Wells Fargo Insurance Settlement

"Looks like I got myself an auto insurance policy on these here cows!"

​When you work in the insurance business you learn a lot about different banks and how they treat their customers. Some are great, some not so much. One bank recently made headlines because they settled a class action lawsuit for placing insurance for customers without properly notifying them. That bank was Wells Fargo and they just paid 386 Million dollars according to Reuters! That’s a lot of money folks! You can read the story here: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wells-fargo-settlement-idUSKCN1T81RM They also denied any wrong doing according to the article. So, I guess that means I'm not admitting to any wrong information in this article either.
What does this settlement really mean, what did the bank do that was so bad?  Here’s the way I’m thinking things went down and how people ended up with auto insurance policies they didn't ask for.
You go to a auto dealership looking for a new car. You find yourself a car you like. The dealership and you negotiate a price to buy the car for. Then the finance department goes to work. They run your credit, they figure out what loan rate you are most likely to get. They tell you the monthly payments and if you agree you roll off the lot with a new to you car. Now, when the finance department tells you what you are going to be paying it is based off them selling the loan to a bank. The buyer of the car doesn’t always know what bank the loan will be placed with. So, when people call to add a car to their insurance policy they don’t always know what bank has the loan. I always advise people to let me know who the bank is when they find out. They don’t always call back until they get a letter from the bank stating they need proof of insurance.
If the person disregarded the letter because they had already notified their auto insurance company, the bank may force place insurance even though they didn't need it. Meaning without your consent they added an insurance policy for you. I’m assuming Wells Fargo did a similar thing. It sounds like Wells Fargo was pretty quick to add the insurance and were not great about notifying the customers they were paying for insurance as part of their payment. So, there were a lot of people who were double insured. Some people may not have noticed the increase and paid even though they had their own insurance the entire time.
From my experience Well Fargo was one of the worst banks to deal with. One insurance company that I worked for would send a notice to Wells Fargo that stated “the insurance is continuous unless we notify you that it has cancelled”. But, that was never sufficient for Wells Fargo, they for whatever reason couldn’t put that into their system. This lead to a lot of wasted time at every renewal where we had to manually notify the bank. I had Wells Fargo’s 800 number saved because I used it so often.  It was a terrible customer experience on both ends. My customers were mad at me because they didn’t think I was doing my job. I had to explain to them how we worked. I then had to get on the phone with the bank and make sure they were straightened out. Usually, I had to fax proof over to them.
It’s an unfortunate thing that happened. This settlement will hopefully pay people back for the extra charges they incurred. I'm going on the record here asking for my cut of the money for all my wasted hours on the phone with them. Think I have a chance at getting anything? Oh, and their home insurance verification system was just as bad FYI. If you’d like to waste a few minutes to get a quote for your auto insurance give me a call at 951-395-0754