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A short conversation with a bank

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Re: A short conversation with a bank

#71

Post by skybrian »

cantrevealname wrote: post #62

> with Gmail, where you were so aggressive about mining receipt data from Amazon that when I get a receipt from Amazon now it doesn’t actually include what I bought Wow, he's right. The item name no longer appears on emailed receipts I receive from Amazon as of about late 2019 or early 2020. I can't think of a plausible explanation for this change other than preventing Google from pilfering your detailed purchase his…

Another possibility is that email is sometimes unencrypted, email clients vary in how secure they are, and some regulation says they have to care about this because privacy.

But who knows, making stuff up like you and I did isn't evidence. At best it gives you an idea of the range of possibilities.

Re: A short conversation with a bank

#72

Post by mkr-hn »

yial wrote: post #61

Two anecdotal- I will say simple was a joy to work with, even for things that were old. I would never have closed on my house in time if not for them. Sadly- it seems that since BBVA -> PNC … everything historic for that account is gone. Unrelated to banks: Me: I’m calling because I got a notice that you’re cancelling my healthcare due to non payment of my premium? Healthcare service line: yes. You had a responsibili…

I miss Simple. I liked it ever since finding it in a sponsored content slot on the new Digg. I cobbled together something like the Goals feature with spreadsheets, but it's not the same.

As for BBVA->PNC, I had to get the CFPB involved just to get confirmation that my account was closed.

https://old.reddit.com/r/BBVABank/comments/pypk87/good_news_...

https://old.reddit.com/r/BBVABank/comments/r53cjt/it_was_ano...

The "courtesy" waiver of the fee for the opt-out paper statement not one Simple abductee asked for ends in April, so we'll see how that goes.

Re: A short conversation with a bank

#73

Post by treis »

dylan604 wrote: post #32
blibble wrote: post #24

the existence of a terrible bank doesn't mean they're all awful like any market, there are competently run companies and there are terrible ones (e.g. HSBC)

Can you please name for me any that you think are good?

Charles Schwab has been great for me. Specifically for the stuff in the article, statements back to when I opened it in 2012 are available in my portal and their bill pay worked flawlessly for me. On top of that, they have US based customer support, they refund atm fees, and their fees are about the lowest out there.

The only downside that I've run into is that they don't have branches that take cash deposits.

Re: A short conversation with a bank

#74

Post by coffeefirst »

Anon1096 wrote: post #53
coffeefirst wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. And the good ones tend to be smaller or regional chains. At a certain size you just become too big to be competent, and the incentives get FUBAR. After that they don't really care about customer satisfaction because they're really focused on investors or the next 1mm corporate customers.

If you're looking for good technical support and features you're not going to get it with your local credit union, they're even worse than the major banks.

Eh, the bigger banks I use have slicker websites, but not necessarily more functional websites.

Of course, we're talking about thousands of small institutions, they're going to vary wildly.

Re: A short conversation with a bank

#77

Post by compiler-guy »

dylan604 wrote: post #36
RhysU wrote: post #18

Fidelity is great. I don't work for Fidelity. For example, this week I needed some cost basis information on a transfer between accounts with unlike registration. Couldn't get it online. I emailed them. They responded via secure message with exactly what I wanted in 2 business days.

I can't tell if this is a joke, or a serious attempt at telling us how good a company is by someone that drank the kool-aid. 2 days to receive answer to a simple question? Responded via secure message? What does that entail?

Email is unencrypted by default, and although private secure message systems like this are annoying to work with, they do avoid that problem.

Re: A short conversation with a bank

#78

Post by reaperducer »

ethbr0 wrote: post #29
chrisdave wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true, they maintain them as a backup in case you corner a customer service representative on the phone and they are about to have to do what you asked. That's when they tell you you need to visit a branch.

Branches are equally powerless. See: Bank of America's policy on two-party "and" checks. I walk in, having had a checking account with them for decades: "Hi, I need to deposit a two-party check into my account here. This is the other party with me, and we're happy to show ID." Door greeter / agent: "Sure, I can do that for you." {Proceeds to verify my information and set up deposit on her tablet} "Hmm." {Walks over t…

Needless to say, I closed my BoA accounts.

