Chime has been suddenly closing accounts, not returning customers’ money(propublica.org)
propublica.org
Chime has been suddenly closing accounts, not returning customers’ money
https://www.propublica.org/article/chime
143 comments
There is fdic insurance up to $250k
According to Chime's website, "Chime accounts are insured up to the standard maximum deposit insurance amount of $250,000 through our partner banks, Stride Bank, N.A. or The Bancorp Bank, Members FDIC",[1] so while that doesn't help anyone who needs their money immediately it's at least a comfort I guess.
[1]: https://help.chime.com/hc/en-us/articles/224459628-Are-Chime...
[1]: https://help.chime.com/hc/en-us/articles/224459628-Are-Chime...
This is why I refuse to fuck around with "smart" banks / credit cards of any kind.
It's just not worth this kind of hassle, where the best case scenario is waiting around 3-4yrs for the government to print your money back to you...
It's just not worth this kind of hassle, where the best case scenario is waiting around 3-4yrs for the government to print your money back to you...
Could you change the title to include "Chime" as the name of the company?
This happens on the regular with established "normal" banks in the UK and other EU countries.
I believe US banks also have the right to suspend accounts for "fraudulent activity", correct me if I'm wrong.
Therefore, you can't expect banking startups to be any better. Fix it on a higher level.
I believe US banks also have the right to suspend accounts for "fraudulent activity", correct me if I'm wrong.
Therefore, you can't expect banking startups to be any better. Fix it on a higher level.
What we've seen in many cases is startup banks coming to the market with a streamlined onboarding (open your bank account in 5 minutes over videochat), and then realizing that many accounts are used for money laundering. They eventually get a warning from the financial authorities and subsequently implement fraud detection algorithms that might be a little too trigger happy, to be on the safe side.
It wouldn't be an issue if you could appeal and talk to a human, but challenger banks are, by design, understaffed, and they have no legal obligation to explain why they're terminating your account.
However I haven't heard of any bank (proper bank, with a license, challenger or otherwise) keeping your money in such case.
It wouldn't be an issue if you could appeal and talk to a human, but challenger banks are, by design, understaffed, and they have no legal obligation to explain why they're terminating your account.
However I haven't heard of any bank (proper bank, with a license, challenger or otherwise) keeping your money in such case.
One issue is that, as stated in the article, Chime seems to be much worse and have an order of magnitude more complaints per customer than actual banks.
The other issue is that Chime is not legally a bank so is not regulated in the same way that banks are.
The other issue is that Chime is not legally a bank so is not regulated in the same way that banks are.
>The other issue is that Chime is not legally a bank so is not regulated in the same way that banks are.
"The rules don't apply to us" is one hell of an unfair advantage to tout on a VC pitch deck.
"The rules don't apply to us" is one hell of an unfair advantage to tout on a VC pitch deck.
>If you don't like it go somewhere else
>Also crypto should be illegal
>Also crypto should be illegal
The article starts out by comparing Chime to "normal banks" that haven't attracted nearly the same level of complaints; the situation may not be unique to Chime, but those banking with, well, banks apparently haven't been running nearly the same risk of "we took your money too bad so sad".
Banks have a well established situation for this. When my debit card purchased a whole boatload (literally) of shoes in China, my card and account was frozen.
But guess what, I was still a customer of the bank. I had all the resources I'd normally have: customer support.
From there, they shipped me a new card. I was still unable to buy groceries for a day or two, but I never lost access to my money.
But guess what, I was still a customer of the bank. I had all the resources I'd normally have: customer support.
From there, they shipped me a new card. I was still unable to buy groceries for a day or two, but I never lost access to my money.
That’s why I don’t trust any of these new trendy banking apps; better to stick with established institutions IMO. Not that they’re great either but at least you won’t be in a situation like this, or at the very least they’ll have better customer support.
