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There are no fees at America’s smallest bank

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Re: There are no fees at America’s smallest bank

#51

Post by inferiorhuman »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #33
V__ wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These sound like direct banks. In Germany, there are a few of those, ING being the largest, and represent about 50% of the private market. Pretty viable therefore.

ING [1] is offering a variety of financial services, including financing and savings accounts. Such banks necessarily have to operate at scale, in order to offset fraud/investment loss. I am specifically asking for the viability of a small "dumb" bank, which engages in only the lowest risk activity. Surely, technology has reached the point where a small team can create a bank of the sort I am suggesting. But do finan…

ING, when they had US retail banking operations, wasn't huge but they also did things differently. For instance they did not offer fixed rate mortgages – it's a lot easier to keep an adjustable loan on the books. They also did tech better than most banks (until the dumpster fire that is Capital One bought them out).

Re: There are no fees at America’s smallest bank

#52

Post by sharkweek »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #49
smelendez wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s an interesting article about church-based credit unions. It looks like they exist to offer better options to underbanked populations and are often limited to church members: https://religionnews.com/2018/10/30/church-run-credit-unions...

Credit unions, by law, must have restrictions on who can join. Often times they're gated by where you live, what city you worship in, where you work. I'm a member of a large California based credit union and while the low/no fees are nice, their general incompetence is awful.

I'm at a credit union for a chunk of my banking. Their tech is bad, but you know what I love?

When I call the number on the back of the debit card a human answers the call after a few minutes and 9/10 times can fix whatever I need fixed themselves.

Re: There are no fees at America’s smallest bank

#53

Post by massysett »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #49
smelendez wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s an interesting article about church-based credit unions. It looks like they exist to offer better options to underbanked populations and are often limited to church members: https://religionnews.com/2018/10/30/church-run-credit-unions...

Credit unions, by law, must have restrictions on who can join. Often times they're gated by where you live, what city you worship in, where you work. I'm a member of a large California based credit union and while the low/no fees are nice, their general incompetence is awful.

The membership restrictions have been watered down a lot. Anyone can join PenFed. There are others that require a token donation to an associated foundation.

I have been in more than one credit union and found they were just as bad as banks when it came to ridiculous fees. I therefore prefer the huge commercial bank as it is much more convenient.

Re: There are no fees at America’s smallest bank

#54

Post by inferiorhuman »

sharkweek wrote: post #52
inferiorhuman wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit unions, by law, must have restrictions on who can join. Often times they're gated by where you live, what city you worship in, where you work. I'm a member of a large California based credit union and while the low/no fees are nice, their general incompetence is awful.

I'm at a credit union for a chunk of my banking. Their tech is bad, but you know what I love? When I call the number on the back of the debit card a human answers the call after a few minutes and 9/10 times can fix whatever I need fixed themselves.

Oh, it's the humans that are the biggest problem. In theory I've got a "password" on my account, in practice I think maybe one or two people have asked for it in the past decade. I went in to buy a couple rolls of quarters the other day… and eventually gave up and got them at Wells Fargo (where I'm not a customer) instead. Let's not get into how monumentally stupid it was of them to ditch NCUA (temporarily).

Their tech… well at least they're not using case insensitive passwords anymore. I had a hell of a time trying to figure out which branches were open – their own site buries contact info and instead heavily pushes their 'virtual teller' which is rather useless for getting quarters. Apple Maps is a few (5?) years out of date in terms of branch locations. Yeah, Apple is a third party company but you'd think one of their six hundred odd employees would've submitted a bug report by now.

I like the idea of credit unions, but this one just sucks. I keep them around because their own incompetence has granted me a favorable fee schedule.

Re: There are no fees at America’s smallest bank

#55

Post by moffkalast »

xeromal wrote: post #41
adrr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So fees don't matter if you offer no services.

The service is your money being safer than under the mattress. They also make home loans.

Well you are trusting someone else with it, that doesn't sound much safer.

