Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines • Hacker News Board

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#131

Post by madamelic » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

ianamartin wrote: post #116

ericcholis wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple[1] is pretty close. Create "Goals" for any amount and time period, Save $X by Y Date . Simple automatically allocates money to your Goals from your Available Balance daily, every friday, or any other schedule. They show you a "Safe to Spend" balance which is your Available Balance minus your total Goals. You can associate a Goal with a spending category, say Groceries, and have all transactions marked Grocerie…

I was a Simple customer from when they were still in beta, and I really loved them and talked a fair number of people into opening accounts with them over the years. Things went really downhill after a while. Moving physical addresses was a total shitshow. It involved them snail-mailing two verification codes. One to the current address and one to the new address. And you had to be able to collect them both and get t…

You didn't even mention when cards didn't work for three days for "maintenance"

Surprisingly I grinned and bared it until I decided the world wasn't ready for life without checks, unfortunately.

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#132

Post by madamelic » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:05 PM UTC

bombledmonk wrote: post #110

Someone1234 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that require giving them your banking online login details?

There's yet another thing that's needed industry wide. Oauth or similar concept with read only access to a data api.

plaid.com

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#133

Post by wmeredith » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:05 PM UTC

vinhboy wrote: post #2

It's hard for me think of wellsfargo as an "evil" company, because every time I had to go into the branch, they have some of the nicest tellers and it's always a pleasant experience.

I don't know how to say this without sounding condescending, but you basically just need to think harder or perhaps more critically. This is like saying you can't wrap your head around global warming because it's cold un your backyard or that you can't believe the earth is round because the ground in front of you seems so flat.

We must open our minds to larger concepts. This sort of small-mindedness is responsible for the worst part of the human condition.

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#134

Post by sol_remmy » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:05 PM UTC

Where are the proceeds of the fine going?

This "fine" should be returned to the American people and not used to fund obscure government programs

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#135

Post by manishsharan » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:05 PM UTC

heurist wrote: post #38

aphextron wrote: post #4

Something has happened to big banks along the way, where they no longer actually provide banking services to their customers. When I walk into a Wells Fargo branch now and sit down with a "banker" to take care of my accounts, it consists of sitting next to them while they call 1-800-WELLSFARGO for me and talk to a call center. There simply is no service anymore. I walked into my local branch to open up an IRA last we…

It's definitely an industry ripe for rebirth. For instance, I should be able to partition my money into several lightweight accounts - one for groceries, one for home expenses, investment, etc - and automatically have fractions of my deposits sent to those accounts so my budgeting and money management are handled without any effort on my part. I should have lightweight cards available for each of those accounts with…

I work for a large bank and can offer a tip. When you find yourself in this situation -- please create an incident report by lodging a complaint with the branch manager or online . Tweet if you must : your goal is to make sure that an incident shows up in the CRM. Branch managers bonus is tied to customer satisfaction parameters. This will not make you situation more bearable but it will force the branch to be more responsive in the future.

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#136

Post by curiousgeorgio » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:06 PM UTC

aphextron wrote: post #4

Something has happened to big banks along the way, where they no longer actually provide banking services to their customers. When I walk into a Wells Fargo branch now and sit down with a "banker" to take care of my accounts, it consists of sitting next to them while they call 1-800-WELLSFARGO for me and talk to a call center. There simply is no service anymore. I walked into my local branch to open up an IRA last we…

> There needs to be a massive restructuring of our system to allow smaller banks to thrive and provide actual competition.

Hmm... does there really need to be any restructuring though? It sounds like you "opened up an account next door at a small local bank" without any problem, so the choices are there, and your choices in banking really aren't that limited.

Your frustration with bigger banks seems to be related to the fact that as banks become bigger, their clientele also tends to be represented by more and more corporations and high net worth individuals. Those clients undoubtedly contribute a larger percentage to the bank's bottom line, so their focus naturally shifts to serving those types more than the average person with a personal checking account.

Just because McDonalds is the easy choice, that doesn't mean it's the only choice. McDonalds' existence (or that of the big banks) doesn't mean the system is broken - only that our collective preferences probably need to change.

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#137

Post by frgtpsswrdlame » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:07 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #49

rdiddly wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it always a choice between poorly-written regulations and no regulations?

Because it is so difficult to write good regulations. It is [nearly?] impossible to predict all the consequences of your regulation ahead of time. After the regulation is written there are many more people who have an incentive to figure out how to twist it to their advantage, and they get as long as they need to dream it up. Then they get a as long as they need to try various forms in small areas that you don't noti…

>It is [nearly?] impossible to predict all the consequences of your regulation ahead of time.

Yes but why is the burden asymmetric? It is similarly impossible to predict the consequences of deregulation ahead of time yet proponents of deregulation are never held to the total unpredictability of the outcomes of their position.

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#138

Post by madamelic » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:07 PM UTC

swsieber wrote: post #92

p-funk wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been planning a side project with a lot of those features. That's exactly how I think about my budgeting and that's exactly how I would like to allocate my money. I'm really not aware of any way to do this currently, apart from a lot of manual work in a spreadsheet, which is annoying and still requires restraint in spending. Mint isn't even that helpful when it comes to budgeting because their alerts and categor…

Have you looked at plaid? I'm not sure what their rates are like, but if you're doing just a personal project, you might be able to get away with their developer evaluation (though that only lets you interface with big banks, not the small ones - the developer evaluation that is). Edit: plaid is a nice abstraction bank api: https://plaid.com/

>I'm not sure what their rates are like

Very opaque and very expensive ($500 / mo+)

Also, they will shut down your account if you don't use your free edition enough.

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#139

Post by mhneu » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

aphextron wrote: post #4

Something has happened to big banks along the way, where they no longer actually provide banking services to their customers. When I walk into a Wells Fargo branch now and sit down with a "banker" to take care of my accounts, it consists of sitting next to them while they call 1-800-WELLSFARGO for me and talk to a call center. There simply is no service anymore. I walked into my local branch to open up an IRA last we…

Monopoly control, or near-monopoly-control, of many markets is hurting consumers and average citizens at the expense of a small number of CEOs.

Some good thinking on this: In context of amazon https://newrepublic.com/article/119769/amazons-monopoly-must... In context of tech firms, Google, Facebook http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/interrogation/2017/...

Re: Wells Fargo Hit with $1B in Fines

#140

Post by djschnei » Fri, Apr 20, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #124

samstave wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conscientious objection to taxation should be a thing though.

It is: it's called "renouncing your citizenship and moving to Somalia". Go ahead! Oh, you meant to say that you want to be able to object to taxation but still freeload on all the benefits. Sorry, no.

I object to most of the roughly 50% of my income that is taken from me and can't say I've ever been called a freeloader... That's an interesting point of view you have there; "either don't be a US citizen or never complain about tax policy".