It's why I switched everything to a combination of [boring established brokerage] and a credit union that's been around for almost 100 years. Their apps are mediocre and some of the more complicated account changes require a mix of faxed forms and phone support that's only available during normal business hours. But they're unlikely to mess things up very much and they're hopefully less likely to sell or leak all of my financial and personal information. And if something goes wrong my brokerage has in-person customer support branches around the country.
I'm in the same boat, with half my checking in the brokerage and half in the credit union. Some recent changes to the credit union(merging/renaming/ui changes) have been frustrating me and I've thought about rolling everything to the brokerage's offering, but the redundancy is nice for a situation like described here. Knock on wood though since it hasn't happened yet.
credit unions are great. Typically very customer friendly (i.e. no stupid monthly fees), many have been around a long time, and have rolled-out decent online banking options and mobile apps.
I don't see how anyone can take Chime seriously.
I have a habit of checking out most new free banking apps, looking for the best deals, UI, security, etc.
Chime immediately started sending my phone notifications with tons of emojis in them. It felt completely childish and I couldn't believe this was a legitimate company that people would put tons of money into.
I have a habit of checking out most new free banking apps, looking for the best deals, UI, security, etc.
Chime immediately started sending my phone notifications with tons of emojis in them. It felt completely childish and I couldn't believe this was a legitimate company that people would put tons of money into.
Isn’t that just a generational thing? Presumably this is an intentional communication choice designed to appeal to younger users. So, even though it doesn’t match your own preferred communication style, it could actually be seen as a sign of competence in knowing one’s target market and how to best reach them.
I used a (now-defunct) app called Penny and it did this. The app was very useful for budgeting so I just had to look past the emojis.
people weirdly enough really enjoy those, but marketing has gotten out of hand lately.
Do they? I mean, even if that's how someone talks to their friends, from some faceless company's mass communication it's at best inauthentic and try-hard.
I am really looking for a Jeeves[0] like demeanor when you have thousands of my dollars. "Yes sir, right away sir." not "Sure bro ;) *eggplant emoji*"
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeeves_and_Wooster
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeeves_and_Wooster
Except Jeeves would add "...but is sir sure that investing such a large sum in Cousin Eddie's racehorse is wise? You will recall his "sure thing" at the parish tombola."
And then later when you lose your shirt, you'd find he'd not actually bet on the horse you asked for, because he'd spoken to Captain Aykroyd's man who'd explained that the fix was in, Greased Lightning had had a plate of porridge to slow him down for breakfast; he'd instead put it all on Dreadnought at 8 to 1, which had won by a length.
You know come to think of it that's exactly who I want managing my finances.
And then later when you lose your shirt, you'd find he'd not actually bet on the horse you asked for, because he'd spoken to Captain Aykroyd's man who'd explained that the fix was in, Greased Lightning had had a plate of porridge to slow him down for breakfast; he'd instead put it all on Dreadnought at 8 to 1, which had won by a length.
You know come to think of it that's exactly who I want managing my finances.
when they were smaller it was more endearing, I agree now that it is too much.
edit: and disingenuous at best
edit: and disingenuous at best
One working theory is that emojis increase conversion, retention, etc. [1]
That being said, the reality likely depends on your product and audience.
[1] https://www.leanplum.com/blog/powering-engagement-with-emoji...
That being said, the reality likely depends on your product and audience.
[1] https://www.leanplum.com/blog/powering-engagement-with-emoji...
My immediate first thought is...are emoji loving folks worth keeping?
Not meant as an insult. But if your retention rate is up 50% with 18 year olds, and down 25% with 30+ers, is that good?
My hangup is that it's a bank. As another so eloquently described, I prefer an ultra professional appearance. Money is important, and banking is ultra regulated. I want to feel they are on top of everything.
Pizza places all started using emojis in communications to me. And that's ok, it's just pizza.
But I don't want my doctor sending me an email with a crab and a skull.
Not meant as an insult. But if your retention rate is up 50% with 18 year olds, and down 25% with 30+ers, is that good?