I've read a number of BoA horror stories on HN, and didn't think anything of them. I just assumed there were a lot because BoA is big in California.

Then, recently, I tried to deal with BoA customer service.

- I'm saving up a few thousand dollars for a Christmas present, but don't want my wife to see the money in our joint account at another bank.

- Since I have BoA credit card with almost nothing on it, and a BoA next door, I decided to open a savings account.

- End of the month, I go online to pay my BoA credit card, and I can't. There is no way on the web site to pay with anything other than the savings account, and no way to re-add my previous external account that I've used with BoA for the last 10 years.

- Call customer service. Wait on hold for three hours, getting transferred twice.

- Finally get someone at BoA to tell me that because I added the savings account, my status changed and I have to add new payment accounts all over.

- Explain again that there is no way to add an external payment account.

- Two more transfers, and someone confirms that the web site is screwed up. Hold on while I transfer you to that department.

- 20 minutes later, someone comes on the line to tell me that tech customer service doesn't work on Saturdays anymore and to check back in a few days and maybe it will magically fix itself.

- I decide to go to the branch. Open BoA app to check its hours, and it's marked "Temporarily closed." So is the next closest BoA. And the one after that. The nearest BoA that is going to be open on Monday is two hours away, according to the app.

- Monday I go out for coffee, which takes me past the BoA branch next door. It's open. People inside. Everything looks normal, contrary to the app telling me it's supposed to be closed.

- I go into the branch, pay off my BoA card, empty the savings account, close both accounts.

Bank of America doesn't deserve to represent itself as the bank of America. It should be called the Bank of Dipshits.

Re: A short conversation with a bank

#79

Post by quadrifoliate »

Not directly related to the title, but further in the article:

> newly minted MBA ex-consultant who’s just started working at Dropbox as a product manager: and here is my presentation about why it is imperative for us to expand from file synchronization and, for some reason, password management, into financial service integration through our automated financial information archival tool, and then ultimately into financial services, which will strengthen our moat against competition from other file synchronization services

I think this is largely part of why modern web services are getting more annoying and aggressive about monetization strategy -- a massive proportion of people in product these days seem to not be the sort of nerds-solving-real-world-problems who founded Dropbox, but someone coming from big consulting companies where the main output seems to be 300-slide presentations. It does not seem like they have much of an exposure to the more human-centric style of building a good product, but rely mostly on buzzwords and spreadsheets, because that ties in closely to what they did before.

I'd like to hear a counterargument from any ex-consulting product managers, or people who hire them though :)

That being said, the password management seems...okay to me? Services like 1Password already used Dropbox as a backend, so if you're paying Dropbox, it seems like a fair feature expansion for them to give you further reasons to keep using them since the space overhead is presumably trivial. You probably have a decent amount of sensitive data in there as well.

Re: A short conversation with a bank

#80

Post by reaperducer »

dmoy wrote: post #46
mring33621 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found that, as long as your name is on the check, they will allow you to deposit a two-party check via the BofA app.

It's not supposed to, but it does go through sometimes Incidentally a BoA teller just told me yesterday that the phone all is not supposed to accept two party checks at all .

It's not supposed to, but it does go through sometimes

Actually, it is supposed to.

The 1990's-era legislation that made phone deposits possible shifted the liability and some other regulatory details a bit to make it possible. The verification and liability is less strict with an online deposit than an in-person deposit.

At the time, it was a big news story. The rule change was originally intended to allow businesses to deposit checks from their offices with a device over a modem for speed and security.

When it was in the news, people were up in arms because it shifted the liability for certain types of fraud onto the consumer, and away from the banks. Consumer advocates saw it as a big money-grab by the evil mustache-twirling bankers.

The result is that now when you get something like a random unexpected electric company refund check in the mail, you can deposit it with your phone.

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