[HN Gopher] Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business
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Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business
Author : nell
Score : 232 points
Date : 2024-08-23 16:38 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jxnl.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (jxnl.co)
| nell wrote:
| I followed the saga as Jason was going through this. You may not
| have the same sway as large entities if you are an indie dev.
| briandw wrote:
| I know that it's an extra expense, but shouldn't you get a lawyer
| involved first thing?
| jxnlco wrote:
| i was just a dude with 3 contractors, i figured it'd just get
| resolved cause i didnt do anything wrong...
| stuff4ben wrote:
| You run a business without a lawyer? Ballsy!
| appletrotter wrote:
| Not uncommon
| jxnlco wrote:
| indie consulting is pretty small scale
| BizarroLand wrote:
| It probably wouldn't hurt you to make a lawyer
| acquaintance and put one on retainer. A few hundred bucks
| upfront and you'll have someone you can call to help take
| care of things like this.
| briandw wrote:
| I can absolutely see myself falling into that same trap.
| Thinking that it's just a misunderstanding and that it'll get
| resolved any day now, just have to do one more thing. They
| can't be that unreasonable right? The unfortunate lesson that
| that you have to assume the worst and escalate right away.
| commercialnix wrote:
| This.
| commercialnix wrote:
| You need access to a good lawyer or you're going to get run
| over. When you sue, you can sue for legal costs, damages to
| your business, and punitive damages.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Lawyer would be great but it may be that you have agreed to a
| contract which says you cannot sue them, only arbitration.
| criddell wrote:
| Arbitration isn't necessarily a bad thing. And you probably
| still want to have a lawyer involved.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Diversifying in many cases won't help you.
|
| If a bank suspects fraud, they can tell other banks about their
| suspicion, which will cause _all_ banks to freeze your accounts
| and none will be able to tell you why.
| leotravis10 wrote:
| Especially if/when a person or business goes into the
| ChexSystems "blacklist" [1] where that individual or business
| can't have a bank account in the US, Canada, and EU for five to
| seven years.
|
| [1] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/banking/blocked-by-
| chexsy...
| meowster wrote:
| I wonder if anyone has successfully sued a credit-reporting
| business for libel.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Would this also apply to credit unions? I feel like a credit
| union is less likely to give a f*** about what some bank tells
| them, and a bank probably doesn't want to help credit unions
| anyway. Am I wrong?
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| 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 from legal@ to the C-suite.
| oasisbob wrote:
| 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, come quick! Just got an email from someone claiming
| they need their money we just froze...")
| calmbonsai wrote:
| Can confirm KYC really helps (in reverse) at small/regional
| banks. Shout-out to Midfirst Bank
| https://www.midfirst.com/about-us for walking the walk.
|
| I deliberately flow a higher percentage of transactions
| through my, literally 10 min walk away, regional bank branch.
| I also occasionally (~once/month), literally walk into the
| lobby (shocking I know) to say "hi!" when withdrawing cash at
| the ATM for travel.
|
| They know me by name & face. I'm not just a number to the
| tellers, the manager, and the vp, and likewise back to them.
|
| Shockingly, I get fees waived for wires the occasional
| cashier's check, and am appraised of anything else going on
| with the website, upcoming services, and pending transactions
| (even at high relative holding percentages from one-time
| routes) flow through like butter.
|
| Relationship banking at its finest.
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| But this isn't a KYC issue and clearly escalating worked.
|
| Any time I've ever had issues that weren't resolved within
| 24hrs by t1 support I've sent a succinct, mostly emotionless
| email to anyone I could find and it's worked every time.
| Phone companies, banks, hell even the government.
| crote wrote:
| > 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?
| mandibles wrote:
| > Chase is a criminal organization
|
| This should be your operating assumption from Day 1.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| >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.
|
| Hard to be annoying when they can just completely ignore
| and redirect it to /dev/null
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| It gets a lot easier to be annoying when you add
| meatspace antics to your portfolio.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| > Yes officer, this neerdowell right here.
| mminer237 wrote:
| 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.
| syntheticnature wrote:
| Yes, though banks use "VP" in a title the same way "Senior"
| is used in software.
| bluGill wrote:
| This is a legal thing - a vice president or above is
| required to sign off on a large loan (like a house loan
| which isn't all that big to a bank). Thus banks give lots
| of people vice president titles, but those people don't
| have any authority except to give the large loans. They get
| an impressive title though.
| smeej wrote:
| 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.
| nraynaud wrote:
| When I looked at local credit unions in Arizona, none of
| them would be able to deal with international transactions.
| skybrian wrote:
| Sometimes your credit union turns out to be Patelco and you
| get locked out for a while [1].
|
| Since we can't vet a bank's IT infrastructure, having
| multiple bank accounts seems like the only way to guard
| against certain risks.
|
| [1] https://www.northbaybusinessjournal.com/article/industr
| ynews...
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| The only reason I'm not currently banking at a credit union
| is because my wife prefers banks. I can't understand why
| she does, but ultimately marital harmony is worth more to
| me than using a credit union. If it wasn't for that, I
| would never have left my credit union in a million years.
| They rock.
| jxnlco wrote:
| yeah it was hard to fit in my travel schedule, i totally agree
| it was a terrible experience losing contact and starting over
| with many people
| throwway120385 wrote:
| 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.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I'm going to have to say that getting a lawyer on board with
| that much money after the second obstacle would be first
| priority.
| physhster wrote:
| Business or Personal, do not ever rely on a single bank. Ever.
| Have a backup, ideally far enough from your "main" bank that any
| issue doesn't bleed over.
| benzible wrote:
| About 10 years ago a startup I co-founded had about $3M in a
| Chase account. We received a notification that they were closing
| our account within 30 days. We weren't able to get any
| information but I assume this was a KYC false positive. The only
| thing I can think of is that we had some investors from the
| Middle East. We had no problem withdrawing our funds but since
| then, I've opened another business account and a personal travel
| credit card with Chase, both of which were shut down within
| weeks, so apparently I'm personally flagged for life.
| jxnlco wrote:
| holy shit. They never gave me an answer but the last thing the
| KYC team did (outside of executive branch) was just confirm a
| 25k invoice =_=
| benzible wrote:
| Just for posterity, we received this on 6/28/2013. Looks like
| they actually gave us 60 days.
|
| > Dear [redacted] Inc.
|
| > A review of our records indicates that we are unable to
| retain your above-referenced account(s) (the "Accounts") at
| JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. (the "Bank").
