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Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

nytimes.com

221–230 of 901 posts

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#221
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very obvious utility in the US which should be able to prevent this: The US Postal Service. It's federally required to exist, and services all Americans already. Basic banking services should be one of the things it is expanded to provide in a minimal, safe fashion (i.e. no loans or lending, but guaranteed electronic banking and funds transfer services).

I don’t see the connection between the Postal Service and banking. Is it just it was historically there? If that’s the case, you could attach it to any department.

It used to provide some limited banking services up until the 60s and it still does billions of dollars worth of money orders a year so a lot of the infrastructure is still there.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#222
post #190
post #162

I'm somewhat surprised no one here views this as an automated decisionmaking problem It's increasingly clear that automating important decisions like this is causing a lot of harm while removing most forms of recourse available to those affected. Coupled with the way automated decisions are used to perform and then launder fraud on a massive scale, maybe we should target laws at the automation itself: Require decisio…

Cory Doctorow has talked about how "they" test these kinds of things on captive "audiences" - mainly children and prisoners - before expanding to the rest of us. I tend to add marginalized groups to that list. Even when a person can nominally be held accountable, it doesn't matter if you can't reach them, protected by an administrative or institutional barrier of some kind. Standardized testing and remote learning mo…

I want to dive into the "how to politely resist this in an effective way".

1. Opt out of these things as much as you can. Often times you can't opt out of the underlying actual thing (school, banking, etc) but you can opt out of the terrible new thing. You don't need to explain to people a deep "why". Instead give the people polite, reasonable (and generally true) excuses. "Oh, it doesn't work on my computer". "Oh, I don't understand how to use it." "I don't really like technology."

2. Help other people, particularly children, the elderly, the vulnerable, etc, in opting out of these things and bypassing them when needed. Help them fill out the paperwork, call the right people, cause the right fuss. Frequently, you'll find by helping one person they'll go on to help other people do the same thing.

3. Tell other people, in appropriate times and circumstances, that you don't care for these things and opt out of them. Don't be weirdly obnoxious about it, but when someone gripes about it or complains about it not working for them.. just agree with them. Most people don't like these things. These things don't generally work (for anyone). They suck. Let other people know you agree with them that these things suck.

There are cases where this doesn't work - automated account closures, automated sentancing, rent shenanigans. You can of course do the usual things of bugging your congress critters (and you should) but you should also use the full range of pressure available to you. Don't do business with shitty companies - and when they inevitably try to sell to you, tell them why you don't do business with them. When a politician supports automated sentancing tools, explain to them why you aren't voting for them.

Surprisingly a little bit of pressure goes quite far.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#223
post #162

I'm somewhat surprised no one here views this as an automated decisionmaking problem It's increasingly clear that automating important decisions like this is causing a lot of harm while removing most forms of recourse available to those affected. Coupled with the way automated decisions are used to perform and then launder fraud on a massive scale, maybe we should target laws at the automation itself: Require decisio…

Wholeheartedly agree. If you don't want to pay customer service people, do not enter or build a business that requires serving customers at scale.

The problem is that the likes of Google, Meta, and Amazon are normalising (have normalised?) "scale via automation" and are making bank on an unprecedented scale as a result.

If they can do it, so can we.

Just like offshoring manufacturing and service centres to places that pay the lowest wages (even though us proles aren't allowed to buy entertainment media from those same places, but that's a separate topic)

Race you to the bottom!

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#224

Protip to anybody who wants to spend an extended amount of time overseas - you’re looking at a strong opportunity to join the list of people who have their accounts closed. Red flags include quantity of overseas debit card transactions, setting a PO Box (this one apparently is a very big red flag to banks) or a PMB as your bank address, lots of wire transfers. Open multiple bank accounts at different banks, use servi…

Agree with everything until the end.

There should be more enforcement on dubious banking transactions, numerous Australian banks have had some big fines because they were literally facilitating money laundering on cartel-scale amounts of money for years. Makes me cringe when they crack down on a Joe Nobody who's obviously not, at even a quick glance, some kind of mule / druglord.

