Wells Fargo Bank’s annoying automated phone calls

Over the past few weeks, my son’s cell phone has been receiving dozens of unwanted phone calls — sometimes three, four or five calls daily. If he answers the phone, a recorded message tells him to contact Wells Fargo Bank about his overdrawn account. However, he doesn’t bank at Wells Fargo. If he doesn’t answer the phone, the caller doesn’t leave a message.

When I found out about this, I checked his iPhone’s log. All these calls were coming from two separate numbers, 503-403-2697 and 503-403-2686. Googling indicated that both belonged to Wells Fargo Bank.

This morning, I called back the first number. A human answered and asked me to provide my account number. When I explained that I didn’t have one, and that I was trying to find out why our number was being called, the young man asked for the mobile number. “Are you Mr. Alvarez?” he asked. “No,” I replied. He curtly said, “We’ll take your number off the list” — and hung up.

That should solve that problem, eh? Just for the heck of it, I called the second number. An automated attendant asked for my account number and then paused. I pressed 0, and that got me to a human. I explained the story to him, he looked up the cell number, and asked, “Are you Mr. Diamond?” — odd that it was a different name. I replied no, and the young man politely apologized, volunteered that perhaps Mr. Diamond had provided our number by mistake, but that he would make sure the calls stopped.

Let’s see if they actually do.