|
| > The terms and conditions governing the Accounts ("Account
| Rules") provide that the Bank may close your Accounts at any
| time. Although the Account Rules do not require the Bank to
| provide you with advance notice of the termination of the
| Accounts, as a courtesy, please be advised that the Accounts
| will be terminated and closed after the close of business on
| 08/26/2013. Any items presented for payment on the Accounts and
| not paid prior to termination will be returned unpaid. If the
| Accounts were covered by Overdraft Protection, as that term is
| defined in the Account Rules, such Overdraft Protection will
| terminate with respect to the Accounts on the Termination Date.
|
| > Please do not deposit checks to the Accounts within five (5)
| business days of the Termination Date or any earlier date that
| you close the Accounts. Please arrange to cause any Automated
| Clearing House or ACH deposits or transfers to the Accounts to
| be terminated prior to closure. Provided that no checks have
| been deposited to your Accounts within the five (5) business
| day period before the Accounts are closed and no deposits of
| any kind have been made to your Accounts within a two (2)
| business day period before such closure, upon closure the Bank
| will, at your risk, mail to you at the address set forth above
| a check for the balance of your Accounts, less any service
| charges assessed to the Accounts. If deposits are made to the
| Accounts prior to closure inconsistent with the foregoing, the
| Bank will mail your check as soon as reasonably possible
| following closure of the Accounts. If you wish to make other
| arrangements for receipt of any funds remaining in the Accounts
| or if you have questions, please contact 1-877-691-8086 OPTION-
| NUMBER-1.
|
| > Notwithstanding the Bank's intent to allow the Accounts to
| remain open until as set forth above, the Bank reserves the
| right to close the Accounts earlier, at any time, for any
| reason, without notice.
|
| > Sincerely,
|
| > Chase Operating Loss Prevention
| Bluestein wrote:
| > Loss Prevention
|
| For "prevention," seems like a great way to lose customers
| ...
| wcarss wrote:
| did you retype this? Assuming not, I just noticed they made
| the "if" -> "fi" typo twice and in two different ways --
| interesting that what amounts to boilerplate can have that
| stuff get through.
| benzible wrote:
| It was a photo or scan attached to an old email, copied the
| text via Apple's OCR. I'll correct the text.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> the Bank may close your Accounts at any time...the Account
| Rules do not require the Bank to provide you with advance
| notice of the termination of the Accounts_
|
| I assume most of the big banks probably have similar
| language, which would be a huge red flag to me for a small
| business account. But what about banks like Mercury Bank,
| mentioned in the article as being more supportive of small
| businesses? Do their terms of service provide at least some
| kind of guarantee about due process if the bank has a
| question about your account?
| closeparen wrote:
| If a bank suspects you of money laundering, they cannot
| discuss it with you. A bank employee could go to federal
| prison just for leaking the existence of a suspicious
| activity report (SAR).
| mijoharas wrote:
| > I've opened another business account and a personal travel
| credit card with Chase
|
| Out of interest, why would you do that after your previous
| experience with them?
| benzible wrote:
| 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. based
| on other anecdotes in this thread! I was also inclined to
| believe that most large banks are terrible. For example, I
| have experienced extremely poor customer service with B of A,
| and Wells Fargo is a very sleazy company. However, my
| experience with Chase is by far the worst I've personally
| experienced.
|
| I'm a very happy customer of Mercury Bank for my current
| business, FWIW.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> 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 in
| another response upthread, they probably all have similar
| "we can screw your business any time we like and there's
| nothing you can do about it" language in their terms of
| service.
|
| _> my experience with Chase is by far the worst I 've
| personally experienced._
|
| Have any of your experiences with other big banks been
| small business accounts? If not, that's an obvious reason
| for your Chase experience to be worse.
| choilive wrote:
| Had a similar experience at a startup I co-founded. Chase's
| risk or compliance team suddenly decided to close our accounts.
| Possibly because we were in the crypto space.
| gojomo wrote:
| 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.
| xur17 wrote:
| This seems somewhat contentious, but having some assets outside
| of the banks is a pretty reasonable derisking mechanism.
| Bitcoin, and some stablecoins seem like a wise choice.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| My local credit union has gone from _anti crypto_ to _fully
| support_ ; I was one of a dozen or so people who were able to
| provide legitimate datapoints to support bitcoin usages that
| weren't illegal.
|
| So glad I was able to just walk in to the local HQ and have a
| sit-down with the person who ultimately authorized crypto
| exchange transactions. YMMV
| smeej wrote:
| Some crypto does. Many cryptos are worse.
|
| For example, USDC accounts can be frozen by a single entity
| with no recourse whatsoever.
| lisper wrote:
| > 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.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > managing your crypto keys, which is a skill in and of
| itself.
|
| Um, depending on how complicated/paranoid you want to get?
|
| Install the Phoenix wallet app and you've got your keys and
| Lightning node ready to go, pending added liquidity. Sure,
| it's not maximally secure, but a person can perform
| transactions outside the banking system pretty easily this
| way. No need to so consciously "manage" anything.
|
| Phone not secure enough? Fine - then get a hardware wallet
| like Ledger.
|
| But maybe I'm misunderstanding your point?
|
| > And if you hire someone to do it for you now you are right
| back where you started, trusting a third party.
|
| If, by hiring someone, you mean using a custodian like
| Kraken, then you're still solving a problem by not dealing
| with the traditional banking system. Sure, you're back to
| trusting a third party, but that's really not the issue at
| hand, but avoiding Big Bank.
|
| > 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.
|
| Seems like a nice idea, yet very optimistic. Is everyone
| supposed to have a personal contact from within a small bank?
| Probably works for some people, but involves luck and
| wouldn't scale. The issue isn't really being solved this way.
|
| The closest compromise might be to work with credit unions
| instead of banks.
| lisper wrote:
| > Install the Phoenix wallet
|
| That's trusting a third party.
|
| > get a hardware wallet like Ledger
|
| Again, trusting a third party, and one which had a data
| breach less than a year ago:
|
| https://www.ledger.com/blog/security-incident-report
|
| And even if you want to discount that, you still have the
| risk of physically losing the wallet or having it stolen.
|
| > If, by hiring someone, you mean using a custodian like
| Kraken,
|
| Yes, that's what I mean.
|
| > then you're still solving a problem by not dealing with
| the traditional banking system.
|
| And, like I said, replacing it with a different problem, of
| dealing with and trusting a crypto custodian.
|
| > Is everyone supposed to have a personal contact from
| within a small bank?
|
| In a perfect world, yes. In this world, anyone running a
| business should have at least one such contact.
|
| > The closest compromise might be to work with credit
| unions instead of banks.
