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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

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You let someone use your phone and they were able to open BoA app and transfer funds without your knowledge? I don't fault BoA for ignoring your claim, that's like handing someone a credit card and acting surprised when they use it and wanting the CC company to refund your money.

If you let someone into your house to use the bathroom it's not OK that they rifle through your dresser drawers and take any cash that they find. People "hand someone their credit card" every day at restaurants. That doesn't mean that they are waiving fraud protections.

It’s also not the toilet companies job to resolve that is it?

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

#222
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FDIC insures up to $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank. But the FDIC claims process only begins after a bank failure (likely caused by a run on the bank). https://www.fdic.gov/analysis/quarterly-banking-profile/fdic...

Is it true that if I had $50K in a bank, for the sake of example let's use Bank of America, and the bank just straight up loses my account and loses track of the fact that I had that money with them, FDIC does not ensure I get my money back? Would I just be reliant on the bank having good will towards me and giving me my money voluntarily? Is there any consumer protection that actually protects the consumer against b…

https://www.helpwithmybank.gov/who-regulates-my-bank/index-w...

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

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How? The lender of last resort is the United State Government. Lender of last resort makes runs less likely and lossy. It doesn’t prevent them altogether.

Also, plenty of runs end in the FDIC resolving in a way that the parent bank no longer exists. Managed buyouts are preferred partially so that the government does not have to deal with the logistics of running a retail bank, but mostly because if a bank with sufficient funds takes over then there is no interruption to depositors’ access to funds.

The FDIC is required by law to use the plan for handling a failed bank that will cost the least to its fund.

Buyouts offers that cover all insured funds are typically cheaper than directly paying out. Indeed, most commonly the buying bank will offer to take all the full balance of any insurable account, not just up to the insurance limit. The logic here seems to be that the extra from taking on those balances is usually pretty small, and it does save work on the FDIC's side as there would be fewer creditors. Thus it makes bids with that include full balances more attractive than those that don't, increasing the chance that the buyer's bid will be selected for final resolution.

Of course, occasionally the winning bid is limited to just insured balances, and very occasionally, the cheapest option is for the FDIC to directly cut checks to handle the insurance side, and proceed as receiver in selling off any saleable assets and paying of creditors.

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

#224

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.

You're responding to a concern about society with a suggestion for individuals. It may be good advice for individuals, but do you think most people are going to follow it?

Great response - even if I can buy a pig with bullets it doesn't help anything else. That assumes you can butcher and store the meat. This seems like a kind of bikeshedding argument - the bike shed is built so don't worry about the actual nuclear reactor, you can always just hide in the bike shed. Doesn't matter how well built the bike shed is - you're still surrounded by nuclear fallout

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

#225
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 saw this happen with my own eyes in 2008 -- the trick was to re-order transactions such that an overdraft is triggered before other small transactions, to rack up overdraft charges.

Secondly, a Wells Fargo in California told a daily customer at the window in a bank "your cash deposit will not be credited until the next day" ..

both of these stories are completely true, at the same time as the Washington Mutual Bank failure.

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

#226
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.

Different in that that wasn't a case of losing records.

It was the delicately balanced house of cards that is fractional reserve banking all of a sudden crashing down, and pulled back the veil to temporarily reveal to everyone that money isn't real, and even though we remember who all has what, it only works if the masses don't look behind the curtain.

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

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true. All bank transfers and reversible. Some easier then other, but none are no-recurse, regardless what a low tier customer service agent insists. It may require more effort, and maybe someone above their pay grade, but it is possible. And Zelle itself, like all electronic bank transfers in the US, is subject to regulation E, which puts the responsibility for unauthorized transfers on the banks (minus $5…

Sending money to a scammer tends to be an authorized transfer; you made it yourself, intentionally. The Zelle page you said itself states "Because you authorized the payment, you may not be able to get your money back." I would not hang my hat on a Regulation E complaint in this scenario.

I think you are both sort of correct. The pertinent bit of regulation E[1] appears to hinge on how the fraudulent transfer was done.

It looks like if you as the authorized person transfer money to somebody because you were scammed into doing so, then the regulation does not apply. However, if you were scammed into giving up your, say, debit card number or password, and this was used to to initiate transfers, the regulation does apply. The magic words here are "access device" and "unauthorized".

That being said once you start throwing around laws that the average consumer doesn't know about, on certified letters directed at important people, the bank very well might make you whole rather than fight it even if you have no case.

[1]: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/rules-policy/regulations/100...

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

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fairly common, most banks have "overdraft protection" that works exactly how you described.

It is not exactly the same thing. The commenter you are responding to is looking to avoid overdraft, not having an insurance on overdraft. I'd agree with the idea of avoiding overdraft entirely unless a customer signs up for it. I don't want transactions I can't afford to go through. I manage my accounts quite closely. For me such situation would be 99% an unintended transaction that I would like to cancel. By lettin…

Overdrafting IS opt-in.

I had a bank charge me an overdraft fee. I asked them to show me my overdraft authorization.

It's amazing how fast a bank can return money when they screw up.

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

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 some…

Zelle is also built around the idea that each identity will be connected to exactly one bank account, which is very irritating.

It was pretty wild when I logged into one of my other bank accounts and it said I could not use Zelle with that account because I already had Zelle linked to a different bank account. So I had to unlink it from the other account first. Isn't it common for people to have more than one bank account, and wasn't this the case when Zelle was developed, relatively recently? Why did this use case not cross their mind when they developed it?

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

#230

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.

As some other replies have said - the best and most reasonable hedge is to rely on your community and have good bonds there. Doesn't matter how much cash you have if people don't care about that anymore, the best option is to have social bonds and have a community to support you, no person is an island etc

$100 under your mattress for the future is not worth nearly as much as giving that money to a friend to help them cover rent today

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