By crypto I'm assuming you mean USD.

Not only USD, but actual US weapons in the hands of US adversaries.

Sigh.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#225
post #162

I'm somewhat surprised no one here views this as an automated decisionmaking problem It's increasingly clear that automating important decisions like this is causing a lot of harm while removing most forms of recourse available to those affected. Coupled with the way automated decisions are used to perform and then launder fraud on a massive scale, maybe we should target laws at the automation itself: Require decisio…

[deleted]

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#226
post #162

I'm somewhat surprised no one here views this as an automated decisionmaking problem It's increasingly clear that automating important decisions like this is causing a lot of harm while removing most forms of recourse available to those affected. Coupled with the way automated decisions are used to perform and then launder fraud on a massive scale, maybe we should target laws at the automation itself: Require decisio…

Every app should have a signature that includes the devs that worked on it, the business manager that requested it, and the IT leadership that oversaw its use.

This is already done for financial statements.

If you put out software that is actively causing harm, you should know your fingerprints are on it

Employees like devs would be protected by professional insurance. That would cause bad management to shape up, or otherwise lose inaurance coverage.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#227
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very obvious utility in the US which should be able to prevent this: The US Postal Service. It's federally required to exist, and services all Americans already. Basic banking services should be one of the things it is expanded to provide in a minimal, safe fashion (i.e. no loans or lending, but guaranteed electronic banking and funds transfer services).

I don’t see the connection between the Postal Service and banking. Is it just it was historically there? If that’s the case, you could attach it to any department.

banking does sometimes require actual money still, much more so if you're poorer. What's another institution that has offices everywhere, ships things every day, and privately and securely stores things for huge numbers of customers? Remember, DMVs/RMVs are state-level.

Hell, they're even surprisingly used to keeping large amounts of valuable paper safe. It wasn't that long ago that you could make a lot of money stealing stamp sheets.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#228
post #165
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No such thing as "an algorithm run amuck" - more like "another department run amuck". Someone programmed the thing, someone is running it deliberately.

Or rather two departments being very good boys: these banks claim to have human reviewers. A first level of automatic flagging (with people running that) and a human review that the flagging deserves debanking (with people doing and running that).

The second, human level is off shore and very tough to get clear with even if nothing was truly wrong. Chase once gave me exactly 7 days around the holidays to present a power of attorney, with no way to escalate or just leave the account frozen a little longer. Since that crew is sitting in the other side of the planet and Christmas is meaningless they didn't care. I survived that episode with them but it gave me the heads up to look around.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#229
post #41

Banks hide behind Bank Secrecy Act and other regulations in order to debank people. Chase closed my account, and the reason Chase gave: "Financial institutions have an obligation to know our customers and monitor transactions that flow through our customers' accounts. After careful consideration, we decided to close your account because of unexpected activity on these or another Chase account." I didn't dispute any t…

> If a bank has 1M accounts, regulators want to see a certain number of SAR/CTR filings, a certain number of account closures; regulators go hard on financial institutions, if the latter don't follow the industry average (#SARs, #CTRs, #closures)

Oh lord, this just asks for gamification.

If there's a multi-million dollar customer and a five thousand dollar customer, who do you reckon they'd rather lose in order to reach their quotas?

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#230
post #90
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a tip, stick with Bitcoin, not crypto.

How can I pay my bills with bitcoin while being debanked?

> How can I pay my bills with bitcoin while being debanked?

Acting as an alternative to krupan's Bitcoin-centric answer:

- There are other crypto rails other than Bitcoin that could be used in its place. USDC & stablecoins in general is going to be the medium-term winners in this space, as more services are set up to help people pay their bills with stablecoins. Here are 2 services that I've found within a few minutes of searching "USDC pay bill":

https://www.spritz.finance/blog/pay-bills-crypto

https://bitpay.com/bill-pay/

- As for transaction costs, L2s are already being deployed, and their fees will only be further reduced as improvements to the L2 networks are made.

https://l2fees.info/

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