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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

#601

Post by refurb »

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…

> Banks hide behind Bank Secrecy Act and other regulations in order to debank people.

Banks do what the government tells them to do.

They are more than happy to launder drug money, they don't care. You think they close the account of some random person who made too many cash deposits to protect themselves from the customer?

No, they protect themselves from the government who will hit them with massive fines when they "fund terrorism".

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#602

Post by rosmax_1337 »

Either we completely get rid of the idea that everyone has a bank account which they use for everyday transactions, going back to cash as default. Or we guarantee everyone an account which can not be closed for any reason whatsoever, at a state run bank. What we have right now, is untenable and a true sign of a society which has lost it's bearings completely.

A bank account nowadays is not some kind of privilege which can only be granted citizens which hold the correct political beliefs and have never upset whatever stupid algoritm they have in place to check for "money laundering". A bank account nowadays is simply a modern prerequisite.

Let me be clear, if the bank "freezes" someones account, I think they are in moral right to use violence against bank officials in self defense. The bank has attacked the individual in a meaningful way, akin to digital sabotage, but way worse.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#603

Post by wizerdrobe »

dboreham wrote: post #490

I didn't get de-banked, but I had a similar wacky experience last year with Wells Fargo. I was buying a car from a guy in Salt Lake City. Not a terribly expensive car. I live in Montana but at the time I was physically in Northern California on a trip. I'd driven to SLC and looked at the car, met the seller, and done various things to ensure I knew his identity (e.g. he used his work email and he had a medium profile…

I have two great (bad) fraud stories with TD Bank.

I once had my card declined buying groceries, which ultimately took several hours to unlock. The cause? The $1.25 transaction for the fancy air compressor at the gas station to fill my tires. No biggie, had to re-shop when my card was eventually unlocked a few hours later by their slack-ass fraud department.

The second story, I once had my card declined purchasing groceries and found my account was -$750 dollars or so. An old gym I had cancelled my membership was acquired by another firm, and this new firm apparently thought I was still a member and owed several years worth of $54 a month fees. Now, instead of doing (3 * 12 * 54) in a single transaction, or $54 transactions 36 times they just started hitting my account for $100 in serial, then for some reason switching to $50 in serial, and then $25 in serial until I was comically in the hole. The bank manager was able to freeze and deny further charges from the firm, initiate a fraud complaint, and ultimately had my money back in a week. Thankfully I had some cash in my safe for the duration.

What boggles me is they were unable to interpret a company for which I had never made a prior transaction jackpotting my account as a fraud, but Thank God they stopped my $1.25 tire pressure refill.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#604

Post by _heimdall »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #555
robertlagrant wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a solution - not sure if everyone's ready to hear it yet: Decentralized finance Carrying some emergency cash is also a solution for this sort of thing.

right but how much emergency cash is needed? He had a transfer of 6000 plus whatever else? Should one have 6000 in emergency cash available? Seems excessive. Anyway lots of countries seem to think they are soon going cashless, so good luck with that.

Going off of this article at least, it can take a few weeks for a bank to either reopen your account or send you the balance. Having around a month's worth of emergency cash would make sense to be able to handle an account closure like this.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#605

Post by Obscurity4340 »

ArabicBaklava wrote: post #481

Bank of america did this to me, in the same weekend i was moving out. All my stuff was in the car, it was a friday at 3PM and i was in the gas station. I couldn't fill up my gas. Called and they told me to come to the bank with two forms of ID. When I arrived to the bank the fraud department was operating in NY (3hrs ahead) and they were closing, so they told me to come next tuesday (it was a long weekend). I went ho…

Jesus, this story :( . Your university couldn't wait a few days, their Finance department could't help? What a crazy outcome

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#606

Post by refurb »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #197
gnicholas wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What qualifies as an "extended amount of time overseas"? If you go on a vacation for 6-8 weeks, does that get you in trouble? I would think banks would want to keep big spenders who can afford months-long international travel.

I travel overseas a lot to Europe and Asia anywhere from a few weeks to almost a year. I VPN, but not always back to the US. I use wise.com. I kept my US address. I’ve had zero problems. I think we’re all getting excited about anecdotes.

Indeed. As someone who lived overseas I knew plenty of people who maintained US accounts and US credit cards. The only time an issue ever came up is if they told the bank they no longer lived in the US. Then boom account closure.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#607

Post by djaro »

dale_glass wrote: post #110
krupan wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin, not crypto. And poster has to be cryptic and/or sarcastic because even though it's a solution to this very problem staring us in the face, people here shut down any intelligent conversation about it both with down votes and tired, long winded, oft repeated, uninformed arguments against it. It's pretty discouraging, honestly

Bitcoin is crypto. There's even a whole lot of cryptocurrencies based on Bitcoin with a variable or two changed somewhere.

But the problem is, Crypto is full of scams, so to avoid that negative connotation the latest Bitcoin talking point has become "Bitcoin isn't crypto".

Which is stupid, because Bitcoin is THE number 1 crypto, but for some reason they're all claiming it isn't.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#608

Post by Quindecillion »

fragmede wrote: post #574
mcny wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a solution - not sure if everyone's ready to hear it yet: Decentralized finance. I want the pendulum to swing the other way. Everybody gets and gets to keep forever an account at the Reserve Bank. > self-hosted Ethereum wallet I'm sorry. The technology might be fine But I simply do not trust the people involved with cryptocurrency. Not just the scammers such as SBF, I don't trust the "victims" to make wise…

A crypto currency pegged to the dollar won't "go to the moon". If you're looking for that, there's USDT. Unfortunately, when trying to pick a coin, it's like trying to choose the best programming language. Each coin has its own ins and outs, there isn't one that is the best. They have their own time and place. A lot of people see this and want to use them in inappropriate places, but doesn't mean there aren't appropr…

> Each coin has its own ins and outs, there isn't one that is the best. They have their own time and place.

This is just wishy washy rubbish trying to appear "diplomatic" and "balanced". Oh sure, you can mint some monkey jpegs or construct a needlessly complex and public smart contract for some esoteric "use case", but the truth is the majority of people in the world don't want or need those things.

People just want a money that works. You can send or receive it instantly across international borders, that no one can stop, and it doesn't lose it's value over the years.

Bitcoin is the only game in town, the "crypto bros" just don't realise it yet because they can make obscene amounts of money from pump and dump schemes with flashy marketing about "use cases" and "yield".

Wake up or get burned, again and again.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#610

Post by ricardobayes »

mcny wrote: post #544
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horrible. I've heard similar stories but this one's the worst by far. This shouldn't be allowed to ever happen again, such sudden closures without warning need to be illegal. The issue is banking is highly regulated but a lot of the regulation is about AML, terrorism screening and such. Not actually protecting customers from abuse but rather the other way around - banks are taking precautions to protect themselves fr…

> There is a solution - not sure if everyone's ready to hear it yet: Decentralized finance. I want the pendulum to swing the other way. Everybody gets and gets to keep forever an account at the Reserve Bank. > self-hosted Ethereum wallet I'm sorry. The technology might be fine But I simply do not trust the people involved with cryptocurrency. Not just the scammers such as SBF, I don't trust the "victims" to make wise…

"Crypto" as a whole broke the circle of trust for most ordinary people. Mocking cryptos now became so mainstream that UK television ran ads, calling out crypto believers.

Not to mention all of crypto on and off ramps are incredibly centralized.

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