says the calls were made on Oct. 22, 2016, Oct. 26, 2016 and July 3, 2017, and possibly other days, and indicated they were from different phone numbers each time.

Wells Fargo was allegedly calling for a man named Richard, who allegedly had done business with the bank. Lisa says she does not know anyone named Richard, and she told Wells Fargo they had the wrong number and to quit calling her cell phone.

When the Wells Fargo robocalls continued, Lisa says she visited a local Wells Fargo branch in mid-2016 to tell the bank’s representatives in person that she wanted the calls to stop.

Lisa says she has never been a Wells Fargo customer, and there is no reason the company should be calling her.

Wells Fargo Robocalls Violate TCPA

According to Lisa’s lawsuit, “Wells Fargo has long acknowledged that it makes calls to non-customers’ cellular telephone numbers using an automatic telephone dialing system and a prerecorded voice message.”

The Wells Fargo robocalls lawsuit alleges the bank makes tens of thousands of automatically dialed calls to cell phones without the express consent of consumers they are reaching, in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

The TCPA prohibits companies from making calls using an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice. Wells Fargo allegedly uses both, repeatedly contacting the cell phone numbers of consumers who have never even been the bank’s customers.

The Wells Fargo robocalls lawsuit is one of the first to capitalize on a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that extended the definition of automatically dialed phone calls to include equipment that dials phone numbers automatically from a stored list. In the past, automatically dialed phone systems covered by the definition included mass phone dialing to random numbers.

The lawsuit alleges that not only do the calls generate from a stored list, but also leave prerecorded messages on non-customers’ cell phones, which itself is a violation of the TCPA.

Wells Fargo allegedly uses the Aspect dialing system, a predictive dialer that uses an automatic phone dialing system that uses stored phone numbers from a database to make outgoing calls. If a live Wells Fargo call center representative is unable to handle the outgoing Aspect call, the Aspect system plays a prerecorded message.

In the event a Wells Fargo call center representative is able to field the outgoing call by Aspect, the Aspect system automatically connects an available call center agent with a successfully completed outbound call.

Because of the alleged ongoing TCPA violations, the Wells Fargo robocalls lawsuit seeks the maximum penalty of $1,500 per phone call.

Wells Fargo has been embroiled in a number of lawsuits recently, most notoriously the Wells Fargo fake bank account scandal.

The Wells Fargo Robocalls Lawsuit is Case no. 3:18-cv-06520-EDL in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Join a Free Wells Fargo Unwanted Cell Phone Calls Class Action Lawsuit Investigation

If you received an unwanted cell phone call from Wells Fargo, even though you have no prior affiliation with that bank, you may qualify to join a Wells Fargo unwanted cell phone calls class action investigation.

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