Wells sparks more social media anger after second glitch in two weeks

For the second time in two weeks, Wells Fargo finds itself at the center of social media fury after customers reported being locked out of their accounts.

Some Wells Fargo customers on social media Thursday afternoon expressed frustration with not being able to log in to accounts digitally. The San Francisco bank responded in a tweet acknowledging the problem.

We apologize to our customers who may be experiencing intermittent issues navigating within Online Banking and Mobile. Thanks for your patience while we research this issue. If you are impacted, please check back here for updates.

— Wells Fargo (@Ask_WellsFargo) February 22, 2018

It was the bank's only tweet since last week, when it apologized for an incident in which customers could not see their online deposits in their account. Even after the bank claimed to have fixed that problem, customers said they were still having trouble.

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Providing social media updates that inform customers while not patronizing them is somewhat of a delicate balance for banks. TD Bank this week also was in the middle of a social media firestorm when its long-planned update to its online and mobile banking systems had run into technical difficulties, with many customer unable to access their accounts.

Managing public relations around technical difficulties remains a struggle for many banks.

“Reputational risk has to be treated with the same urgency as, say, credit risk or fraud risk and, candidly, it just isn’t yet in most cases,” said Sam Kilmer, senior director of Cornerstone Advisors, in a previous interview with American Banker.”

Wells Fargo customers ran into another glitch in January, a double-billing snafu that the bank said was caused by an “internal processing error.”

Wells Fargo said in a statement that it had resolved the problem. "A few customers may experience residual issues through this evening, and we apologize for the inconvenience," a spokesperson said.