|
| Yes, that's also a good solution, much better than crypto
| IMHO.
| throw101010 wrote:
| > That's trusting a third party.
|
| It's not, Phoenix is a non-custodial wallet. They provide
| one shortly-custodial service to on-board on the
| Lightning Network (to provide a seamless experience, but
| you can do the process manually with your own node if you
| prefer). Once the channel on LN is open, it is non-
| custodial and trustless.
|
| For Hardware Wallets, plenty of other providers exist,
| exempt of data breaches and dodgy services unlike Ledger.
| For Bitcoin Coldcard comes to mind.
|
| For the risk of physically losing your keys, seems like a
| less random, more in your control, risk than trusting
| Chase Bank, see OP.
|
| > trusting a crypto custodian
|
| If that's your choice, at least you have the option to
| avoid this with crypto... that's one thing I will never
| get with people who systematically bash Bitcoin, nobody
| forces you to use it, it provides you optionality and
| full control of your assets, something traditional bank
| and fiat do not offer at all, you are forced by the state
| to pay your taxes with the currency they tell you, you
| are practically forced to use banking as a cash only life
| is pretty complicated these days... so why hate on a new
| option.
| commercialnix wrote:
| > and one which had a data breach less than a year ago
|
| Did not impact the viability of the hardware product at
| all.
| commercialnix wrote:
| > but equally difficult problem: managing your crypto keys
|
| Yeah, equally difficult, if you have like room-temp IQ.
| pengaru wrote:
| When I first moved to the SF Bay it tickled me to find there was
| no retail Chase Bank presence at all.
|
| Then the financial collapse and bailouts happened, Chase scooped
| up WaMu, and now Chase is everywhere here. :sadpanda:
|
| I won't even take money from their ATMs if I can avoid it, my
| bank covers ATM fees, but f*ck giving that company another dime.
| wanderr wrote:
| Is there a bank you recommend? Mostly I use online banks but
| every now and then you just need to go to a physical bank. I am
| a bit nomadic so one with branches all over the country would
| be good, although I know those are the most likely to be
| terrible
| techsupporter wrote:
| Most credit unions participate in the credit union shared
| branching network, so I recommend joining your local credit
| union of choice. You can then go into the branches of several
| other credit unions to do most banking needs.
|
| The caveat is if there's a major problem, like here, then
| you'd need to deal directly with your home credit union.
| wanderr wrote:
| Oh wow, I had never heard of that. I already have a CU on
| the other side of the country that I still use for loans
| because they've always had the lowest rates. I'll have to
| see if they participate.
| martin_ wrote:
| Glad you got your money back Jason!
|
| Not often you get to read a post from the future, either ;)
| "posted on 2024/09/21"
| jxnlco wrote:
| fuck lol, i messed up the date but if i fix it it breaks the
| url
| tantalor wrote:
| Title is different?
|
| Should be: Chasing Chase: Why I'll Never Trust Chase Bank Again,
| A Yuppie Nightmare
| CliffStoll wrote:
| 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 person as "Clifford Stoll".
|
| Took more than 8 months, dozens of emails, five visits to
| Citibank offices, and a letter to the Citibank president, to
| shake loose money that I'd deposited across three decades.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Infuriating. That kind of thing is what makes me wish I could
| not have to ever deal with a bank ever again.
| otteromkram wrote:
| 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.
| Djdjur7373bb wrote:
| 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.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It is absolutely different.
|
| I can walk into my credit union's offices - they have
| just two branches - and talk to someone with decision
| making power. An actual human being picks up the phone if
| I call. Their customer service has been impeccable
| despite some complex asks.
|
| I am unlikely to be able to do this if someone steals my
| crypto.
|
| (My security question when calling in was once "you sent
| an email last week that made my boss very happy, what was
| it about?")
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Pros of a credit union: many processes are still
| manually-controlled
|
| Cons of a credit union: many processes are still
| manually-controlled
|
| There's a lot of scenarios where that's the lesser of two
| evils, though. And god it's nice to be able to walk into
| a branch, explain the situation to someone, and get "Let
| me see what I can do. There, all fixed" in reply.
|
| Instead of "Oh, the system won't let me do that."
| piperswe wrote:
| At my previous credit union (before moving), the local
| branch manager knew me and my family (mom, husband, etc)
| by name. And she either (1) had actual power to make
| things happen or (2) could just call the person that did
| in any given circumstance.
|
| This is a medium sized credit union, with a dozen or so
| branches.
| unanimous wrote:
| Banks are for-profit and credit unions are not-for-
| profit. Banks will do whatever they think they can get
| away with to increase their profits, which affects every
| interaction you have with them. I've had accounts at
| Citibank and now multiple credit unions, and I regret
| ever having had accounts at Citibank. They were
| constantly making things difficult in new ways. I don't
| know how the bureaucracy compares, but how they treat
| customers is definitely different.
| gopher_space wrote:
| The main difference is that a credit union actually wants
| clients at your income level. They're not necessarily
| more competent.
| Djdjur7373bb wrote:
| It's this exact sentiment that drives many to crypto, despite
| the challenges in spending it at this point.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Doubly infuriating because it's Cliff Stoll they fucked-with.
|
| At least I know never to do business with Citi.
| ghaff wrote:
| I've had some weird experiences related to my address although
| none were really a serious problem. My street name changed
| (probably when an interstate spur was put in about 40 years
| ago) and I _still_ have issues now and then with geolocation.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| >My street name changed and I still have issues now and then
| with geolocation.
|
| This happened at my previous house, except with an additional
| twist: the street name was changed to an identical
| streetname, _less than a mile away_ , but within a different
| city.
|
| Adding to the confusion, my address was duplicated _on that
| other street_ with a commercial brokerage which often gets
| sued. How do I know about these lawsuits? -- because several
| process servers showed up (over about eight years living
| there) to sue the other address. They never believed my
| factual explanation: the numbers repeat on the same road, so
| closely ( "yeah, _ok buddy_ ").
| jxnlco wrote:
| what... what did you doo...
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| Usually just accepted the documents/lawsuit, then drove
| up the mountain to give it to the intended recipient. The
| first time this happened, business was closed... so I
| just taped it to the door (and then the owner came out
| LIVID, thinking _I was the process server_...).
|
| Only once did the process server actually look on his
| phone to see that there were in fact two same-addressed
| properties (and obviously mine was residential).
