Wells Fargo app and site down: what to do to claim stimulus check?
Wells Fargo customers experienced issues when checking their accounts online on Wednesday morning just as $1,400 stimulus payments were becoming available.
On Wednesday, the $1,400 direct stimulus payments made via direct deposit were set to be made available to customers at Wells Fargo and Chase. The two major banks had received criticism over the weekend for not putting the money at the disposal of customers sooner, despite the IRS stating the official payment date as 17 March. Well Fargo customers had a new gripe when they went to check their accounts this morning, service outage messages.
Starting a shortly before 9 am EDT Wells Fargo online banking and mobile app services began to experience outages across the United States. According to downdetector.com, the reported outages spiked at over 12,000 two hours later, before quickly falling as the company worked to fix the problem. Service was mostly restored by early afternoon to customers wanting to check their accounts for the stimulus payments and to perform other transactions.
Did the outage affect $1,400 stimulus check payments?
In a tweet to customers Wells Fargo said "We apologize to our customers who may be experiencing issues with our online banking this morning. This does not affect stimulus payments with a March 17 effective date which were credited to accounts today. Thanks for your patience. "
Wells Fargo is one of the biggest banks in the US and has over 32 million digital customers who use their mobile or online banking services. The company blamed the outage on a high volume of traffic as people tried to check their online banking accounts. 75% of outage reports occurred with the online banking while the mobile app represented the remainder. But no account balance outages were reported and the customers who experienced outages saw a message to let them know that they could access their accounts through ATMs, local banks and by calling customer service.
How much stimulus money has been sent?
The government was set to release the funds going to customers at Wells Fargo and other institutions at 8:30 am EDT. The Treasury Department released a statement saying that 90 million stimulus payments have been sent so far totaling more than $242 billion. Treasury says it has also mailed roughly 150,000 paper checks worth approximately $442 million.
The Treasury will be releasing more funds over the coming days in further waves of payments, with a goal of having millions of payments disbursed in the next few weeks. Roughly 160 million households or an estimated 85% of Americans are eligible for the payments.
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