241–250 of 282 posts
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It gets a lot easier to be annoying when you add meatspace antics to your portfolio.
> Yes officer, this neerdowell right here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_Fargo_cross-selling_scan...
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I’ve had business accounts with almost every large US bank. I’ve founded quite a few businesses - venture-backed and bootstrapped product and consulting companies, going back to the 90s. I’ll repeat: I’ve never had an experience as bad as the one I had with Chase. Not sure what would possess you to post something so condescending about a statement of opinion and then to make incorrect assumptions about the extent of…
> I’ve had business accounts with almost every large US bank. Ok. I would suggest making that very clear up front in your article. I think that would considerably increase the article's impact.
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> I’ve had business accounts with almost every large US bank. Ok. I would suggest making that very clear up front in your article. I think that would considerably increase the article's impact.
I’m not the OP and I didn’t write an article. I wrote a comment about my own experience with Chase, which you quoted and responded to.
Oh, sorry, I didn't realize that. That was stupid of me.
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The Chase Sapphire card was rated as the best travel card. I had no idea that I had been flagged personally at the time I applied. I can't remember why I chose them for a business account. At the time I was working under the assumption that this was a "lightning strike" type of event which could have happened with any bank. I'm more inclined to believe it's Chase-specific now, or at least more likely with Chase, esp.…
> I'm more inclined to believe it's Chase-specific now, or at least more likely with Chase, esp. based on other anecdotes in this thread! The only reason anecdotes in this thread are about Chase is that Chase is the bank you mentioned in your article. If you had mentioned any other of the big banks I am sure you would get similar anecdotes. All of the big banks work basically the same way. For example, as I commented…
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Who said you have to deal with a bank? That's not written into law, is it? Try a credit union if you want to avoid banks.
Is the experience that different? I've never tried one, but I assumed the level of bureaucracy must be similar in order to defend against fraud and fulfill regulatory requirements.
At that level of assets, you're usually not thousands of branches, it's probably just tens, and the organization is small enough to be based on empowering people to use their brains as opposed to strict script following and zero thinking.
Credit unions are a bit more flexible than a small bank though, because of shared branching. It's not as good as they say it is, but you can go to selected other credit union branches and get limited teller services.
Apparently banks can be tough to work with for obscure reasons.
Own little case:
While in NYS (US, New York State), did personal banking with, false name, XYZ Bank. Somehow I was assigned to a particular branch office of XYZ in NYS.
Moved to TN (Tennessee). Eventually ran out of paper checks, so ordered a new supply. The account was "joint" with my wife; thus, her name was also printed on the checks. Since my wife had been dead for 20+ years, I guessed (first mistake) that it would be more appropriate to have her name removed from the new batch of checks I was ordering.
Did get the new checks and used a few (mostly I don't pay with paper checks).
Then got some communications from "my" branch office of XYZ bank in NYS that I should come to the branch office and sign my name to show that I am the real owner or whatever of the account.
Apparently due to the new checks without my wife's name, someone at XYZ Bank was afraid that I was doing something nasty to my wife, to separate her from our joint money, etc.
Soooo, they wanted me to drive from TN to NYS for WHAT THE F????
So, I called and got sent to "my" XYZ Bank branch office in NYS.
On the phone to that office I explained:
"My wife died 20+ years ago. You are welcome to drive to Indiana, to the little town of Warsaw, take the main road south out of town, drive about 15 miles, turn left, east, to the little village of Claypool. There you will find a school and a church. The church has a graveyard. There you will find the tombstone of my wife ....
For my signature, you already have hundreds of copies of that. I will NOT drive to NYS. For more I will gladly talk to you. But I will not talk to lawyers. If you involve a lawyer, then I will immediately close out my account. If you want, I'll order a new batch of checks that again has my wife's name printed on the checks."
That worked. Otherwise I like XYZ Bank a lot. But, since XYZ Bank has no branch office near me in Tennessee, really I should get an account with a bank with an office where I live. Actually, while in NYS, I did open a "business" account at a branch of Chase. It was a small branch, small office, no Greek columns, just a few nice women, trying to be a local bank, for businesses, yes, but also for consumers. Likely gave them the form I'd just gotten from NYS "Doing business as". Checking, Chase does have a small branch where I live. And I have a small balance in that account.
Hmm. Sounds like anyone with a SMB (small, medium business) should have more bank accounts, not fewer!!! Sounds like, before my business starts getting revenue, I should get an account at a local bank where I can be known in person and use that as my main business bank.
Also lesson: Banks are legalistic, have too many rules, have low common sense, like lawyers too much, can be simplistic close to brain-dead, tend to be paranoid, and can generate expensive legal problems. Go slow on crypto, more than the necessary one LLC (limited liability company), etc.
Addendum:
For this discussion about banking, we all should understand at least a little about financial institutions
SMB -- Small Medium Business
KYC -- Know Your Customer
SAR -- Suspicious Activity Reports
BSA -- Bank Secrecy Act
Maybe it was SARs? > In the specific case of “Why did the bank close my account, seemingly for no reason? Why will no one tell me anything about this? Why will no one take responsibility?”, the answer is frequently that the bank is following the law. As we’ve discussed previously, banks will frequently make the “independent” “commercial decision” to “exit the relationship” with a particular customer after that custom…
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It's definitely exacerbated by being a big bank though. If I have a problem with my local bank, I can literally walk into the branch and probably just talk to a VP about it straight-away if needed.
This is even more true at a local credit union. Add in the co-op network of credit unions, where you can go to any branch of any of the member unions (50k+ branches last time I checked, but it's been awhile) and it's hard for me to understand why people bother with these big banks.
You can't just go to any branch, you've got to confirm they do shared branching. And then they may likely have withdrawal limits that are pretty low. I recently tried to pull $2,500 cash to buy a project car, and couldn't get it done in one day. If I had a big bank, I don't think it would be an issue; or if I had an account at a local bank or credit union with a convenient branch.
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Did you read to the end? > I want to make it clear that Chase could've been an excellent banking partner. I never gave them the chance. I never told them what my business does or what I'd use the money for. I never talked to anyone (besides saying what I needed to get off the phone). This story isn't a cautionary tale about Chase, it is rather recounting my naivete as a young, first-time startup founder.
Ah, you are right! it's been a while since I read the post, and I mis-remembered it as being more negative about chase than it was. I'll edit my comment as such, thanks for pointing it out
It was a great post and very informative, especially the part about bank account being open after transferring all the funds out. I guess this is why some of the seemingly useless planning meetings we all have are actually necessary.
Thanks for the post!
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> It's not, Phoenix is a non-custodial wallet. What difference does that make? You're still trusting them not to have put in a backdoor, and to have sufficient security in their development process that an attacker cannot insert a backdoor. Also, what happens to your keys if your smartphone fails? Is there a backup? Is that self-hosted too? Is it adequately encrypted? Unless you do everything yourself (which ultimate…
At which point does this no true Scotsman stops? Controlling your keys (yes this implies a backup, all wallets guide/help you to do it these days), having access to the source code of your wallet, and being able to verify the data of Bitcoin's public and open blockchain is obviously much better than blindly trusting your bank and getting cut off from your assets at any point through NO fault of your own. > Until your…
Maybe for you. Not for everyone. The vast majority of people don't have the technical chops to audit a code base. They have to trust someone else to do it for them.
> slightly less iredeemably in some cases
But that's significant. And if you learn how to work the human system, you can improve your odds much more than "slightly". That's a skill that many people have a much easier time picking up than coding or public-key crypto.