Re: There are no fees at America’s smallest bank

#56

Post by xeromal »

moffkalast wrote: post #55
xeromal wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The service is your money being safer than under the mattress. They also make home loans.

Well you are trusting someone else with it, that doesn't sound much safer.

It's FDIC insured and regulated.

Re: There are no fees at America’s smallest bank

#57

Post by SoftTalker »

nebula8804 wrote: post #44
SoftTalker wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I was just trying to fill out a PDF form for my taxes. A complete nightmare. Tried three different PDF viewers that had different bugs or incompatibilities with the form. Finally had to start a Windows VM to run Acrobat, that was the only way to get it done, other than print the blank form and fill it out by hand which in retrospect would have saved me about 40 minutes. I have been in software and IT for my whol…

Sounds like you are purposely making your life worse by using something like Linux. Don't blame the machine when it is running poorly tested software that likely did not consider UX. Have you tried using a Mac full time? It lacks the ad-bloatware of Windows 11 while still retaining some POSIX compatibility.

I did try my wife’s MacBook, it failed.

Re: There are no fees at America’s smallest bank

#58

Post by BirAdam »

andrepd wrote: post #50
nebula8804 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you are purposely making your life worse by using something like Linux. Don't blame the machine when it is running poorly tested software that likely did not consider UX. Have you tried using a Mac full time? It lacks the ad-bloatware of Windows 11 while still retaining some POSIX compatibility.

I've used Mac, Windows 10, and Linux (KDE and Cinnamon). Linux has been an infinitely more pleasant experience.

I’ve used em all. I hate Windows. MacOS is “fine”, and Linux can be great. The issues with Linux are on edge cases, just like macOS. They’re just in different places, imho.

Re: There are no fees at America’s smallest bank

#59

Post by BirAdam »

Arrath wrote: post #32
blakesterz wrote: post #4

Sammons, the fourth generation of his family to run the 100-plus-year-old S&L and its only full-time employee, confides that he’s a bit tech-averse. “Computers are great when they work,” says the 55-year-old, laughing. “I don’t have the patience for them.” Most days I bet most of us would agree with that statement!

Change that to "Computers/Printers" and you'll probably have universal appeal

Printers are directly descended from Satan himself.

Edit: and printing is the one part of the tech world that really is worse than it used to be. Most of the time, it’s just rose colored glasses that make us think things are worse. Computers used to be awful. Constant crashing and rebooting, and stuff randomly failing to work. Slow, bad UX, etc. printers, however, worked fairly reliably. Then… inkjet, laser jet and fuck this jet. Printers haven’t worked since inkjet became a thing. Dye sublimation printers, thermal printers, and impact printers seem to work forever without issue. The common inkjet printer is just a pile of plastic and bullshit.

Re: There are no fees at America’s smallest bank

#60

Post by sefrost »

SoftTalker wrote: post #15
blakesterz wrote: post #4

Sammons, the fourth generation of his family to run the 100-plus-year-old S&L and its only full-time employee, confides that he’s a bit tech-averse. “Computers are great when they work,” says the 55-year-old, laughing. “I don’t have the patience for them.” Most days I bet most of us would agree with that statement!

Yep. I was just trying to fill out a PDF form for my taxes. A complete nightmare. Tried three different PDF viewers that had different bugs or incompatibilities with the form. Finally had to start a Windows VM to run Acrobat, that was the only way to get it done, other than print the blank form and fill it out by hand which in retrospect would have saved me about 40 minutes. I have been in software and IT for my whol…

I have been going through the Canadian immigration process recently and I’ve had so many struggles with editing PDFs.

A former employer sent me a copy of my work reference encrypted with a password that I had to remove.

I had to install third party PDF software to fill out a Canadian government form. The native Mac Preview app couldn’t edit it.

A form for a police certificate seemed to be entirely uneditable with any third party software on my Mac.

I have no idea how ‘normal’ (for want of a better word) people are able to get anything done with PDF documents.

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