My hangup is that it's a bank. As another so eloquently described, I prefer an ultra professional appearance. Money is important, and banking is ultra regulated. I want to feel they are on top of everything.
Pizza places all started using emojis in communications to me. And that's ok, it's just pizza.
But I don't want my doctor sending me an email with a crab and a skull.
That seems like an incredibly petty thing to be bothered by. I really hate the idea that companies have to act in some fake capital P Professional way for people to take them seriously. I really don't care if my bank (or whatever) wants to exude personality. It just means they don't have some boring, gatekeeping PR flack in charge…
tpae(2)
> Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by The Bancorp Bank or Stride Bank, N.A.; Members FDIC
Regardless of this, those bank accounts are still FDIC insured, and thus they're subject to the same regulations, right? When I closed my Bank of America account they were insistent that any transactions or deposits after it was closed would be mailed to me in the form of a bill or a check, respectively. Is that not a requirement for all FDIC insured accounts?
Regardless of this, those bank accounts are still FDIC insured, and thus they're subject to the same regulations, right? When I closed my Bank of America account they were insistent that any transactions or deposits after it was closed would be mailed to me in the form of a bill or a check, respectively. Is that not a requirement for all FDIC insured accounts?
IAAL but this is not legal advice.
It sounds like it depends. If the bank has good reason to believe the funds are fraudulently sourced, then it may lawfully be entitled to hold them until it can be shown (either to their satisfaction, or to the satisfaction of a court) that the funds are legitimate.
It sounds like it depends. If the bank has good reason to believe the funds are fraudulently sourced, then it may lawfully be entitled to hold them until it can be shown (either to their satisfaction, or to the satisfaction of a court) that the funds are legitimate.
It also depends on whether and how the funds actually made it to the FDIC insured institution. If Chime didn’t deposit the funds or if the funds weren’t deposited in a segregated custody account FBO Chime customers (as opposed to co-mingled with Chime’s corporate cash) then it’s a lot less of a guarantee because they could be tied up with potential creditor claims to Chime’s cash.
That being said, the article makes me think this is the custody bank’s AML process at work and Chime wasn’t prepared for the customer service aspect of on-boarding a bunch of “high risk” clients and then almost immediately having those accounts closed due to the risk assessment.
That being said, the article makes me think this is the custody bank’s AML process at work and Chime wasn’t prepared for the customer service aspect of on-boarding a bunch of “high risk” clients and then almost immediately having those accounts closed due to the risk assessment.
the user accounts are def segregated from corp
- ex-chimer
- ex-chimer
it is almost certainly Bancorp that requested this -- not Chime itself.
Does that mean that each customer has an account at one of those banks? Maybe they could call them up directly and get their money back.
This is a good reminder that the best way to get your money back from an institution that is unfairly keeping it from you is either to file suit (in CA, you can sue for up to $10,000 in small-claims court), or hire an attorney. Self-help and complaining online rarely works. Phone calls work even less.
If all your money is parked in one bank account, you're probably too busy figuring out how to buy groceries or pay bills, and don't time for a daytrip to an attorney's office or courthouse.
Hiring an attorney is a good way to not have any money since you used it to pay the attorney. (And you have to find one - for some reason there's a phrase "my lawyer" but what kind of person "has a lawyer" and why would that lawyer know how to do everything?)
Just file a CFPB complaint: https://www.consumerfinance.gov
Just file a CFPB complaint: https://www.consumerfinance.gov
> Just file a CFPB complaint: https://www.consumerfinance.gov
"Just <do x>" is considered facile and sometimes rude, if not harmful; it implies that things are easier and/or more effective than they actually are. (The CFPB does not represent you personally, and is not obligated to act on your behalf, unlike an attorney.)
> Hiring an attorney is a good way to not have any money since you used it to pay the attorney
It depends on how much money is on the line. Many small-claims courts don't even let you have an attorney, and the filing fees are small and the effort to file is minimal. On the other hand, if there's a lot of money at stake, having an attorney can pay off.
