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‘I’m Old, Not an Idiot.’ One Man’s Protest Gets Attention of Spanish Banks

nytimes.com

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Re: ‘I’m Old, Not an Idiot.’ One Man’s Protest Gets Attention of Spanish Banks

#141

Post by olliej »

fortran77 wrote: post #110
adriand wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently endured a Kafka-esque nightmare with my bank. I had this personal VISA card for several years but I rarely used it because I also have a Mastercard that I prefer. Anyway, two years ago when I started my current venture I opened a business bank account with my preferred bank for business banking (same bank I had the personal VISA through), so I applied for a business VISA. At the same time, I told them I wa…

It's a shame you can't get criminal charges against banks in cases like this. For people who aren't scrupulous about saving copies of transaction receipts, and memorializing transactions, you can be in real trouble for a long time!

Right? They can do incredible damage to people, but have no consequences for it - take OP: if they were applying for a mortgage at the same time that black mark on their credit rating wouldn’t have caused the mortgage to fall through.

Re: ‘I’m Old, Not an Idiot.’ One Man’s Protest Gets Attention of Spanish Banks

#142

Post by kube-system »

locooon wrote: post #103
justin66 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As far as I can tell, barring some very special circumstances, individuals never need to keep such records. This is blatantly false. Unless paying taxes is a "very special circumstance." People don't want these records at hand purely for their own amusement, which seems to be the assumption you're operating under here.

In what situation will an individual need to supply their utility bills to the taxman during an audit? > This is blatantly false. Unless paying taxes is a "very special circumstance." I’ve certainly never needed to pull up my utility bills while paying taxes as a private person. It really feels like you’re just coming up with stuff, utility bills aren’t normally tax deductible (unless you are a business). There’s no…

> In what situation will an individual need to supply their utility bills to the taxman during an audit?

Under IRS rules, some people who WFH can often deduct part of their home expenses, including utilities.

See IRS Form 8891 line 21, labelled "Utilities"

Re: ‘I’m Old, Not an Idiot.’ One Man’s Protest Gets Attention of Spanish Banks

#143

Post by justin66 »

rosndo wrote: post #131
justin66 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, you really created an account to make that comment? > In what situation will an individual need to supply their utility bills to the taxman during an audit? The bills would be useful if they expensed some of those payments, deducted them, or whatever. With a record number of people working from home, some portion of those expenses might be tax deductible for some people, some people might receive reimbursements…

Quoted post unavailable.

You would save the records for deductions or business expenses or whatever as a bookkeeping measure - and as a tax precaution, yes - even if you were not expecting an audit. Audits are fairly unusual.

(Way, way upthread jacquesm cited tax audits as a reason for these records to be physically provided, but they're a useful and common means of communication when employing a tax preparer or bookkeeper as well. And back to the original point, this is all even more likely to be true of an "old" person.)

The cost of saving paper records, for an individual, is fairly close to zero, whereas it's a colossal pain in the butt to track down stuff later. Make that mistake once and you won't do it again.

Re: ‘I’m Old, Not an Idiot.’ One Man’s Protest Gets Attention of Spanish Banks

#144

Post by Macha »

missedthecue wrote: post #129
GekkePrutser wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing that by email is a real dick move. They should send a letter with the last bill. And do it opt in of course. Old people are exactly the type of people that would carefully study letters that come in the post. Unlike people my age that would bin anything that comes with the bill thinking it's probably just commercial crap. But of course this is precisely the reason they do it by email. Dark pattern..

Precisely the reason? Is it to the phone company's advantage to lose a paying customer?

I would say most people, even most people still using paper billing in 2022, have a billing method set up (be it CC charges, direct debits or standing order) that would allow their bill to continue to be paid for their main utilities in the absence of receiving a paper bill. It's these people who the companies would rather cajole onto paperless billing.

Then there is the group who are still going to insist on/need paper bills, but use technology enough to catch the email about changing and use the opt out process.

I wouldn't say it's a dastardly plot to kick my elderly neighbour off their service, but simple disregard that people like her that would fall through the cracks while they're trying to save money with the first group.

Re: ‘I’m Old, Not an Idiot.’ One Man’s Protest Gets Attention of Spanish Banks

#145

Post by cipheredStones »

saganus wrote: post #60
adriand wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently endured a Kafka-esque nightmare with my bank. I had this personal VISA card for several years but I rarely used it because I also have a Mastercard that I prefer. Anyway, two years ago when I started my current venture I opened a business bank account with my preferred bank for business banking (same bank I had the personal VISA through), so I applied for a business VISA. At the same time, I told them I wa…

What happened to you is clearly not your fault, but after having similar issues with big institutions, I've realized that doing more than one "important" operation on a " big business/bank" account is always finicky. So now I do things one at a time. E.g. To cancel a card, first move all money (or debts) from acct A to acct B. Go home. Couple of days later, pay any outstanding fees of acct A. Go home. Couple of days…

It's sort of funny that software engineers spend so much time thinking about the nuances of making sure that things occur in the right order on the scale of milliseconds while maintaining invariants in all sorts of exotic distributed NoSQL systems that don't guarantee strong consistency... and meanwhile many of the most important things we do on computers use standard centralized relational DBs but take several business days to process and get screwed up if you don't wait long enough for them to resolve properly.

