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Discover is now part of Capital One

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Re: Discover is now part of Capital One

#91

Post by ethbr1 »

const_cast wrote: post #82
lxgr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: Amex has been issuing charge cards since the 50s, and their tech seems leagues ahead of Discover, for both charge/credit cards and checking accounts (based on my first impressions for the latter; I haven't really used their checking account as my main account).

Yes, Amex has the best app out of all banking I've used thus far. It's very fast, the UI is easy to understand, and you can do what you need to do quickly and painlessly.

The under the surface portion of the legacy system iceberg is how agile (and well-defined at interface points) backend systems are.

Most of the time, the reason a front end app can't do X is that there's no way to use/modify the internal core systems to do that.

So front end shiny is a poor litmus for how well or poorly a company's internal systems are.

Agility is probably a better proxy -- given a new business need / requirement (e.g. ACA in US health insurance), how quickly can a company execute on it?

Re: Discover is now part of Capital One

#92

Post by 0xBDB »

lxgr wrote: post #61
hombre_fatal wrote: post #45

Ugh. Moving back to the US after a decade abroad, I had to get credit cards to rebuild my nonexistent credit. Discover and Capital One both had deposit-based credit cards for credit building, so that's what I started with. Discover's customer support system was polished and felt like a small company. I'd always speak to a polite native English speaker. When I gave authentication information to the pre-call robot (lik…

Agreed – Discover has great customer support. Their tech stack, however, seems terrible. They had a very messy migration of their Zelle integration and in the process seem to have broken things for many of their checking customers. Personally, I could neither use it, nor enroll my email address or phone number previously enrolled at Discover with any another bank for several months! Capital One seems to have a much m…

> Let's see which tech stack and which customer support organization survives the merger, respectively...

I have no inside experience of either company, but I have been through a lot of large financial industry mergers and I know what's public about this one.

I'd bet heavily that it'll be some of both, but tech especially will be Capital One. Because it's larger, because it's the acquirer, and maybe above all because it's newer - a younger company with a younger tech stack that's known to be entirely cloud based.

Re: Discover is now part of Capital One

#93

Post by const_cast »

ethbr1 wrote: post #91
const_cast wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Amex has the best app out of all banking I've used thus far. It's very fast, the UI is easy to understand, and you can do what you need to do quickly and painlessly.

The under the surface portion of the legacy system iceberg is how agile (and well-defined at interface points) backend systems are. Most of the time, the reason a front end app can't do X is that there's no way to use/modify the internal core systems to do that. So front end shiny is a poor litmus for how well or poorly a company's internal systems are. Agility is probably a better proxy -- given a new business need…

> Agility is probably a better proxy -- given a new business need / requirement (e.g. ACA in US health insurance), how quickly can a company execute on it?

Yes, probably, but I think performance is pretty good sign too. Old legacy systems are often complex so new functionality is always bolted on-top, and not baked-in. Making architectural changes like that is risky.

And, third-party integrations are going to be preferred. So over time the application becomes incredibly slow. There's layers and layers of cruft and then calls to third parties around every corner.

Re: Discover is now part of Capital One

#94

Post by mulderc »

drdaeman wrote: post #64
0xC0ncord wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like nothing more than the cost of doing business.

I'm seeing misleading advertising with scummy/dark patterns, spam, failure to disclose important information, plus all the classic stuff like money laundering and bank fraud. Could be just the cost of doing business, if that business' motto is "you either fuck someone over, or get fucked" or at least "you gotta hustle to survive". I'm so tired of all those businesses out there.

One thing I don’t understand is why people even do business with many of these scummy financial companies when credit unions exist.
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