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Of course, what you did was the kind and polite thing but
| would the process server have any recourse to, "You would
| be failing to serve that notice if you leave it with me"?
| antimemetics wrote:
| I would just shrug and chuck it in the trash tbh.
| Probably not the first or second time but if it happens
| often and they don't listen then definitely
| dmoy wrote:
| Congrats on the retiring!
|
| Are you still doing the hats & bottles or did you retire from
| that too?
| CliffStoll wrote:
| 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?
| pjmorris wrote:
| The Acme Klein bottle and its packaging materials are among
| my prize possessions.
|
| And 'The Cuckoo's Egg' was a great read.
|
| Thank you for being you.
| CliffStoll wrote:
| // blush //
| apocadam wrote:
| Aside from those I also loved the photos I got with the
| bottle and him in his garden. Thanks Cliff (:
| rolandr wrote:
| Find someone interested in continuing that business under a
| long term (royalty or such) or short term (lump sum)
| financial arrangement that is acceptable to you? I think
| there will be interested people, maybe even within this
| community (not suggesting I'm one of them, though).
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Or he could go full Japanese and adopt the business heir
| into his family.
|
| ... actually, that might be safer so as to not raise any
| red flags with Citibank. /s
| jeff_carr wrote:
| There are lots of us that made good money over the years
| and your books were important to lots of us.
|
| Sell signed copies of your books for $1000 at the klein
| bottle store so we can buy them. Let us help you have fun
| in your retirement! (A signature or signed bottle would be
| awesome too.)
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| I'm having the same issue due to changing my surname (male). So
| far I've mentioned that millions of women experience name
| changes during marriage... to deaf ears.
|
| The good news for this is that my primary stock has gone up 80%
| (since this issue became apparent, just two years ago), and it
| has encouraged me to live more frugally. Eventually?
|
| Unrelated: thanks for the awesome Klein Mug, Cliff!
| dextrous wrote:
| Off-topic: I loved "The Cuckoo's Egg", was part of what
| influenced me to get a CS degree. Fantastic read.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| Cliff, you've probably got the contacts necessary who could get
| their way in there and change the records for you. :)
| jmvoodoo wrote:
| 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.
| CliffStoll wrote:
| Thanks JM. Long time back, and lotsa changes.
|
| Cleaning out my attic last month, I just found a stash of
| punch cards left over from the 1980's. Some paper-tape that
| has my phd dissertation. And a fortran manual from my high
| school's IBM-1620. Oh my...
| sizzle wrote:
| What are you up to these days? Were you able to predict or
| see the advent of modern AI and LLMs coming from earlier in
| your career? Thoughts on the future of computing?
|
| Thank you.
| navigate8310 wrote:
| https://youtu.be/Gj8IA6xOpSk?t=140
| imdsm wrote:
| I read your book for the first time a few months ago after
| someone here recommended it. I was hooked. It took me back
| to my beginnings (99/00) when the internet was different,
| when we had dial up and there was still discovery.
|
| I appreciate the time you put into writing it -- and the
| nostalgic enjoyment it brought me.
| jakespencer wrote:
| Also unrelated, I too read your book in the 90s as a teenager
| and emailed you, and you emailed me back!
| calmbonsai wrote:
| Ah, Citi.
|
| Related to an earlier comment I posted on a different thread
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41316889 , I didn't name
| the "national bank", but I now feel perfectly comfortable
| outing "Citibank" as the national bank that I will no longer
| (personally) do business with. Corporate stuff is a different
| matter.
|
| As a matter of policy, they do not empower their front-line
| (personal) banking CSR reps, and even 1st-level escalation
| folks. They're basically nothing more than stenographers.
|
| After 20 days of back-and-forth with non-answers, I finally
| sent them a certified letter giving them 30 days to "take
| action" or "explain non-action" on a specific dispute amounting
| to ~$5k.
|
| The responded with a non-reponse bizarre marketing letter in 10
| days.
|
| I called to verify the prior letter was "on-record" in my
| account. Given the nature of the postage, it was already
| verified delivered.
|
| Moving forward, that 15 year+ line-of-credit is just going sit
| on their books until they close the account. There is no longer
| a fundamental basis of forthright communication, confidence in
| competence, and trust to move forward.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| Couldn't hurt to keep an eye on the account to make sure
| those dummies don't start tacking on some "account dormancy
| fee" or other nonsense like that.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| Or just go down the Wells Fargo road and start opening
| accounts on his behalf.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _As a matter of policy, they do not empower their front-
| line (personal) banking CSR reps_
|
| This appears to be the original sin in most of these
| scenarios.
|
| Eventually, automation and predictive analytics _will_ break.
|
| If you do not have a customer service org empowered and
| staffed to (a) investigate what went wrong & (b) make it
| right, then you will lose customers.
|
| And maybe you're fine with that trickle, but know that the
| Kafkaesque burning of a relationship means they will _never_
| do business with you again.
|
| For all its faults, Amazon is an example of a company that
| still remembers this and seems to empower its support folks.
| As a counterexample, I severed a 20 year relationship with
| Bank of America because they disempowered their retail staff
| to the point of uselessness.
| trinsic2 wrote:
| > After 20 days of back-and-forth with non-answers, I finally
| sent them a certified letter giving them 30 days to "take
| action" or "explain non-action" on a specific dispute
| amounting to ~$5k.
|
| > The responded with a non-reponse bizarre marketing letter
| in 10 days.
|
| >I called to verify the prior letter was "on-record" in my
| account. Given the nature of the postage, it was already
| verified delivered.
|
| What was the purpose of the certified letter? you can use
| that in court but did you take any further action?
| immibis wrote:
| Seems like court order would have been the easier option, but
| courts intimidate people.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Did you show them your TV interview?
|
| :)
|
| Glad you got things straightened out.
|
| Yesterday's SMBC made me think of you: https://www.smbc-
| comics.com/comic/outside
| burnte wrote:
| Early this year they messed around with a credit card account I
| had with them. I immediately said fix it or I cancel today,
| they refused, I cancelled the account and they've been nagging
| me to come back for 6 months. Fuck no!
| Balgair wrote:
| Aside: Hey Cliff, love your work and efforts, glad to hear
| you're retiring too.
|
| Yeah, we had another issue with Chase like yours and the
| article's. Finally got around to letting Chase know that a
| family member had died, took a little while, because, duh. We
| were all on the accounts together. So, Chase then goes and
| makes us _all_ down as dead. Freezes everything, then started
| up the process to put up the money for probate to our various
| estates (?!). Luckily, we get daily emails about this and were
| able to go and start everything back up again. It 's still no
| where near finished up, after about 5 months of weekly visits.