Re: ‘I’m Old, Not an Idiot.’ One Man’s Protest Gets Attention of Spanish Banks

#146

Post by rosndo »

justin66 wrote: post #143
rosndo wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

You would save the records for deductions or business expenses or whatever as a bookkeeping measure - and as a tax precaution, yes - even if you were not expecting an audit. Audits are fairly unusual. (Way, way upthread jacquesm cited tax audits as a reason for these records to be physically provided, but they're a useful and common means of communication when employing a tax preparer or bookkeeper as well. And back…

> You would save the records for deductions or business expenses or whatever as a bookkeeping measure - and as a tax precaution, yes - even if you were not expecting an audit. Audits are fairly unusual

I think you are just repeating original comment here. Regular people in regular situations will never need their old utility bills for tax purposes.

Those choosing to e.g. run a business, pick up various extra responsibilities in doing so. In that case it’s absolutely your own responsibility to maintain good records, and you should print electronic invoices if you so desire.

If you run a business and are using your utility bills as a basis for deductions, you’d have to be stupid to not safely store them (digitally or physically).

Paper invoices should be opt-in, not opt-out. Very few people actually require them.

Re: ‘I’m Old, Not an Idiot.’ One Man’s Protest Gets Attention of Spanish Banks

#147

Post by rosndo »

kube-system wrote: post #142
locooon wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what situation will an individual need to supply their utility bills to the taxman during an audit? > This is blatantly false. Unless paying taxes is a "very special circumstance." I’ve certainly never needed to pull up my utility bills while paying taxes as a private person. It really feels like you’re just coming up with stuff, utility bills aren’t normally tax deductible (unless you are a business). There’s no…

> In what situation will an individual need to supply their utility bills to the taxman during an audit? Under IRS rules, some people who WFH can often deduct part of their home expenses, including utilities. See IRS Form 8891 line 21, labelled "Utilities"

As far as I can tell this exclusively applies to self-employed people, i.e. someone running a business from their home.

Re: ‘I’m Old, Not an Idiot.’ One Man’s Protest Gets Attention of Spanish Banks

#148

Post by GekkePrutser »

missedthecue wrote: post #129
GekkePrutser wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing that by email is a real dick move. They should send a letter with the last bill. And do it opt in of course. Old people are exactly the type of people that would carefully study letters that come in the post. Unlike people my age that would bin anything that comes with the bill thinking it's probably just commercial crap. But of course this is precisely the reason they do it by email. Dark pattern..

Precisely the reason? Is it to the phone company's advantage to lose a paying customer?

Don't think of the company as one single highly aligned entity.

Probably what happened here was that a mid-level manager had a goal for 2021 to reduce paper billing by X percent. And came up with this as a quick trick to do it. Departments externalise negative effects to other parts of the company all the time. What they care about is their own goals and looking good to higher management. Not the interests of the company as a whole. This will only change when something causes a ruckus and top management finds out about it.

Also, the company is not really losing anything, the customer will sign up again, has to pay reconnection fees and will probably be forced to e-bill "because paper billing is no longer available for new customers". Triple win for the company really.

Of course the customer can move to another company but they'll probably want to keep their number and the whole portability rigmarole is much too difficult for this type of customer.

Re: ‘I’m Old, Not an Idiot.’ One Man’s Protest Gets Attention of Spanish Banks

#149

Post by GekkePrutser »

Femtio wrote: post #139
GekkePrutser wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, the new money that's 'created'(not even minted as paper money is pretty niche now) by the government is given to the banks to invest. PS I was just at my bank and I'm not even super old :)

But for what?

What do you mean for what?

Why I was at the bank? I had to cancel a credit card I never used, and had to show my latest ID.. Here in Europe banks are supposed to validate ID regularly now which is a real pain in the **. I don't get why either, it's not like I change identity very often :) It's just more distrust from the government I think.

No I didn't go there to withdraw money or to pay bills. Though it can still be done. In fact for some government transactions, like getting a new ID, it has to be done. You have to go to the bank with a government form, pay your 20 euros into the government account, and the bank stamps the form as proof that you did it. Then you take that to the police and they issue a new ID.

This is also in Spain by the way (like the article).

Yeah I hate this process too. But I like that old people can still do things the way they understand.

Re: ‘I’m Old, Not an Idiot.’ One Man’s Protest Gets Attention of Spanish Banks

#150

Post by GekkePrutser »

One thing that I do have to say about Spain: Pre-Corona there was literally a bank branch at every street corner. It was a bit too much. I get that old people have mobility issues, but where I live there were 3 branches within 500m of my house. And that was just for my bank, I had at least one branch from the other main ones within the same distance as well. I have never seen this density in other EU countries (I've lived in several and visited most) even before digitisation, except probably Romania.

Now what they've done is shuttered a lot of actual branches but left the ATMs. The density of bank branches now is comparable to the density of post offices (in my "barrio" there is only one post office and now only one branch of my brank). It's not like they have to walk 20km now especially in the city.

However I do really think old people should be able to keep doing transactions as they were. They should not be forced to go online.

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