Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), the biggest U.S. home lender, agreed to pay as much as $16 million to resolve claims that the bank wouldn’t do business with deaf and hearing-impaired people using a telecommunications relay service, the Justice Department said.

Hearing and speech impaired individuals were referred to a phone line for the deaf that asked them to leave a message that went unanswered, the government said in an e-mailed statement today. Wells Fargo will pay as much as $16 million to people for violations of the American with Disabilities Act, plus a $55,000 civil penalty and a $1 million donation to charity, according to the statement.

The company will accept relay calls and take other steps to assist disabled consumers wishing to do business by phone, by computer, at branches and at automatic teller machines under the settlement.

“We are committed to serving our customers with disabilities” Richele Messick, a spokeswoman for San Francisco- based Wells Fargo, said in a phone interview.

Some of Wells Fargo’s call centers stopped accepting calls made through relay services because of fraud concerns and referred the calls to a dedicated line for the deaf, the bank said in the agreement. The bank denied it violated the disabilities act.

Wells Fargo formed a task force after customers complained about the line for the deaf and began accepting telecommunication relay calls again a year ago, before the Justice Department began its investigation, Messick said.

Wells Fargo worked on a settlement once the government opened an investigation, the Justice Department said. Other major financial institutions are refusing to communicate with disabled people who use relay services to communicate by telephone, which is discrimination, the government said. The banks should accept relay calls immediately, it said.

 

Reproduced from: Bloomberg