I went to my local branch of Wells Fargo in Southwest Washington State, Clark County today to withdraw a sum of cash. I was told that the bank could only give me $2000.00 in cash and that I would have to wait until next week in order to receive the amount I requested to withdraw. I was told that they rarely issue "large" amounts of cash. The large amount is not even one tenth of my savings. Is Wells Fargo in financial trouble? I actually believe I was lied to. I am sure that the amount I asked for I was not making a "run" on the bank. Can anyone tell me why a bank would not give a depositor their money?

You didn't say how much you tried to withdraw, but there may be several senerios:

If it is not a large branch, they may have limited cash supplies at that location.

It might be a temporary situation where they had a number of large withdrawal this week and they are waiting for their next cash shipment from the Federal Reserve.

I don't think you have to worry about Wells Fargo. This is not that unusual. Many banks request that customers give them advance notice when they want to withdraw large sums of cash. If the bank has all that cash just sitting in their vaults, they can't make any money.

Banks also have to balance their customers' withdrawal needs against the security risk involved in keeping larger sums at their offices.

Our bank states that customers withdrawing large somes of money from interest bearing accounts (except for CD's) give us 7 days notice. This way we can be sure that we have the cash on hand.

As has already been said, there are any number of different reasons why this might have happened, but rest assured it is not because Wells Fargo is in danger of failing.

If Wells really was close to failure, they would be talking to other banks about a buyout, and a situation that huge would be hard to keep quiet. Wells is big enough for the federal government to step in and not let a failure happen. The risk the impact to the federal deposit insurance fund would be too great.

As has already been suggested the branch simply may not keep very much cash on hand and needs to limit how much it pays out to any one person in order to make sure there is enough to go around for all its customers. There are other reasons, but I think this is probably the most likely.

Finally, we don't know how much cash you requested, but as a rule, there are very few good reasons why someone has to have a large amount of cash in their pockets. (Before anyone gets offended, please notice that I didn't say there are "no good reasons," I said there are "very few good reasons.")

I have not heard good things about Wells Fargo, but they are definately not in financial trouble. They may not have wanted to fill out necessary paper work, or their tellers may not have known the rules or been comfortable couting that much money back. It's just a personal opinion of mine, but that is because I personally don't like Wells Fargo. This opinion is only based on the things I've heard. If anyone can change my mind, please do so.
Also, Wells Fargo has a ton of small branches, so it is most likely they really didn't have the large of a cash supply. Most branches only supply a small portion of their customers.

Saphire - it is not really our job to change your mind about wells fargo. But someone having poor customer service is not the same as being in financial trouble. Sorry if you have had a bad experience with them. It has been my experience that the larger the institution, the worse the customer service.

Sorry, Dave, I think you've had too many late nights. Fifth Third's P/E is higher than Wells'. And their low efficiency ratio means that there just isn't much if any fat to cut there. I don't think there's a way to make it pay.

Fifth-Third would be a difficult purchase for anybody, because of these factors.

So we shouldn't buy 5th Third? I thought that the name, First Fifth Third National would be kind of cool

Wells fargo is far from unstable or in financial trouble. Furthermore, Wells would buy 5/3, not the other way around. WF is hitting it' profit goals. 5/3 is not.

First let me say that I don't work for Wells Fargo and that I have banked with them for many years. Like any financial insitution they will make a mistake from time to time like we all do. But I have always felt that my dealing with them have been very good and responsive.