Wells Fargo Steals $50 from My 2-Year-Old Son

I have been a Wells Fargo Bank customer for a long time, and when my son was a year old, I opened a savings account for him and deposited $50. Normally, savings accounts have a minimum threshold ($300 for Wells Fargo), otherwise fees are applied. I was told that since this was a minor account, no fees would apply.

Internally, the way Wells Fargo does this is to apply a fee waiver to the account, so that no fees are applied and deducted from the account. They failed to do this on this account (and they have acknowledged this). The account was opened in September of 2003. Fees were deducted every month, and so by September 2004, there was no money left in the account.

As the account only earned .25% interest, I simply deposited the money and thought no further about it. I didn't bother to look at the statements until recently, when I was going to make another deposit. The bank never sent me any notice that there was no money left in the account and that they were closing the account. When I contacted the bank recently, I asked them to restore the $50 plus the interest accrued since September 2003. They told me that, although the error was theirs, I had not contacted them within 60 days of the error, and so they would not restore the money to the account. They told me the 60 day rule was in the paperwork they gave me when I opened the account (really, who reads all the fine print on these sorts of things?). However, as this is the bank's error, why should this limitation apply?

I am now in the process of contacting the Los Angeles media to generate a story about this. I'll keep you posted on my progress.