Fire causes Wells Fargo banking customers to lose access to accounts
Exterior of the Wells Fargo bank on November 16, 2018 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Lisa Lake/Getty Images for Wells Fargo)
LOS ANGELES (FOX 11) - Wells Fargo customers experienced issues with accessing online or mobile banking as well as other banking services nationwide, after a fire happened at one of the bank's data centers.
Wells Fargo on Thursday blamed the technical issues on smoke, which was "detected following routine maintenance."
"We’re experiencing system issues due to a power shutdown at one of our facilities, initiated after smoke was detected following routine maintenance," the company wrote on Twitter. "We’re working to restore services as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience."
It was unknown how many Wells Fargo customers have been impacted, but the fire at the unspecified location has caused reported outages to Wells Fargo's mobile banking app as well as its online banking portal.
CNBC reported that the incident happened at a data center in Minnesota at around 5 a.m. CST and was under control starting at 9 a.m.
Twitter complaints about Wells Fargo being down were nationwide, particularly in the parts of the country where Wells has a large presence, like the South, California and the East Coast.
San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, the nation's third-largest bank, can't seem to catch a break when it comes to its customer service issues over the last few years.
The bank has been plagued with scandals over its sales practices, attaching insurance contracts to auto loans that did not need it, and putting homes into foreclosure where it shouldn't have happened.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.