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Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

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Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#81

Post by crote »

oasisbob wrote: post #11
650REDHAIR wrote: post #5

The most important lesson learned here is not to ever deal with retail banking at the branch. Not only do they not care they aren’t given the authority or autonomy to help you. By trying to do this at multiple branches across the country OP likely made the problem worse as those actions raise suspicions even more. With that much money after the first day of inaction by support he should have CC’d every department fro…

This may vary a lot by bank. At the small regional bank I used to work for accounts were assigned a home branch, typically where the account was first opened, and that branch had enhanced responsibilities in terms of servicing and maintaining the relationship. Chase is big enough that their KYC fallout queues probably have an entire team working them, and it wouldn't matter who else you CC on the email. ("Hey Joe, co…

> Chase is big enough that their KYC fallout queues probably have an entire team working them, and it wouldn't matter who else you CC on the email.

The trick is to become so incredibly annoying that some CxO / VP is going to bump you ahead in the queue and assign a dedicated customer experience manager.

Personally, if a bank were to steal $180.000 of my money, a few weeks in I'd probably start considering sticking "Chase is a criminal organization" posters on the doors of their regional headquarters, or getting tickets to industry events just so I can ask them at the Q&A where my money is. They may think "computer says no" is an acceptable answer, but that doesn't mean I can't make their life a living hell too - so why not make my problem our problem?

Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#82

Post by throwway120385 »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #60

I have been burned by a bank (stagecoach in red field) very similarly. I now only do my financial transactions with smallish credit unions. Big enough that they can have the services I need, but small enough that my business is a large-ish part of the Unions' business. This works internationally, not just US or Europe. Most nations have some sort of a member-owned financial cooperatives, equivalent to credit unions.

Yeah their abysmal handling of my wife's stolen checks convinced me that we need to dump them as fast as possible. One of the agents basically said "I'm not even going to bother asking my manager to expedite the funds. Don't even bother. They're just going to say no." My wife insisted, and so the agent went away for 60 seconds and came back and said "Okay those funds are back in your account have a nice day." Every interaction with their agents from their fraud department to the regular CSRs went like that. Even getting them to freeze the account didn't happen with the first or second agent she talked to.

Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#83

Post by otteromkram »

pickledish wrote: post #61

Another story about a startup and chase, from the person who founded hashicorp, it's a fun read: https://mitchellh.com/writing/my-startup-banking-story (edited since at first I remembered it being more negative about chase in particular -- but it's really just funny!)

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.

Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#84

Post by lisper »

gojomo wrote: post #10

Crypto solves this. Well, eventually, after initially making it worse, because all your crypto-adjacent transactions in the meantime make legacy banks extra-hair-trigger suspicious.

> Crypto solves this.

Not really. It just replaces this problem with a different but equally difficult problem: managing your crypto keys, which is a skill in and of itself. And if you hire someone to do it for you now you are right back where you started, trusting a third party.

The right answer IMHO is to do business with a bank that is small enough that you have a contact there whom you personally know and will pick up the phone when you call.

Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#85

Post by jmvoodoo »

CliffStoll wrote: post #26

Similar experience: Citibank Retirement. I had about $80,000 in IRA/CD's. I'd created & contributed to them over a period of 35 years. Last year, it's time to retire, and Citibank won't give me half the money. It seems that some CD's are for "Cliff Stoll" and some for "Clifford Stoll". Citibank Retirement demanded a "Marriage Certificate, Divorce Decree, or Court Order" to demonstrate that "Cliff Stoll" is the same p…

Unrelated, but I read your book in the 90s as a teenager and it had a huge impact on my life. Still one of my favorite books. Thank you.

Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#86

Post by CliffStoll »

dmoy wrote: post #38
CliffStoll wrote: post #26

Similar experience: Citibank Retirement. I had about $80,000 in IRA/CD's. I'd created & contributed to them over a period of 35 years. Last year, it's time to retire, and Citibank won't give me half the money. It seems that some CD's are for "Cliff Stoll" and some for "Clifford Stoll". Citibank Retirement demanded a "Marriage Certificate, Divorce Decree, or Court Order" to demonstrate that "Cliff Stoll" is the same p…

Congrats on the retiring! Are you still doing the hats & bottles or did you retire from that too?

Thanks D'moy! I'm still having fun with Klein bottles and other topological manifolds. Toying with immersions of the projective plane and several knot embeddings.

At the moment, retirement mainly means "start taking out required minimum distributions".

All the same, I wonder: How do you retire from a marginally profitable nano-business built upon glass mathematical shapes? How'd I ever reach 74 years old?

Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#87

Post by Djdjur7373bb »

codetrotter wrote: post #33
CliffStoll wrote: post #26

Similar experience: Citibank Retirement. I had about $80,000 in IRA/CD's. I'd created & contributed to them over a period of 35 years. Last year, it's time to retire, and Citibank won't give me half the money. It seems that some CD's are for "Cliff Stoll" and some for "Clifford Stoll". Citibank Retirement demanded a "Marriage Certificate, Divorce Decree, or Court Order" to demonstrate that "Cliff Stoll" is the same p…

Infuriating. That kind of thing is what makes me wish I could not have to ever deal with a bank ever again.

It's this exact sentiment that drives many to crypto, despite the challenges in spending it at this point.

Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#89

Post by [deleted] »

throwway120385 wrote: post #36
650REDHAIR wrote: post #5

The most important lesson learned here is not to ever deal with retail banking at the branch. Not only do they not care they aren’t given the authority or autonomy to help you. By trying to do this at multiple branches across the country OP likely made the problem worse as those actions raise suspicions even more. With that much money after the first day of inaction by support he should have CC’d every department fro…

I would've had a lawyer on retainer within the first week and had them in touch with the legal department until I got my check. We've had similar weird issues with our home address and the mortgage company that suddenly got cleared up when we put our lawyer in touch with their lawyer and there turned out to be a very simple form and process for changing the address of the property.

[deleted]

Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business

#90

Post by galaxyLogic »

Consider also that you probably could not sue your Bank if you wanted to. All the small print you agreed to.

This was brought to my awareness due to the recent news about how somebody could not sue Disney because they had opened a Disney+ streaming account.

We need financial reform customer protections. Let us hope the party that fights for big businesses and billionaires does not win in the next election.

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