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Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

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Re: Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

#141

Post by JumpCrisscross »

notch656c wrote: post #106
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> interesting to characterize economic collapse as unrelated to access to foreign currency for international trade This jumps the rhetorical shark. Nobody said they’re unrelated. Just that the unrest is a response to the collapse. It would have occurred if the government seized dollars or not. The dollar seizure was a response to the collapse.

I acknowledge neither of our theories can be proven but it just seems too far fetched to me the unrest was attributable to everything but the banking measures.

> it just seems too far fetched to me the unrest was attributable to everything but the banking measures

Temporary and permanent capital controls have a long history of peaceful implementation. Economic collapses do not.

Re: Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

#142

Post by armchairhacker »

ctoth wrote: post #10

I have long been terrified of something shaped a bit like this. Here in the US we already treat most workers like absolute garbage. If one day the Average Joe wakes up and finds that all his money is merely some electronic scribbles in a database which have mysteriously gone missing, the social unrest is probably something that most people on this site couldn't even conceptualize of. Today it's Zelle, but what happen…

Isn’t this what happened during the Great Depression? Exactly what you described except instead of “scribbles in a database” it’s people’s physical money in banks. This is literally where the term “bank run” comes from

The depression certainly had unrest, idk how great but it happened in the 1930s so I would expect things would be much worse if something like that were to happen today.

Re: Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

#143

Post by snotrockets »

timerol wrote: post #20
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should the banks do to prevent scams?

Allow reversing transactions that are proven to be scams, as they are required by law to do. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulation-e.asp

They can not disallow doing that (as you wrote, they are required to), but they do make it very hard, because they are unwilling to put up the cost. However, the regulator mandates they should: what needs to be done is make sure they are always taken to task, and that the task is extremely easy to perform.

Re: Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

#145

Post by jlawson »

aeturnum wrote: post #96
luckylion wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the idea of "if you take everything from someone, what makes them keep to the law", but it's pretty obvious people don't work that way. There are plenty of scam victims who lose all their savings to individuals or groups. How many of them do you hear of visiting the scammers' office with a pump gun? The sue, they hope for justice, they drink themselves to death, but that's about it. There are some except…

I mean, people are not robots, but I think it's pretty obvious people do work that way. Famously, one of the factors in the collapse of the USSR was people realizing society was breaking and starting to work with grey market or criminal groups. You can search for the impact on crime of basically ANY social support program (sanctuary cities[1], substance abuse treatment[2], SNAP[3]) and they all reduce crime. How peop…

This is intuitive but wrong; the balance of evidence is that poverty does not drive people to crime.

During economic contractions in the west for example, crime does not spike. 2008, or even the great depression: No crime jump.

In the past in the west, when everyone was much poorer (1960's back to 19th century) crime was often substantially lower even than now. We're talking 1930's slums here.

Poverty correlates with crime, but the causation is probably the other way: Crime destroys wealth of a community.

Or it might be a third cause: The kind of people who commit a lot of crime in their community are also the kind who are economically dysfunctional in general and will create poverty for themselves.

Re: Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

#146

Post by cptskippy »

Karunamon wrote: post #58
cptskippy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By putting the onus on the user to maintain access and security rather than the bank?

I trust my ability to keep a small file (or more realistically: 24 random words that can be committed to memory with some effort) secure more than I trust any corporate entity that treats the penalties for screwing their customers as a mere cost of doing business. Crypto has many failure cases but a generalized loss of all transfers for all wallets is simply not one of them.

This isn't a defense of the corporate banking structure.

The cognitive load necessary to grok crypto currencies doesn't displace that which is required to utilize existing financial solutions, it's just adds to it. It's also less forgiving and has fewer safe guards or regulations.

For most people, crypto is just an added layer of obfuscation and complexity with some speculative gambling sprinkled on top. It benefits few and only when utilized by many.

It's like cash, if cash were a bar of wet soap you had to hold onto while riding a roller coaster in the rain.

Re: Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

#147

Post by dcist »

I got scammed by a Zelle transfer when someone used my phone (without my authorization). I didn't even know I had Zelle but it's built into the BofA app. I lost $3,000. BofA refused to refund any of the transfer or reverse it. Total trash feature. I didn't sign up for it. I don't want it. BofA signed me up for it. I'm changing banks because of it.

Re: Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

#148

Post by Denvercoder9 »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #95
jesprenj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of the rest of the world has had for a decade or more What specific system are you implying? In Slovenia, I can't make a bank transfer online when my bank is closed (at night). Money transfer between banks costs me 40 cents per transaction and international transfer in the EU costs me around 7 €. Maestro card is instant and free and works even when the bank is closed, but it is only used for spending money. I…

> I'm younger than 27 Why is age relevant to fees?

Lots of banks (at least in the EU) give free accounts to young people (usually until 25 or 27), in the hope that they'll stay a customer for life, because changing your bank account number is a hassle.

Re: Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

#149

Post by dcist »

Maursault wrote: post #110

Zelle is the choice of scammers. Incidentally, Zelle offers no guarantees or refunds. I don't know why anyone would use Zelle under those circumstances. Some banks will automagically sign their customers up for Zelle accounts, exposing them to scam risks for which there is no resolution. Money gone.

Yup, this happened to me. I didn't sign up for Zelle. Didn't know I even had it. I lost $3,000 and BofA refused to reverse or refund any of the charges. Total BS.

Re: Bank of America has lost Zelle transfers for many customers

#150

Post by tristor »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #36
notch656c wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have enough money in the bank to buy groceries you have enough money to take out of the bank and put in your mattress for groceries. Also HN will probably get upset for me saying this but a few grams of gold or silver or other goods easily tradeable like whiskey or ammo never hurt anybody and might buy you a pig to slaughter or something.

> few grams of gold or silver I remember, a few years ago, Cupertino being targeted for burglaries because the Indian and Taiwanese immigrant populations had a penchant for storing wealth in gold and silver and cash under the mattress, respectively. The victims’ recovery rates and timelines were far poorer than these BofA customers’ will be.

Which is an interesting comparison because these are not the only immigrant populations that do this, there are large groups of immigrant populations in Texas who are largely unbanked or underbanked or have cultural penchants for using gold and silver as stores of value, but there has been no concerted effort to burglarize them, because strings of home invasions in Texas usually end up with the home invaders in a body bag regardless of who they decide to target.
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