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A short conversation with a bank

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Re: A short conversation with a bank

#161

Post by geoduck14 »

immibis wrote: post #156
thrawaybanksup wrote: post #154

Disclaimer: I work in a bank and have worked closely with the customer support team. Here's the thing: retail banking margin is actually quite low and customer support is expensive. If you are someone who routinely calls your bank then your long-term value (LTV) is going to take a huge hit, so, of course banks want to keep everything as "low-touch" as possible. A small anecdote: there were plenty of elderly people wh…

> Here's the thing: retail banking margin is actually quite low and customer support is expensive. Is this because banks don't need retail money any more, since instead of acting as intermediaries between savers and borrowers, they now act as intermediaries between the Federal Reserve and borrowers, and only take savings because they're required to by law?

Banking has shifted from low-volume high-profit (read: A bunch of rich people) to high-volume low-profit (read: normal folk and some poor people).

The reason why margin is low... is because you are the customer. I know many people feel "poor people are unbanked" and the industry is going in the direction to support them, but it also means banks have to find ways to get money from poor people and reduce costs everywhere possible.

Source: I used to work at a top 10 bank

Re: A short conversation with a bank

#162

Post by re »

> someone on at a place in which you will never find a more wretched hive of disruption and innovation, but also called hacker news: hey we should found a startup that automatically logs into peoples’ bank accounts and downloads their statements and then stores them on amazon s3 in a badly configured bucket that’s ultimately publicly accessible to the entire world and then when that happens blame amazon for an opaque and insecure management tool but instead it’s obviously our fault for moving fast and breaking things

Is this a reference to something specific (like the Venmo reference later on), or just to poor security practices and data exposures in general?

Re: A short conversation with a bank

#163

Post by danuker »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #148
rebeccaskinner wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another plausible explanation is that omitting the items you bought means that you have to log back into Amazon and look at your purchase history to see what you ordered. That gives amazon several more touch points to get you to buy more things, including the "buy it again" button that they put on the page for particular items. It also makes it more difficult for you to search for the name of something you bought in…

Seems incompatible. Making you log-in to advertise is a far less effective option than the ability to advertise products to you while you voluntarily use another service, i.e. your email. They could easily do the same adverts and quick order links from your email, but targeted adverts in your inbox is useful information to Google, maybe even better than purchase history since the recommendation work is already comple…

Once you're logged in, the credit card is ready to go.

Re: A short conversation with a bank

#164

Post by [deleted] »

re wrote: post #162

> someone on at a place in which you will never find a more wretched hive of disruption and innovation, but also called hacker news: hey we should found a startup that automatically logs into peoples’ bank accounts and downloads their statements and then stores them on amazon s3 in a badly configured bucket that’s ultimately publicly accessible to the entire world and then when that happens blame amazon for an opaque…

[deleted]

Re: A short conversation with a bank

#165

Post by buttocks »

geoduck14 wrote: post #155
monktastic1 wrote: post #22

A short conversation with Blue Shield of California last month: BS: Have a question? Ask us via this very useful secure messaging form! Me: Great! Can you explain the difference between these two arcane out-of-pocket limits that you display that are un-Googleable and nowhere in your documentation that I can never find anyway? BS: Sure! We will wait two days and then send you an email suggestively titled "a response t…

I heard somewhere that telegraph is a legitimate form of communication for some official routes - unless they aren't specifically prohibited. Has anyone tried this? I would reallt like to force my bank to respond to my telegraphs... or pony express letters

In the US, telegram service ended in 2006! https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna11147506

Re: A short conversation with a bank

#167

Post by akomtu »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #144
monktastic1 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://imgur.com/a/t7M2RGv When I called, I was told that it's there to show that the OOP max for in-network and out-of-network providers isn't summed to get my total OOP max; instead it's just equal to my OON OOP max. (Of course, this plan makes it hard to go bankrupt, unlike all ACA plans. That was a bit of literary liberty.)

Excuse me -- your yearly deductible is $10,000? Here I thought €385 was a lot...

You probably pay way more in taxes. If I was given a choice between (1) an additional 20% income tax and free healthcare, or (2) crazy $10k/year out of pocket maximum, I'll choose 2 without a blink.

Re: A short conversation with a bank

#168

Post by code_duck »

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…

This also enables Amazon to claim you purchased a different item than you did, or charge a different price. The only way to obtain documentation of a purchase is to take a screenshot of every transaction.

I bought some lightbulbs from Amazon recently. I am quite sure I purchased some 7-8 watt LED candle bulbs. I received a package of 50 watt incandescents, which was definitely not what I wanted. I went to my Amazon account and it showed I had purchased the incandescents. I looked at my email receipt, and all contained was is a list of links to Amazon, which led to their site, showing I had purchased the incandescents. The lack of text in the email meant I had no way to determine what I actually purchased and whether the mistake was on my end, Amazon's or the third party vendor.

Re: A short conversation with a bank

#169

Post by dan-robertson »

geoduck14 wrote: post #155
monktastic1 wrote: post #22

A short conversation with Blue Shield of California last month: BS: Have a question? Ask us via this very useful secure messaging form! Me: Great! Can you explain the difference between these two arcane out-of-pocket limits that you display that are un-Googleable and nowhere in your documentation that I can never find anyway? BS: Sure! We will wait two days and then send you an email suggestively titled "a response t…

I heard somewhere that telegraph is a legitimate form of communication for some official routes - unless they aren't specifically prohibited. Has anyone tried this? I would reallt like to force my bank to respond to my telegraphs... or pony express letters

At my university there was a rumour that you were still allowed to submit your thesis in Latin. I think some people were tempted to try it but I’m not aware of anyone who did (or who pored over the regulations to find out if it was true)

Re: A short conversation with a bank

#170

Post by AshamedCaptain »

> bank: instead you can get all your transaction data as a csv, an xlsx, or an ofx or whatever Quicken or Microsoft Money thing

I don't even know why is this a thing (i.e. who had to sacrifice himself to the gods of IT interoperability so that a lot of banks offered this) , but all of these formats are actually very well documented these days. It's a GOD. SEND. that even the most terrible of banks seems to offer this, double plus good when no one at the bank even knows what "Quicken" is.

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