Wells Fargo

Recently, Wells Fargo has been caught stealing millions of dollars by falsely submitting loan applications without customer’s consent.

How does one continue in business after such fraudulent behavior?

Consumers don’t know.

Consumers don’t care to know.

The story you tell yourself, once you have been informed, is that “everyone does this”. Or perhaps, “it’s not a big deal.”

I think these are symptoms of a bigger problem. The deeper rooted problem in our culture is that once we have already made a decision about which bank to use, we don’t want to make it again.

Cognitive load is so high that it is harder for me to switch banks than it is to accept that my bank is doing some deceptive.

We’re locked in.

So, we justify our original decision. Because by switching banks, we would be signaling that we made a wrong decision. That is very hard to overcome. We rather stick with things we know, rather take a chance somewhere else.

As they say, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”