And there's always somewhere in between: having an attorney send a demand letter can sometimes yield good results, without necessarily breaking the bank. Getting an attorney involved doesn't necessarily imply that you're going all the way to trial and judgment.
> And you have to find one
You also sometimes have to find a plumber when a pipe springs a leak... Life isn't perfect, and that's why these people exist.
"Just <do x>" is considered facile and sometimes rude, if not harmful; it implies that things are easier and/or more effective than they actually are. (The CFPB does not represent you personally, and is not obligated to act on your behalf, unlike an attorney.)
> Hiring an attorney is a good way to not have any money since you used it to pay the attorney
It depends on how much money is on the line. Many small-claims courts don't even let you have an attorney, and the filing fees are small and the effort to file is minimal. On the other hand, if there's a lot of money at stake, having an attorney can pay off.
And there's always somewhere in between: having an attorney send a demand letter can sometimes yield good results, without necessarily breaking the bank. Getting an attorney involved doesn't necessarily imply that you're going all the way to trial and judgment.
> And you have to find one
You also sometimes have to find a plumber when a pipe springs a leak... Life isn't perfect, and that's why these people exist.
> The sudden account closures have put financially vulnerable customers under stress.
Of course they have. It's no accident that accounts like these are heavily marketed to people with terms like "faster access to YOUR money" and "virtually no fees" and "manage YOUR MONEY from anywhere, down to the penny!" These companies are targeting people for whom every single dollar is of vital importance.
To then yank the accounts right as a large deposit from a government agency lands is malfeasance, or at least immoral.
The vast majority of us who post on this site have plenty of money, or at least credit, in reserve so that even losing $10,000 worth of deposit isn't crippling. It's bad, for sure, but it's not "I'm homeless starting tomorrow" bad. We are not the target market for apps-that-should-be-proper-banks like Chime.
> She was directed to a passage in the company’s account agreement that states, “Chime and/or Bank may suspend, freeze, or close your Account for any reason with or without notice”
Yup, sounds about right. And of course there's a binding arbitration agreement, requiring all arbitration actions to be on an individual basis.
So customers can be turned away with no reason, no recourse, no private right of action against the offending company, and no ability to group together to push back on a larger foe.
This is, no pardon requested, fucking bullshit. I loathe that we've gotten so deep into contracts of adhesion and abstractions between supplying company and supplier and third-party relationships and "oh it's someone else's problem" and automated customer handling.
Of course they have. It's no accident that accounts like these are heavily marketed to people with terms like "faster access to YOUR money" and "virtually no fees" and "manage YOUR MONEY from anywhere, down to the penny!" These companies are targeting people for whom every single dollar is of vital importance.
To then yank the accounts right as a large deposit from a government agency lands is malfeasance, or at least immoral.
The vast majority of us who post on this site have plenty of money, or at least credit, in reserve so that even losing $10,000 worth of deposit isn't crippling. It's bad, for sure, but it's not "I'm homeless starting tomorrow" bad. We are not the target market for apps-that-should-be-proper-banks like Chime.
> She was directed to a passage in the company’s account agreement that states, “Chime and/or Bank may suspend, freeze, or close your Account for any reason with or without notice”
Yup, sounds about right. And of course there's a binding arbitration agreement, requiring all arbitration actions to be on an individual basis.
So customers can be turned away with no reason, no recourse, no private right of action against the offending company, and no ability to group together to push back on a larger foe.
This is, no pardon requested, fucking bullshit. I loathe that we've gotten so deep into contracts of adhesion and abstractions between supplying company and supplier and third-party relationships and "oh it's someone else's problem" and automated customer handling.
With regard to “automated customer handling” (I.e. intentionally wasting customers’ time and energy in the hope they give up) - I can’t help but feel that society has lost a critical social regulatory mechanism, in the form of being able to physically beat up people who repeatedly exhibit scummy behavior. If some airline or bank puts you on hold for 4 hours, there’s no way to throw a few punches or whatever at the people who are responsible. For most of human evolution, there was always someone you could hold personally and physically accountable. Now that this check no longer exists, it’s no surprise that kafkaesque bureaucratic bullshit has exploded in popularity with customer-facing megacorps. I don’t really have a solution to propose here - maybe encourage people to vandalize corporate HQs if they’re egregiously wronged? It doesn’t feel like a very good solution.