| They managed to make us undead in their system, but then a week
| later it would revert. No one ever knew what was going on and
| still don't. Eventually managed to get a check of all the cash
| in the checking and savings accounts and have gone and put it
| all with a local credit union. However, about $120k of
| retirement savings from my dead family member are still locked
| up in Chase. No amount of records from the county or newspaper
| obits or hospice forms can convince Chase that the deceased is
| actually dead. They, and I am not joking here, said that my
| family member has to sign off on declaring their death to
| Chase.
|
| Chase, _never_ again.
|
| I want to be clear to the other readers here: This is your
| warning that 'something is rotten in Denmark'. When another
| large fiscal crisis starts up again in ~3 years, you'll now
| know it's because these banks have become too big to operate,
| not just fail. Cleaning out that mess is going to be a lot
| harder than 2008, as all their internal records stink.
| luizfzs wrote:
| Sorry to hijack. Cliff Stoll the astronomer?
|
| I loved your book! I loved the way it reads. So fluid and
| interesting.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| Many decades ago I transfered my money from the USA to Europe.
| Nothinf much but I didn't want to cross borders with wads of
| cash even though it's perfectly legal.
|
| I had to give my origin bank everything imaginable, including
| address, phone, fax of both the destination bank as well as the
| branch.
|
| All of my ID obviously and the destination account number.
|
| Weeks later I get a message from my destination branch saying
| they got some money in USD for someone that had a subset of my
| name but no account information whatsoever.
|
| I said it was for me and thankfully that was it.
|
| What happened?
|
| Eventually I got something that looked like a traceroute of the
| transfer.
|
| The origin bank used Citibank as an intermediary and at that
| step everything but the amount, name of the destination bank
| and my first and last name was lost.
|
| Completely obliterated.
|
| Never trusted them ever since.
| ciupicri wrote:
| How was it possible for both "Cliff Stoll" and "Clifford Stoll"
| to exist? Shouldn't your legal name be used as it is (i.e. no
| nicknames) on all papers? Or did you change your legal name?
| dguido wrote:
| Strong recommend on using meow.com. You can get interest on your
| primary checking account, and easy access to high yield treasury
| management services.
|
| I've been following the Evolve Bank fallout on the FinTech Weekly
| newsletter, and the whole situation scares me about Mercury. I
| used to bank with them, but the sanctions by the Federal Reserve
| and the continued disclosures about lacking KYC and money
| laundering controls has me worried there are other problems.
| dogleash wrote:
| Step 1. Think "this is probably fine"
|
| Step 2. Find out it's actually a fucking nightmare
|
| Step 3. Finally stop thinking everyone who worries about
| obstacles you assume don't happen are tinfoil hat weirdos.
|
| It's always step 3 that gets people.
| camsinko wrote:
| I went to Chase Bank to withdraw cash for a Facebook deal, and
| they refused because I didn't have their app. The teller couldn't
| verify my driver's license or passport, insisting the only way
| was through their app's 2FA. This is exactly why I stick with
| credit unions--where I can work with real humans who actually
| help.
| Arch485 wrote:
| I know someone who had an almost identical experience with CIBC
| in Canada: accounts (including payroll) completely frozen, nobody
| to contact, nobody who can help. Never found out the reason,
| either.
| fswd wrote:
| my story with them: Chase bank refused to cash their own Chase
| cashiers check. Seems crazy but I had to get a lawyer involved.
| jxnlco wrote:
| thankfully i just DM'd the mercury team and got a temp approval
| to deposit the 180k
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| "Computer says no" is the one customer support response that
| makes me move my business elsewhere.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| For those unfamiliar with the reference:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_says_no
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0YGZPycMEU
|
| For niche, zany sketch comedy, _Little Britain_ is a gem.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| At a certain point in this story, it felt like time to file the
| lawsuit. They basically stole the money and wouldn't give it back
| to the owner.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| That would probably be an expensive lawyer.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| 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.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Why would you say "stagecoach in red field" instead of Wells
| Fargo? I don't get why people are so coy about calling out
| terrible companies by name publicly. They're not going to kick
| your door in and shoot your dog. Do you think Wells Fargo (the
| terrible shitty bank) is going to actually search through HN
| looking for instances where users said their company name
| "Wells Fargo" and linked that company name "Wells Fargo" to
| their reputation "terrible and shitty"? When they find your
| username, are they going to scour the web to find your real
| name? And then, when they do, what then? You probably no longer
| do business with them so there's nothing much they can do in
| retaliation.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| I presume you are either in the US or Europe. I understand
| your point. Alas, not everyone is based in countries where
| civil liberties are not completely eroded. That said, even in
| the US civil cases with or without merit can destroy a
| business and individual.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Happy to edit out my comment if you're actually personally
| worried about your safety. Although I can't imagine
| companies having that much free time, no matter what
| country you live in.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Hold onto your worldview: https://arstechnica.com/tech-
| policy/2024/01/ebay-hit-with-3m...
| mistercheph wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Barnett_(whistleblower)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lynch_(businessman)
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
| news/article/2024/aug/19/mike...
| pickledish wrote:
| 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!)
| otteromkram wrote:
| 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.
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| Why would any of that be necessary? They're a bank, not your
| parents.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Exactly!
|
| Entrepreneurialism and nanny states are fundamentally
| incompatible.
|
| If Chase or any other bank has to know what you had for
| breakfast in order to hold your money for you, then you
| shouldn't bank with them as you'll never know when they
| randomly decide you took money from a bad man and then hold
| your financial life hostage from you.
| pickledish wrote:
| 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
| apercu wrote:
| I've never used JP Morgan or Chase, but I recently inherited some
| stock. There was no way to transfer the stock in-kind to another
| brokerage, for some reason it needed to go from a JP Morgan
| account to another JP Morgan account. (I didn't want to cash the
| stock out immediately because I couldn't get info on the basis
| and what the capital gains taxes would be).
|
| Anyway, sibling knew someone who worked at JP Morgan private bank
| and they were willing to do all the work so I said "sure".
|
| Turns out Chase and JP Morgan are integrated on the backend but
| not Private bank. So the transfer couldn't go through.All in all
| this was 15-20 emails and multiple phone calls.
|
| And then I was told to open a Chase individual investment account
| instead.
|
| Not wanting to continue to burn time during work hours when I was
| super busy with a project, I drove 20 minutes to a Chase branch
| to open an account with an investment banker to make sure all
| went smoothly (instead of doing it online).
|
| He couldn't open the account for me, couldn't get anyone on the
| phone, either. Turns out that the backend is connected enough
| with Private Bank that I had a profile in their system, but he
| couldn't "do" anything with it.
