"So now everyone can recreate your statements."... "remember us? We're a verb now." Hahahaha! I wish this weren't true.
What is this reference, CashApp?
Here's a page that showcases what the article is referring to: https://publicbydefault.fyi/
A short conversation with a bank
211–220 of 316 posts
Re: A short conversation with a bank
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the risk of turning this into a political debate -- yes, you pay more taxes if you earn more, and less taxes if you earn less. That's how a society is supposed to work: you don't leave people to suffer because they aren't rich.
We don't use tax money to bulk buy food, or auto repair, or fuel, or computers, or phones, or banking, or any other modern good or service that is essential and required for every member of society. Why do we do it for health care or health care insurance? If the justification is "everyone needs it and you will die without it" then shouldn't farms and supermarkets also be public utilities? The line seems entirely arb…
> We don't use tax money to bulk buy food, or auto repair, or fuel, or computers, or phones, or banking, or any other modern good or service that is essential and required for every member of society.
We certainly do: taxes fund social programs like welfare and subsidies, which allow every member of society to afford a baseline level of food, housing and transportation.
Back in World War II, food supplies were rationed precisely because everyone needs them, so food vendors have certainly faced regulation in times of scarcity. Farmers still receive sizable EU and US subsidies. [1] [2]
In the US, the government purchased bulk amounts of foods for decades. [3]
Re: A short conversation with a bank
#213Not directly related to the title, but further in the article: > newly minted MBA ex-consultant who’s just started working at Dropbox as a product manager: and here is my presentation about why it is imperative for us to expand from file synchronization and, for some reason, password management, into financial service integration through our automated financial information archival tool, and then ultimately into fina…
IIRC 1Password doesn’t let you use Dropbox as a syncing/backing store anymore, and if it still does, it’s being deprecated.
Yeah, maybe I should have made the past tense more explicit ("used to use"). My understanding is that 1Password wanted to have their own sync solution and not be dependent on Dropbox, so it seems fair to me for Dropbox to make a password solution of their own.
Re: A short conversation with a bank
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I suppose the devil's advocate argument is once you get to this stage (publicly traded company), the company's priority is no longer just "do things to get traction", but also "do things to support share price". You could argue the ex consultant MBA type product manager is better suited to solve a problem that institutional investors run by ex finance MBA types have.
That's exactly the problem - that's why things are so broken as per the article.
Specifically, I think that in the past people who were so MBA-influenced were mostly in finance, and not in charge of designing every minor product feature.
Now that they often are, you get the sense of being nickel-and-dimed every time you use the product. Maybe that's temporarily spiking the share price, but it's a really bad long-term strategy. You really don't want every product to descend into RyanAir pay-toilets-aboard-the-plane territory.
Re: A short conversation with a bank
#215I really, truly don't understand how any bank in the year 2022 can only give you 1 year of electronic access, but this is actually the case!
This cannot be an uncommon scenario (and yet it's happened to me so many times): April 1 rolls around, ok time to do taxes, let's start by reviewing my bank transactions for the previous calendar year -- whoops! No data for January - March because those are months 13, 14, and 15.
Total insanity.
Re: A short conversation with a bank
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is almost true: you will, in fact, be forever on the hook for any medical expenses charged which exceed the "reasonable" limits your insurer has set for each given service, even after you've exceeded your MOOP. So if your physical therapist charges $150/hour and your insurer reimburses $120/hour, you'll still owe $60 OOP for two hours of therapy even if you've exceeded your MOOP. Ask me how I know.
This happened to me and I found the practice extremely deceptive. In California it is nearly impossible to find therapy or similar services that don’t charge much more than the per service maximums allowed by Anthem Blue Cross (and likely others). This is primarily about out-of-network care, but good luck finding a competent therapist in-network in the Bay Area. For example, the max paid for a therapy visit might be…
> good luck finding a competent therapist in-network in the Bay Area.
> For example, the max paid for a therapy visit might be $120 while the providers typically charge $160-180/session.
These seem tightly (and unsurprisingly) linked. If you were competent at your job and had a choice to bill $120/hr or $160/hr, which would you choose?
If you weren’t competent, having a steady stream of $120/hr customers pipelined to you would be mighty convenient as well.
