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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

#161

Post by browningstreet »

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…

I work for a bank in the US, and not one of the names you hear associated with scandals all the time. The level of redundancy and HA built into our everything is why our jobs are so boring and slow. We also use a core banking platform that lots of other banks use and it's properly engineered for the kind of enterprise performance we'd all expect. There are certainly problems in banking, but the FDIC protections are also there for consumers. Let's start with a reasonable premise, not a fear-mongering one.

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

#162

Post by sowbug »

elforce002 wrote: post #49

Interesting. I don't agree with the concept of 'cashless' society. This is no paranoia, conspiracy theory. I don't know if this is the first time this happens but this is one to many times for most people. The healthy thing is to have multiple options ranging from cash, credit/debit cards, up to apps with NFC payments, etc... There has to be a limit on how much tech is too much. This goes for every human facet (medic…

HN likes to trash Bitcoin, but at least you can understand where the pro-Bitcoin folks are coming from. If a cashless society is inevitable, would you prefer that all such transactions be mediated by a small number of large corporations? Or would you prefer the option of at least some of your transactions happening through a peer-to-peer system that no corporation or government controls?

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

#164

Post by shuckles »

tristor wrote: post #150
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 bod…

Can you help my understand why this article cites a higher per capita burglary rate in Texas than California (it claims the data is from the FBI)? https://www.thezebra.com/resources/research/burglary-statist...

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

#165

Post by kergonath »

imtringued wrote: post #59
ceejayoz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instant, no-fee, irreversible transfer between participating US bank accounts. (Like most of the rest of the world has had for a decade or more, but it's new, and because it's new and there's very little education to consumers from the banks it's heavily used in scams. It also has a pretty confusing UX that lends itself to scams.)

SEPA instant payments are pretty new but yeah even Europe has that now.

Even before instant transfers, standard SEPA was quick and easy. The big step forward was when they let us add beneficiaries from a phone app or a website rather than by sending verification codes over snail mail, but that was a while ago now.

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

#166

Post by pkaye »

tristor wrote: post #150
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 bod…

Why does Texas has so many reported burglaries though?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/232539/burglaries-report...

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

#167

Post by Karunamon »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #155
Karunamon wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does this work for your average hospitality worker, or is it really only a solution for the techno elite? In every institution I’ve worked at if you do something that accumulates fines you and your management get fired. Since it’s a small street, you also effectively get blacklisted. They’re also highly influenced by their credit rating and credit spreads for day to day operational financing, which negative reputatio…

And yet gargantuan financial institutions keep getting fined for various kinds of misbehavior, on a what seems to be a regular basis. The one that sticks out in my mind aside from this kind of failure was the systematic fraud perpetuated by Wells Fargo. Are any execs in prison or was it just financial fines (i.e. cost of doing business) and job losses for the lower level peons who executed the (plausibly deniable) orders?

You will have to forgive me for being entirely unsatisfied with that level of accountability.

Re: ease of use, I think crypto skeptics tend to intentionally overstate the knowledge and skill required. We're not exactly at the "grandparent safe" level yet, but framing it as something only for the "techno-elite" isn't fair either.

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

#168

Post by astrange »

dcist wrote: post #147

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.

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/

Well, someone stealing from your bank account would be more of a law enforcement issue I guess.

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

#169

Post by amluto »

dcist wrote: post #147

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.

The magic words are “Reg E”. Your bank won’t tell you about it, but they must follow the regulation.

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

#170

Post by astrange »

nibbleshifter wrote: post #136
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.

A month or so of salary in cash at home, and some "hard assets" is a good hedge.

Under what situation could that possibly be useful where all society hasn't collapsed?

You're not going to lose access to your bank account because the bank failed; the FDIC handles that. It just moves to a different bank over the weekend.

Locked out because Chexsystems thinks you're a financial criminal is more in the direction of possible.

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