|
| A few more emails and phone calls and the Chase investment banker
| sent me a link to open an account online. So I do that and let
| the banker that controlled the original stock account know the
| account details. But he still couldn't transfer the stock. That
| private bank profile still causing problems I guess.
|
| I was given an 800 number to call private bank to get them to
| close the account. I spent about a half hour on hold before I
| hung up. I then contacted the banker I knew at Private Bank and
| informed him, he said he'd take care of it. Later that day he
| emailed me and said he had put in the order and I would get a
| confirmation.
|
| I did get the confirmation but was informed it would take a few
| days. Once that was done I contacted the broker that controlled
| the stock account. He tried again, no dice.
|
| He then decided to get licensed in my state so that he could
| create the account for me. That took another week or so.
|
| And, I was told to close the Chase account. I did that, again, a
| couple days. By this time I'm 20-25 hours in with phone calls,
| emails, conversations with my siblings, have driven into the city
| twice, and so on.
|
| Finally, after about an hour on the phone the next week, the
| broker creates my account and is able to execute the transfer. Of
| course, by this time the stock market had tanked and the stock
| had lost ~20% of its value, meaning I netted less than my
| siblings, and spent a ton of time.
|
| What. A. Circus.
| lisper wrote:
| > I didn't want to cash the stock out immediately because I
| couldn't get info on the basis and what the capital gains taxes
| would be.
|
| You'd need to figure that out eventually anyway. Better sooner
| than later.
|
| But in any case, you could have sold the stock, transferred the
| money, and then re-purchased the stock and simply reported it
| as a wash sale.
|
| > by this time the stock market had tanked
|
| That can go either way. I've had stocks that I wanted to sell
| get held up, and go up in value in the meantime. So you have to
| just chalk that up to fate.
| apercu wrote:
| >You'd need to figure that out eventually anyway. Better
| sooner than later.
|
| 100%
|
| > That can go either way. I've had stocks that I wanted to
| sell get held up, and go up in value in the meantime. So you
| have to just chalk that up to fate.
|
| My plan was to immediately sell 50% of the stock (it was at
| an all-time high) immediately but now plans have changed. Oh
| well.
| drfuchs wrote:
| Isn't your basis simply the price of the stock on the day your
| rich uncle died? What other information did you need?
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Diversify your banking. Every individual and business shoudl ahve
| at least two completely unrelated banks. I actualy reccomend one
| be a credit union. Ift gives you a fall back position to protect
| against this kind of situation.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| I feel like these sort of corner cases likely can happen with any
| bank.
|
| The real question is: why did it take months of having their
| vital money withheld before trying to go around the bottom rung
| support that was clearly not going to help? By like week 2 I'd be
| talking to an attorney and I bet a letter from them would get it
| cleared up fast. (Perhaps I'm wrong though.)
| jxnlco wrote:
| I was in Canada, and I was also quite stressed with some
| keynote presentations I had to give, planning my move back to
| the US, and applying for my O-1 visa.
|
| I figured I'd sort it all out by the time I moved. However, I
| may have been a little too relaxed about the situation and
| stressed out about other stuff
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Well in any case, I'm sorry that happened to you. It sounds
| awful.
| akeck wrote:
| Obligatory reference to patio11's write up on banks:
| https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/seeing-like-a-bank/
| kevdoran wrote:
| > Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank
|
| Funny enough, I recently opened a Chase business checking because
| of this "bank not bank" news:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40480159
|
| I still have a different business checking with a Mercury-like
| fintech provider. Chase freezes accounts, Fintech startups go
| under.
|
| Chase already froze my business credit card once. I had to send
| them a deed of a house that I had already sold. It made little
| sense.
|
| On the fintech bank side, my biggest client cannot make transfers
| to that account. Their payment system throws an error when they
| try to ACH to it. That plus the news about Synapse going under
| made me want a chase.
|
| So I don't really know what to do. I now have multiple business
| accounts, multiple personal accounts. I want to find like a good
| credit union maybe?
|
| What's clear is being in small business requires building
| tolerance for money uncertainty that wasn't as necessary when I
| was an employee.
|
| I feel for the author. That all sucks. I enjoyed the 'Yuppie
| Nightmare' reference. Many thanks for sharing.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| There is a middle ground called "community banking".
| badlibrarian wrote:
| Many community banks are little more than fronts for pcbb.com
| or fisglobal.com at this point.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| I got a letter from Citibank demanding I prove my business was
| legit. I sent them a "secure message"(on their online site)
| containing the documents. But(according to them) they could not
| open those secure documents. They called me and asked for the
| password for that secure message. That was of course a red flag
| so I went to the local branch and asked them to send those
| documents to whoever it was that was requesting them.
|
| Going to the local branch stopped them from sending any more
| demands for documents so it seems it really was Citibank who had
| sent those demands to me. But for them to ask for my password in
| a phone conversation is a huge Red Flag right? And they never
| sent me a confirmation that issue was resolved.
|
| I should have reported them for asking for my password, but did
| not know where should I submit such a report.
|
| Big banks are too big.
| neilv wrote:
| I feel bad for the people who went through this Kafkaesque
| nightmare.
|
| > _After months of back-and-forth, [...] I finally got my money._
|
| I didn't find any mention of a lawyer in the article.
|
| When you realize you're dealing with people who aren't operating
| in good faith, seriously consider consulting a lawyer.
|
| (A harder problem is realizing when people aren't operating in
| good faith. Especially if you're a Pollyanna, or decent folk
| dropped into the big city.)
|
| > _consider using my referral link to open an account with
| Mercury_
|
| I'm not going to click a kickback link on a piece like this, and
| I'm going to disregard the recommendation.
|
| If the goal is to warn people away from something, or to make a
| positive recommendation for something else, why _add_ an obvious
| conflict of interest that didn 't have to be there?
| stainablesteel wrote:
| yeah this sounds like some kind of corporate fraud, i imagine
| they were blocking people out and moving their money around to
| cover their own books after something went wrong, there should
| be a payout
| serial_dev wrote:
| It assumes you know which one was first, the chicken or the
| egg.
|
| One option is that the author found/got a referral deal with an
| alternative provider, so thought they could write this article
| complaining about a competitor.
|
| Or... They were so pissed with Chase due to this nightmare they
| had to go through, they looked for alternatives, found
| something, so they mentioned it in the post.
|
| Disregarding is fine as you don't know if they are honest, at
| the same time I wouldn't attribute evil intentions either.
|
| It's like when a native iOS developer says the best apps are
| truly native. It could be that they tell you that so that you
| hire them and their niche stays strong... or they really
| believe it and that's why they are iOS developers.
| shahzaibmushtaq wrote:
| Everyone wants to open their first bank account in one of the big
| banks, I was one of those. Later I found out that not-so-famous
| big/small banks are far superior for SMBs.
|
| Revolut, Mercury, Meow and Payoneer (Personally using myself) are
| all leading online businesses.
| tedmcory77 wrote:
| The real question here for the author is: What are the _three_
| banks that you now use? We use high availability and redundancy
| for everything else, why not business?