Re: A short conversation with a bank
#217“customer service agent: would you be able to participate in a customer satisfaction survey to provide feedback on how we did after this call? you: if I don’t give you a good rating in this survey will you get fired? customer service agent: yes” This particular aspect of modern society really bothers me
It gives them incentive to help customers, I suppose. I generally get good service and give appropriately good ratings.
On the occasions where I get assigned a clown, I have no problem giving the appropriate rating there either.
Re: A short conversation with a bank
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the risk of turning this into a political debate -- yes, you pay more taxes if you earn more, and less taxes if you earn less. That's how a society is supposed to work: you don't leave people to suffer because they aren't rich.
We don't use tax money to bulk buy food, or auto repair, or fuel, or computers, or phones, or banking, or any other modern good or service that is essential and required for every member of society. Why do we do it for health care or health care insurance? If the justification is "everyone needs it and you will die without it" then shouldn't farms and supermarkets also be public utilities? The line seems entirely arb…
> We don't use tax money to bulk buy food, or auto repair, or fuel, or computers, or phones.
We don't buy bulk food because it's a commodity with low entry costs, and between subsidies and SNAP we can keep food almost universally available. We should be doing more, because people do fall through the gaps and our agriculture subsidies could be better directed.
We subsidize transportation and oil to keep costs down. We should do more to expand free at the point of access mass transit.
There are means-tested programs for cell phones paid entirely by tye federal government (you may hear them coloquially referred to as "Obamaphones").
Many people believe basic, low cost banking services should be provided through the USPS. I believe Senator Elizabeth Warren is an advocate for this policy.
> Why do we do it for health care or health care insurance?
Health care and health insurance are different from the other examples you listed. If a person is in dire need of care, they are unlikely to be able to shop around. They might not even be in a condition to prove they are able to pay, so we require hospitals to treat people without waiting for such proof, which means providers can take on significant losses which need to be covered.
And to keep costs down in such a system where you cover these cases, it makes sense to invest in preventative care, up to the point of paying people to get it.
Entry costs to starting a hospital or becoming a health care professional are high because people want some standard of safety. This lumits competition that makes your other examples work.
> Water yes, but food no? Why education and healthcare? Why not heating and electric power?
Yes to all of the above. Since you added heating and electric, often low income will qualify someone for assistance, eapecially heating in colder regions. Since the market functions well enough for people with sone money, means testing seems to work well enough here.
> The added benefit of letting people arrange it individually is that those with a higher risk appetite are not forced into it (at significant personal expense) against their will/consent, too.
The challenge is that if you make people arrange it individually, there is incentive to underestimate the risk (higher risk means higher premiums) and then they might need care that they cannot afford. The health care system sometimes still incurs this cost because they might have to provide emergency treatment (and many conditions untreated due to costs can become emergencies).
Re: A short conversation with a bank
#219Two anecdotal- I will say simple was a joy to work with, even for things that were old. I would never have closed on my house in time if not for them. Sadly- it seems that since BBVA -> PNC … everything historic for that account is gone. Unrelated to banks: Me: I’m calling because I got a notice that you’re cancelling my healthcare due to non payment of my premium? Healthcare service line: yes. You had a responsibili…
I miss Simple. I liked it ever since finding it in a sponsored content slot on the new Digg. I cobbled together something like the Goals feature with spreadsheets, but it's not the same. As for BBVA->PNC, I had to get the CFPB involved just to get confirmation that my account was closed. https://old.reddit.com/r/BBVABank/comments/pypk87/good_news_... https://old.reddit.com/r/BBVABank/comments/r53cjt/it_was_ano... The…
Yeah I'm fighting with PNC right now. But apparently my paypal account was still pointed at them and charged $4 so now they want a $36 overdraft fee and also won't close the account until it's finished "pending"... I honestly can't believe banks get away with overdraft fees. Damn I miss Simple.
Re: A short conversation with a bank
#220“customer service agent: would you be able to participate in a customer satisfaction survey to provide feedback on how we did after this call? you: if I don’t give you a good rating in this survey will you get fired? customer service agent: yes” This particular aspect of modern society really bothers me
If I do those I just give glaring reviews so as to possibly relieve some small bit of human suffering.
My brother worked at a major telecom call center as recently as last year, and for them the survey let you rate them something like 1-5. But anything under 5 was a "failure" and they were only allowed a few failures per day without repercussions. So fun.