71–80 of 170 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would imagine this phone call's primary goal is trying to sell you higher margin financial products/services.
The way you phrase that, it sounds like these services are more advantageous to the bank, but possibly not to the account holder? If so, that goes against the tone of the article, where Mitchell implies (I think?) that he would have benefited more from speaking to Alex than the other way around.
What the bank is probably mainly trying to do is not "extract a higher margin" from you, but rather to "maintain your business." While Alex might not have recognized that a startup that took in a bunch of financing and plopped it into a cash account and then didn't do much with it is a customer who might disappear at any time, on some institutional level the bank is aware of it. They want you to regard them not as an interchangeable place that money sits, but as a valued partner who helps you do things with your money, and as a result you feel like it would both be a risk and a bother to extract all your money and go to some other bank.
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TFA didn't really explain the mistake. What I think it was: 1: Chase's business account wasn't appropriate for a tech startup; nor was it appropriate for the amount of money Mitchell was handling. 2: When your bank calls you after a very, very large money transfer, you should take the call. That being said: In today's world where every other phone call is some telemarketer trying to scam you or otherwise sell you som…
They basically had no problems through $35M+ of money coming in except a few phone calls trying to sell him some banking services... I wouldn't really call it 'not appropriate' for a startup... All it was is probably the guy trying to say "hey maybe you'd be interested in parking some of that capital in a term deposit" or offering some credit products... It is a bit weird how actively the guy tried to engage but it p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way you phrase that, it sounds like these services are more advantageous to the bank, but possibly not to the account holder? If so, that goes against the tone of the article, where Mitchell implies (I think?) that he would have benefited more from speaking to Alex than the other way around.
Not really, these are probably mutually beneficial. Having $35 million sitting in a cash account is, as Mitchell recalls in the article, pretty bad -- you're forgoing a lot of benefit for yourself. What the bank is probably mainly trying to do is not "extract a higher margin" from you, but rather to "maintain your business." While Alex might not have recognized that a startup that took in a bunch of financing and plo…
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I don't think he was trying to imply that he did anything wrong. He was admitting the ignorance regarding how banks and banking work... plus acknowledging that a lot of readers will have had experiences that would make them think "Oh you young fool." In 2022 I lost my business banking and had to shut down a business that I owned for 20 years because it was related to the adult entertainment industry and, despite bein…
Chargebacks. Tons of people buy porn on a card then later deny it when their SO finds the bill. The industry is rife with this kind of fraud, and chargebacks represent tangible risk of financial loss, so banks just blanket ban working with certain industries. People who sell precious metal jewelry for credit card payments are another.
source: used to run porn websites back in the early 00s.
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The bank account was appropriate for small businesses. IE, restaurant, laundromat, ect. This became clear when the article explained that there was education for tellers about what a tech startup is. Mitchell didn't take the call. He ended the call as quickly as he politely could, short of hanging up on Alex. Edit: I've had a few bank tellers advise me on how to adjust my bank account correctly in the past. I'm going…
Thanks for answering! So there is some set of services that are useful specifically to a tech startup but not a restaurant, but then there are a category of services that "nobody" wants, neither restaurant nor startup. Do you have an examples of any of those categories? I am not asking because I disbelieve you. I am asking because I find this all fascinating, but it seems my imagination is lacking! What would I want…
He also didn't get any extra controls on the account - you can see from the end of the story that they just forgot about it and someone stole $100k of it!
> Ultimately, there was no long term negative impact of the events that transpired (except maybe for Alex, but I truly don't know) and I can now look back on it with amusement. So a software guy who didn't understand people or banking opens an account at Chase. And a guy from Chase who didn't understand people or software calls him-- repeatedly over years-- and fails to ever connect on any human level whatsoever. Now…
Banker was probably asked daily by his managers if the multi-million dollar client was happy and the banker probably always responded with-yes, very.
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This is somewhat funny to read because if you were a JPM(chase) Private Bank client you wouldn't have any of these issues (zelle works, you can deposit checks, pull from any/all ATMs).
Or just plain Schwab One. Don't know about Zelle but ATMs and checks work just fine. (Better than fine, in fact, in that they refund your ATM fees.)
During COVID, I took a major haircut in my day job, and ended up doing a lot of side work to stay solvent. All my banking was with Chase; I setup a new checking account for my side work. One day they just took about $900. No matter who I spoke to, they bounced me around and never gave me an answer why. I can only guess there was a fraud trigger or something, but to this day, I've never gotten the money back or even g…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bank account was appropriate for small businesses. IE, restaurant, laundromat, ect. This became clear when the article explained that there was education for tellers about what a tech startup is. Mitchell didn't take the call. He ended the call as quickly as he politely could, short of hanging up on Alex. Edit: I've had a few bank tellers advise me on how to adjust my bank account correctly in the past. I'm going…
Thanks for answering! So there is some set of services that are useful specifically to a tech startup but not a restaurant, but then there are a category of services that "nobody" wants, neither restaurant nor startup. Do you have an examples of any of those categories? I am not asking because I disbelieve you. I am asking because I find this all fascinating, but it seems my imagination is lacking! What would I want…
It wasn't a specific service, it was that Wells Fargo employees had a "performance metric" (which I understand in certain postapocalyptic hellholes translates to "a threat to your livelihood and your ability to receive medical treatment if you fall ill") on the number of products each customer was using. So they would encourage customers to open extra savings accounts, credit cards etc. (or some of the more enterprising employees would skip the phone hassling stage and just open these accounts).