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| 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.
| pjdemers wrote:
| I used to have a side gig as the CFO for a not-for-profit (an
| unpaid volunteer). Anyway, this organization was over 125 years
| old, associated with a larger organization 80 years older than
| that, and had the same primary bank for 70 years ... Anyway, my
| treasurer, who was very smart, insisted we keep enough cash to
| run for 3 months in a secondary bank. Just in case we were locked
| out of our primary bank.
| jxnlco wrote:
| this this this
| Terr_ wrote:
| Not quite the same scenario, but it makes me think of how a
| startup I know dodged a bullet with the Silicon Valley Bank
| collapse [0] partly due to having some other money elsewhere
| Just In Case. (But in a major part due to bailouts, of course.)
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_Silicon_Valley_Ban...
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| Is it possible to use a european bank with eId totp physical chip
| with fallback to passport scan?
| msarrel wrote:
| In 2008 Capital One did the same thing to me. It almost destroyed
| not only my business but also the rest of my life. They were
| completely unwilling to work with me and they said that they
| suspected fraud. There was no fraud, I proved there was no fraud,
| they still kept my account locked for over 30 days.
|
| Yeah no one tells you when you start your business that your own
| bank is preying on you.
| rglover wrote:
| This is why Bitcoin is ideal. You can hold and transfer any
| amount, any time of day, without fear of surprises like this.
|
| Would I use it as a primary cash account for my business today?
| No, because of the obvious exchange rate/price swings. But long-
| term, moving toward Bitcoin as a settlement layer (i.e., a modern
| SWIFT) would solve a ton of problems and avoid situations like
| this. The more people that do that/normalize it, the more stable
| the price in other currencies, too.
|
| I get that people like to hate on it because it's not a perfect
| solution to everything, but in a hostile unpredictable
| environment, it's a life saver.
| bootlooped wrote:
| I don't see why having a different settlement layer would
| prevent the bank from freezing money that they have custody of.
| rglover wrote:
| It removes the bank from the equation. The point here being
| that you keep some of your funds in Bitcoin so that, in the
| event you have to deal with something like this, you can
| still find a means to get people paid.
|
| Long-term, if everyone does larger transactions in Bitcoin
| (e.g., payroll, invoice payments, etc), then problems like
| this never occur.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| solana seems t be even better for that tech wise. but yea,
| bitcoin is incumbant here
| rglover wrote:
| Solana is centralized. The network should never go
| offline/have outages or be vulnerable to bad actors. At best,
| Bitcoin has the 51% attack problem which would require insane
| resources and convincing node operators to follow a fork of
| the network.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This doesn't make any sense. The problems a business faces are:
|
| - Receive money from customers. If the customers don't have
| Bitcoin, they're not going to pay you in Bitcoin.
|
| - Pay your employees and suppliers. Very few of them will
| accept Bitcoin.
|
| - Borrow money to cover differences between revenue and
| expenses. The entity loaning you the money may or may loan you
| Bitcoin, but what difference does it make? They're going to
| give you the same scrutiny and terms as any other lender in any
| currency.
|
| - Security for your enormous wads of liquid assets. Banks have
| vaults and FDIC insurance. Bitcoin has nothing on its own, and
| if you use an exchange, they can do exactly what a bank does
| and freeze your funds, or in many cases, just steal it and
| spend it themselves.
|
| You say later you just mean "well, you can withdraw some of
| your country's legal tender from the bank and store it as
| Bitcoin in case you need it later." You can just diversify the
| same way everyone else suggests by using multiple banks. If you
| trust zero banks, you can withdraw cash and stuff it under your
| mattress. You can loan it to a local drug lord. You can buy
| gold. You can buy forex and put it in a foreign bank. I guess
| some of these options are less liquid than others, but what
| advantage are you really claiming keeping your rainy day fund
| as Bitcoin has over anything else? Generally speaking,
| businesses tend to stick with things like commercial paper and
| treasuries and that has seemingly worked out fine.
|
| I wish we had real verifiable base rates on the probability
| that a business will go under because it's cash and near cash
| equivalents line item was seized by authorities even though
| they legitimately did nothing wrong versus a business will go
| under because it decided to keep all of its funds in
| cryptocurrency and it either tanked overnight, they lost the
| key, SBF took their money because he felt like it, or whatever
| other reasons might happen.
|
| Would you seriously bet the former is more likely than the
| latter?
| rglover wrote:
| I didn't say keep all of your cash in Bitcoin.
|
| In the current epoch, I'd cite Murphy's Law and say that
| anything is possible and it's wise for a CEO/CFO to plan
| ahead in case this happens. Bitcoin is one among several
| options and an excellent safeguard against corruption,
| political persecution, etc.
|
| As for exchange hacks and lost keys, the business that relies
| on this will intelligently keep funds off-exchange/self-
| custody and use multisig wallets with signatures held by
| multiple officers of the company.
|
| Today, it's the "nuclear option." But if enough people start
| transacting in Bitcoin routinely, it's the ideal future.
| commercialnix wrote:
| > If the customers don't have Bitcoin, they're not going to
| pay you in Bitcoin.
|
| Every customer my firm has offered a 15% discount if paying
| with BTC via Coinbase has taken it.
| commercialnix wrote:
| > because it decided to keep all of its funds in
| cryptocurrency and it either tanked overnight, they lost the
| key, SBF took their money because he felt like it
|
| Tell us you don't comprehend cryptocurrency without telling
| us you don't...
| HeavenFox wrote:
| I think this situation, while extremely unfortunate, is just the
| natural consequences of how banks are regulated in the US. The
| big banks face a constant threat by the government: if your
| customer does something illegal with your product, YOU will be
| fined millions of dollars. Therefore, if your activities have any
| resemblance of money laundering, they'd rather lose your business
| than lose millions. Different banks have different "sensitivity",
| and Chase, unfortunately, is one of the more sensitive ones.
|
| What are the solutions? Laws should be passed to protect
| customers' rights in the event of an account closure; banks
| should probably be provided some safe harbor so they aren't as
| skittish; and in the meantime, bank with a smaller credit union
| that have a smaller target on their back, and also if something
| breaks you can yell at someone who can actually fix it.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Complains about big banking. Hawks a referral code for a non-FDIC
| insured "bank".
