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Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

nytimes.com

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Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#361

Post by jltsiren »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #78

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…

Protip to anybody dealing with a bureaucracy, no matter whether it's automated or human-based, public or private, fair or oppressive: don't look weird. Bureaucracies function by finding the right category and using the appropriate process for the category. If they can't place you in the right category, you may be in trouble. To avoid that, you can try using products and services that signal the right category, even when they are more expensive and less convenient than the alternatives.

Of course, that doesn't help if you don't just look weird but actually are weird. Spending a lot of time overseas is not weird in itself, because it's common enough. Some specific international situations are weird. Because such situations are rare, it's not cost-effective for the bureaucracy to develop processes for dealing with them fairly.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#362

Post by mindslight »

fencepost wrote: post #112
raincom wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they sent me a cashier check for a small balance (around $1000) I left, as Chase gave me 45 days heads up for closure. However, for some people, Chase dragged out until after CFPB complaints are filed. The case one should worry about these banks is this: you deposit a $500K check, or you got a wire for $500K; check was cleared on the sender's side. Now Chase/Big Bank holds your funds, saying that this check is f…

I'm very far from dealing with 500k personal banking transactions, but my immediate thought is that if you're doing so you're probably making mistakes. If it's revenue from sale of a company or similar, move it through escrow with your attorney. If it's a legal settlement, do the same. If you don't have an attorney but are dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars, get an attorney. If it's income from trading or…

One should get an attorney if they desire legal representation, period. Otherwise it's quite perverse to be contributing to one of the main guilds facilitating this cesspool of overregulation, just in the hopes that their social status is going to make a bank think twice. And also attorneys aren't immune from this. In fact, one reason to actually get an attorney is that you want to launder some money.

Also, business accounts aren't immune from this dynamic, as per the article. It seems like you're just grasping at bureaucratic straws here in search of the just world theory. But no, the whole thing is really an accountable terrible dynamic that will continue to get worse and worse until it affects enough people that the laws change.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#363

Post by WalterBright »

Clubber wrote: post #346
jimmydddd wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can never wrap my mind around the Walmart thing.

Not only do we subsidize their workforce, we pay for the police to arrest shoplifters for them.

Do you really want people to hire private police forces?

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#364

Post by HeartStrings »

shiroiuma wrote: post #295
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #78

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…

>use services like wise.com for transfers Last I heard, wise.com is outright stealing people's money now. Otherwise, this is a good heads-up. Banking for expats can be tricky; a lot of US financial institutions don't want to service customers who live overseas, and will automatically cancel your account if they find out you don't live in the US. The US is looking more and more like the old Soviet Union, where people…

If they are stealing money why haven’t they been sued in criminal court? Last time I checked, stealing was a crime in literally all countries.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#365

Post by Ridj48dhsnsh »

krupan wrote: post #109
zb3 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Lots of discussion in the comments here about how ingrained banks are into our current system. I do honestly see Bitcoin as a way out of that, but at this early stage of it, you'd probably have to get help from someone who is not debanked in order to interact with our heavily banked system. If you are honestly interested in this, take a close look at Strike.

> take a close look at Strike.

Could you clarify what you find interesting about it? I skimmed their website and looks like just a lightning wallet. Am I missing some key feature that helps one interact with fiat systems?

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#366

Post by mindslight »

redox99 wrote: post #206
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #78

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…

> Glad we have so much energy focusing on legit bankers instead of the crypto that is actually funding multiple US adversaries at this very moment Funny you criticize crypto, when it actually solves all the bullshit you're mentioning. It's so nice knowing for a fact that when I send or receive crypto, it will 100% arrive within moments, unlike the absolute shitfest that is international transfers (like SWIFT).

> Funny you criticize crypto [currency], when it actually solves all the bullshit you're mentioning.

Maybe if you're talking about Monero or another currency with the key security property of untraceability. Otherwise it's only a matter of time until cryptocurrency exchanges require documentation about the sources of money, which will likely resemble a parallel blockchain that carries wallet metadata.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#367

Post by avs733 »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #242
advael wrote: 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…

> I'm somewhat surprised no one here views this as an automated decisionmaking problem It isn't an automated decision-making problem. Every instance involves humans in the loop making the final decision. And that article makes clear -- via spokesperson statements -- that it is auditable and the banks know exactly why accounts were terminated.

I know what you are saying but I want to counter the interpretation a bit.

What the spokespeople say is a claim…it’s not truth, we don’t have independent evidence of it, of course they would claim that.

Even if they did have human in the loop - what does that meaningfully look like? Are those humans given the authority to actually overrule the decision? Are they given the evidence to do so? Are they punished or perceive that they will be punished if they do?

I don’t think taking the banks answer to any of those questions at face value is responsible citizenship. Yes it’s what they said - no I don’t think that supports calling it reality.

I’ve mentioned this in other threads related to medical billing. My wife and I have had crazy medical bills for bizarre things the last few years. They are never correct, often they are basically fiction. The people you talk to just point to the bill as if it is inherently correct because it’s the bill. I’ve shown pictures of me on vacation on another continent that same day they charged me for a service…well the bills the bill. That’s not human in the loop, it’s a human shield around the automated decision making loop.

It’s a fixable problem, make incorrect billing an actual crime. It already is to mid bill the government, just not people.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#369

Post by tjpnz »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #304
raincom wrote: 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…

You don’t have an ombudsman? Or something like that? Here in India we can even make them sing exact reason for rejecting credit card applications and if they just did it shoddily then they have to actually issue it. They just can’t say “internal policy” or shit like “discretion”.

Same thing in New Zealand. If you can't get something worked out with your bank you complain to the ombudsman and the bank must respond. Sometimes, even the mention of a potential ombudsman complaint is enough to grease the wheels.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#370

Post by momirlan »

WalterBright wrote: post #347
thebradbain wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t game something when the maximum award is still designed to be Not Enough On Its Own. That describes quite literally every US government aid program— from food stamps and school lunch debt at the very bottom of the financial ladder, to grants+loans for those who have demonstrated the academic merit to get into college, to healthcare and social security for literally every citizen in this entire country. Ther…

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." -- Karl Marx We don't need to imagine how that would work out. There are plenty of examples.

yes, there are the millions dead in various "cultural" and agri-"cultural revolutions, the millions dead in gulags because they opposed the horrors of communism. i grew up in it, and it makes me vomit when someone mentions that murderous ideology.
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