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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

#21

Post by notch656c »

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…

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.

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

#22

Post by ceejayoz »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #7
alistairSH wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also a owned by the 5-6 largest consumer banks in the US (BofA, CapOne, etc). So, they’re complicit in allowing the fraud to continue.

What should the banks do to prevent scams?

Ditch the patchwork nature of it, for starters.

See the Zelle "getting started" page at https://www.zellepay.com/get-started - there's no solid set of instructions because there's almost two thousand different implementations of it. Your bank's procedure may be entirely different than mine's; if your bank doesn't support it it's a different procedure alltogether.

As a result, scammers can fairly easily convince someone who's never or infrequently used it that their process (usually with a phished website posing as Zelle) is legit. The "it's a banking technology, but it's also a website and an app, maybe, it depends" thing doesn't help.

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

#24

Post by cle »

ceejayoz wrote: post #4
sidcool wrote: post #2

What are Zelle transfer?

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.)

> irreversible transfer

Apparently they're not irreversible...

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

#25

Post by jabroni_salad »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #7
alistairSH wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also a owned by the 5-6 largest consumer banks in the US (BofA, CapOne, etc). So, they’re complicit in allowing the fraud to continue.

What should the banks do to prevent scams?

You can never really prevent scams, it is what it is. However, they need to keep a paper trail and reverse bad transactions.

If someone impersonates me or steals my debit card, they can do a bad ATM withdrawal and get cash. That can be reversed, but for some reason once Zelle is in the picture everything is written in stone.

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

#26

Post by gnicholas »

neon_electro wrote: post #18
gnicholas wrote: post #13

When my older relatives wanted to send money to family/friends, I used to recommend Zelle, which was better than the never-heard-of-it apps they were considering. But with all the problems I keep hearing about Zelle, they're off the list. Most of them have iPhones and so I just tell them to send cash via Messages/Apple Cash. I don't know how reversible that sort of thing is, in the case of fraud, but as long as they…

I no longer recommend Cash App (formerly Square Cash) because they explicitly removed the ability to have inbound transactions be automatically deposited into your bank account. They left it on for anyone who already had it on, but I specifically signed my dad up on the assumption that sending him money would be as frictionless as possible. Instead, Square/Block would love for that money to stay in the Cash App accou…

I got burned by the Cash app as well, with bait-and-switch tactics around their merchant discounts. Their system had problems registering merchants correctly, so the discounts pretty much never went through for me. I tried to get support but they didn't care. I bounced.

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

#27

Post by ceejayoz »

andrewflnr wrote: post #17

It's removed now. Does anyone remember enough to give the gist of what allegedly happened?

The stickied mod comment reproduces the post's contents.

> If you bank with BoA check your balance this morning. Our account is negative due to thousands of dollars in Zelle transfers suddenly vanishing overnight. Calling customer service goes nowhere, just dead air.

> Many other customers reporting the same problem: https://downdetector.com/status/bank-of-america/

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

#28

Post by zaphod420 »

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…

Bitcoin fixes this

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

#29

Post by marstall »

eYrKEC2 wrote: post #23
marstall wrote: post #11

Is this the kind of rumor that starts a "run on the bank"?

How? The lender of last resort is the United State Government. Thank goodness the bankers will always be made whole.

everybody panicking and closing their accounts?

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

#30

Post by webdoodle »

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…

Sounds like Blade Runner 2049 is predictive programming.
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