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My startup banking story (2023)

mitchellh.com

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Re: My startup banking story (2023)

#141

Post by robocat »

robocat wrote: post #82
aetherson wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> but rather to "maintain your business." If banks want to keep a customer, you might think the most important thing is to just not annoy or screw over their customers. Why do they continually treat good customers like shit? I'm in New Zealand and my bank just continuously pisses me off. I don't want any upsell (the arseholes tried to upsell insurance when I got a credit card the other day). I've got a six figure fac…

Great article on this: https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/every-industry-is-an-ov...

  I hand the cashier my credit card. She looks at me like I’ve just asked her to barter goats for spices. “Can I have your name?” she asks. “No,” I reply. “You can have my money.”

  Then comes the phone number. Then the email. [] Finally, after this interrogation, I’ve spent $300 and she asks if I’d like a bag. Of course I want a fucking bag: “That’s 25 cents,” she says. Why can’t stores just build the damn bag into the price instead of insulting me at checkout? I’m not asking to be hand-fed grapes like Julius Caesar.

  And God forbid I need to call anyone about anything. Changing an airline ticket? Calling my credit card company? Forget it. Every road leads to an automated voice system with the warmth of a Soviet switchboard.

Re: My startup banking story (2023)

#143

Post by asib »

GJim wrote: post #131
mitchellh wrote: post #8

Funny to see this pop up again (I'm the author). The year is now 2025 and I still use Chase as a personal bank and I'm now discovering new funny banking behaviors. I'll use this as a chance to share. :) My company had an exit, I did well financially. This is not a secret. I'm extremely privileged and thankful for it. But as a result of this, I've used a private bank (or mix) for a number of years to store the vast ma…

> private banks is they make it hard to do retail-like banking behaviors > depositing a quick check.....Zelle. Good lord American banking really is in the stone age. I don't think I've seen a cheque in 20 years. As for private banks, in Blighty they all (?) offer 'retail' services that out perform high street offerings. Incidentally, all high street banking is free in the UK. Only private banks tend to charge for the…

Yes, it's honestly a joke.

Zelle limits the amount you can send per day, starting at $500, so you can't even necessarily pay your rent in one go the first month.

With Chase, I don't have the ability to do ACH transfers to accounts I don't own (I hear other banks allow free ACH transfers), so if Zelle limit is too low, my only option would be a paid wire...

Re: My startup banking story (2023)

#144

Post by michalpleban »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #133
DownGoat wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so easy in Norway. When you start a new relationship with another bank, they just offer to move all your money and automatic bill payments from the other bank to your new bank. So the new bank handles everything

Similar in the Netherlands (idk about banking, but), nowadays if you move house, you just make an appointment at the local county hall and set your new address; the old county is informed, and a lot of companies that bill you regularly (e.g. utilities, health insurance, etc) will automatically reroute any mail to your new address. I'm glad for that too; mail is pretty much dead, I wouldn't know what organizations to…

Yes, it's similar with banking, you just use OverstapService.nl and they will automatically switch all your direct debits to your new account. Worked for me like a charm when I switched banks, of around two dozen direct debits only one failed to transfer properly.

Re: My startup banking story (2023)

#145

Post by pavlov »

mortos wrote: post #90
gwbas1c wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take them to small claims court. (Also close the account. No bank should lose money like that.)

I'd instead talk to the CFPB. You might also try some other governmental bodies but I've read a lot of success with the CFPB

DOGE killed CFPB.

Musk wants X to be in payments, and he hates CFPB.

Re: My startup banking story (2023)

#146

Post by kjellsbells »

Whenever I move significant sums into my bank account, I guarantee that my bank is going to do an "Alex" call. I can also guarantee that there is no freaking way I am going to do a call with some rando not already in my contacts to discuss my financials. I really don't know why banks don't understand this.

Chase is not the only offender but they are unhilariously, shockingly bad at this: if you do a large transfer, they will sometimes cancel it unilaterally and without warning because of their fraud detection. And then they'll call you, but the dude speaking won't know anything about your account and ask you about what you just did. "We are clean on opsec" is very much not the vibe.

Lest this be just me moaning, Fidelity gets it right. When you log on you can see who your banker is and how to reach them. A real human with a phone! And that person is the one who calls you, emails you, and you can set up a call/mtg with, so you don't have these random calling you.

Re: My startup banking story (2023)

#147

Post by ianhawes »

EarlKing wrote: post #99
edm0nd wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why adult industry merchants are a thing, like CCBill. They have been around for decades and its kind of a non-issue. Can still accept Visa, MC, AMEX, etc. source: used to run porn websites back in the early 00s.

How does something like CCBill stay in business when the card networks themselves have strict guidelines on chargeback rates that'll get you booted from the network?

They charge 10% (or at least they did ~10 years ago, probably higher now) and require you maintain a 30% reserve and then they use that money to continue to lobby Visa/MC to prevent competition.

Re: My startup banking story (2023)

#148

Post by FinnKuhn »

nshelly wrote: post #88

When I was an American PhD student in Zurich, none of the Swiss banks would accept me—except the official post office bank. This was due to the stringent FATCA laws, which made U.S. citizens too burdensome for the traditionally privacy-centric Swiss banks. Within the first few months, I accumulated around 40K CHF in salary that the university owed me (technically from the Swiss government, since researchers were fede…

One thing that has always amused me as a German is that for every banking/investing account I have ever opened they always included one question: Do you have an USA citizenship?

I assume with online banking this has become less of an issue, but apparently having US clients as a non-US bank is a massive hassle that no one wants to touch.

Re: My startup banking story (2023)

#149

Post by phil21 »

jackvalentine wrote: post #103
recursive wrote: post #32

The author imagines that all readers obviously know why his actions were so wrong. My understanding of banks is much like his naive version. So what's the more enlightened understanding?

Yeah I'm not sure why I would really care about the motivations of the bank. If I need them to be a store of money that I can move in and out and I'm happy with that then leave me alone. When you're big enough for that to be a problem, like in the story, then someone who knows more that you've hired will have a stronger opinion of that.

Banking works as a store of money and money mover until they decide what you are doing is outside the normal course for their average account holder.

After that you very rapidly get educated on the fact that money within a bank is not your money - it’s the banks money and they are not afraid to more or less tell you that outright.

There is very little recourse once you hit some internal KYC/AML or other “non-desirable” entity flags so it’s best to establish relationship banking prior to ever getting close to those (hidden and secret) thresholds. Even having multiple accounts at different banks isn’t much protection since they seemingly by law or regulation share these databases with each other. You will likely never make it off such a list if you get added to one.

For me at least that’s all private banking or even banking beyond a checking and savings account is. It’s paid insurance for continued access to the financial system.

Re: My startup banking story (2023)

#150

Post by thimkerbell »

xp84 wrote: post #119
chao- wrote: post #48

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.

This reminds me of a call I got from Schwab, which is my brokerage and one of my two banks where I keep checking accounts as well. I had a bunch of money that I had transferred in and stupidly, lazily, just left sitting around earning basically nothing. A nice guy called me one time and pointed out that I could be earning a few hundred bucks (maybe $800?) a month just by putting it all into a very safe money market f…

Do they have anyone charged with security of mailings? Which seem tacky for such an organization.
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