|
| Some people never learn, I guess?
| bdcravens wrote:
| Chase stole about $900 from me from an account I setup just for
| freelance income. This was during the pandemic when I had to take
| a 2/3 haircut in my day job to keep the company afloat (we did,
| and all is well now). Every time I'd try to reach out to try to
| get answers, I'd get bounced around among different foreign call
| centers. After months of trying to resolve it I just gave up. (I
| could and should seek legal recourse, but I just didn't have the
| emotional energy for it at the time)
|
| I will never do business with them again, even though their many
| branches (literally have one across the street from my office)
| would make it convenient.
| 0x5f3759df-i wrote:
| Chase really has the worst phone customer service. I foolishly
| used one of their 0% interest promos to buy some hardware and
| when I was charged interest anyway due to their screwup in how
| my payment was applied he told me:
|
| > "since you have enough money in your account to pay this off
| I don't know why you are using this plan at all. These are
| intended for low income customers"
|
| and did nothing to solve the problem.
| screye wrote:
| Knew this had to be Jason. Poor guy has been put through the
| ringer. Running into a new update on twitter has me like, "How is
| this still going on?".
| cruppelt wrote:
| fun following this debacle on twitter
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| When I read these kinds of stories, and the comments on them, I
| feel it would vastly more useful for people to document positive
| interactions with financial services.
|
| Am I shilling for banks? I hope not. It just seems that at this
| point anyone who imagines the banks are going to work for you,
| the customer, has not been paying attention and/or is delusional.
|
| Finding out that SolarFlower Bank in Hometown, Your State has
| provided exceptional banking services is massively more useful
| than hearing, _once again_ that BigBankCorp are terrible.
| eduction wrote:
| Blog post dated a month from now? "2024/9/21". Not exactly
| helping me believe your story.
| eduction wrote:
| Also why is there a post dated 2025?
| https://jxnl.co/writing/2025/06/15/my-self-reflection-on-suc...
| eduction wrote:
| I feel bad for you and not a fan of Chase's behavior here but I
| would never open a business banking account in a country
| different from the one I'm living in unless I had an extremely
| good reason (like a statutory requirement). Particularly if I
| hadn't fully secured permission to be in that country.
|
| Even then, if I was going to do it I would want to be sitting
| physically across from a bank officer to make it happen, not
| online. I opened business checking from BofA online years ago and
| it was a total nightmare even living a short walk from the
| branch, being a US citizen, etc. They did freeze it once or
| twice. Never again.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| Always have your money split between multiple unrelated banks in
| different jusrisdictions.
|
| Always have multiple debit and credit cards between different
| institutions.
|
| If possible avoid the USA banking system, although thats easier
| said than done if you live there.
|
| These are good practices for both professional, company and
| personal finances.
| nottorp wrote:
| Stupid question from outside the anglosphere: what's the
| difference between a bank and a credit union?
| bluGill wrote:
| Credit unions are owned by the people with money in them. A
| coop bank.
|
| There are a few other legal differences as well, but the
| ownership is the big difference.
| Brian-Puccio wrote:
| Credit unions are nonprofit, member/cooperatively owned
| financial institutions.
|
| Banks are for profit (and likely publicly traded).
| cjs_ac wrote:
| Credit unions are cooperatives owned by their customers.
| jachee wrote:
| A credit union is ultimately owned by its members, and
| generally serves internal interests over pure profit. As a
| result, they tend to usually be less cutthroat and have lower
| fees, but also lower interest rates on the flip side.
| readyplayernull wrote:
| The main differences between banks and credit unions are that
| banks are for-profit institutions owned by shareholders, while
| credit unions are not-for-profit organizations owned by their
| member account holders. Credit unions typically have lower
| fees, higher interest rates on savings, and a focus on serving
| their members' financial needs, rather than maximizing profits
| like banks. Credit unions also have membership requirements,
| while banks are open to the general public. Lastly, banks are
| regulated by federal and state banking authorities, while
| credit unions are regulated by the National Credit Union
| Administration.
| spiffytech wrote:
| 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 customer has had multiple
| Suspicious Activity Reports filed. SARs can (and sometimes must!)
| be filed for innocuous reasons and do not necessarily imply any
| sort of wrongdoing.
|
| > SARs are secret, by regulation. See 12 CFR SS 21.11(k)(1) from
| the Office of Comptroller of the Currency:
|
| > No national bank, and no director, officer, employee, or agent
| of a national bank, shall disclose a SAR or any information that
| would reveal the existence of a SAR. Any national bank, and any
| director, officer, employee, or agent of any national bank that
| is subpoenaed or otherwise requested to disclose a SAR, or any
| information that would reveal the existence of a SAR, shall
| decline to produce the SAR or such information, citing this
| section and 31 U.S.C. 5318(g)(2)(A)(i)...
|
| https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/seeing-like-a-bank/
| Algemarin wrote:
| Reading anecdotes like this is just so terrifying, and there
| appears to be absolutely no recourse.
|
| These stories can, and do, happen to anyone at any bank. And what
| can we do about it? It seems like the answer is a glib 'nothing'.
| mistercheph wrote:
| These days, its best to always travel with a retained team of
| attorneys, ready to intimidate and threaten litigation against
| anyone that tries to treat you like a kafka protagonist.
| imroot wrote:
| I had a similar experience with US Bank. Business account, over
| $50k lost; they said that they can 'terminate their relationship
| with me at any time for any or no reason whatsoever,' and didn't
| have to return the money.
|
| The Fraud and Trust VP seemed shocked when I mentioned to her
| that it wasn't a big deal for me, and that I had my personal
| accounts with a credit union.
|
| It's been 4+ years. I've written the money off.
| ksenzee wrote:
| For $50k I would at least have a lawyer write them a nastygram.
| Wow.
| rvba wrote:
| I went with someone from my family to close a bank account. The
| bank teller received an error message that said something like
| "please visit the bank personally". It was a message on her
| computer.
|
| Is that on the shitty bank rules, or shitty software? After 2
| hours and the bank stuff calling some helpdesk they managed to do
| it.
| commercialnix wrote:
| By day 2 I'd have filed a lawsuit seeking over $5-million in
| combined actual and punitive damages. You have to speak the
| language they understand, anything else is a waste of time.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| Let me explain this to those who are not familiar with the
| American system of kleptocracy: Banks freeze account to steal the
| money, not because they suspect wrongdoing. The protagonist in
| the article finally showed Chase it would be more expensive to
| keep the money than to give it back, so they gave it back.
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