Back in the banking crisis days, I applied for a mortgage modification. I’m on top of paperwork and fax like a boss, so I made sure all of our documentation was in order and submitted ahead of schedule. Regardless, the bank tried to use every trick in the book to delay. I ended up war dialing all the extensions around my contact to find someone who worked there with access to my files to push it along. Ended up succeeding and receiving my modification.
Imagine trying that with google or Facebook or chime.
I don’t agree with the need for physical violence. Historically, we have had decent regulatory protections for customers. I feel like those protections are rapidly being eroded. The threat of reporting to the bank/insurance/etc regulator was real and triggered a response even in the most dense bureaucracies in my experience.
Best story ever along these lines is when an angry homeowner who was wrongfully foreclosed upon ended up suing the bank, winning, then foreclosing on her local branch when they neglected to pay: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/bank-america-florida-foreclo...
Imagine trying that with google or Facebook or chime.
I don’t agree with the need for physical violence. Historically, we have had decent regulatory protections for customers. I feel like those protections are rapidly being eroded. The threat of reporting to the bank/insurance/etc regulator was real and triggered a response even in the most dense bureaucracies in my experience.
Best story ever along these lines is when an angry homeowner who was wrongfully foreclosed upon ended up suing the bank, winning, then foreclosing on her local branch when they neglected to pay: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/bank-america-florida-foreclo...
I think this is illustrative of my point; only the most well-equipped people (lawyers, people who know how to wardial, etc.) have any chance of grappling with the kafkaesque bullshit of modern corporate bureaucracy. If amazon wrongs you, you're fucked. If a shopkeeper wrongs you, you can go yell at the shopkeeper. I don't know if there's any legal framework that can fix this. I even have to admit that it might not be socially optimal to fix this.
I didn’t learn this by being smart or well-to-do; this is the sort of guerrilla warfare that my working class father taught me. Street smarts take you far in life.
Also I think we have lost something when decisions are made far away from the consequences. If there is a decision made in SF that affects a population in Wichita, where the company has no ties or physical presence, it’s hard to empathize on either end. A lot of commerce depended on trust between parties that could see face to face. That’s sorely missing these days.
Also I think we have lost something when decisions are made far away from the consequences. If there is a decision made in SF that affects a population in Wichita, where the company has no ties or physical presence, it’s hard to empathize on either end. A lot of commerce depended on trust between parties that could see face to face. That’s sorely missing these days.
>If a shopkeeper wrongs you, you can go yell at the shopkeeper
So, go buy your appliances from a local store, not Amazon or Lowe's or Home Depot. Do you, or do you not do that? Because you can totally do that.
So, go buy your appliances from a local store, not Amazon or Lowe's or Home Depot. Do you, or do you not do that? Because you can totally do that.
When I can. Not for this reason, though - just because I don’t trust Amazon not to send me something used or a fake or something.
>I don’t agree with the need for physical violence. Historically, we have had decent regulatory protections for customers.
“When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.”
Regulatory protections certainly didn't arise from the void. If you trace them back the New Deal agencies, then you have to consider the widespread violence that forced their creation.
“When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.”
Regulatory protections certainly didn't arise from the void. If you trace them back the New Deal agencies, then you have to consider the widespread violence that forced their creation.
So, saying to an insurance company that you feel has wronged you - I am registering a complaint with the state insurance commission- is equivalent to physical violence? I’m sorry but that strains credulity.
[deleted]
> society has lost a critical social regulatory mechanism, in the form of being able to physically beat up people who repeatedly exhibit scummy behavior
Wow, that's the most poorly-thought out idea I've read in recent memory.
A few more seconds of consideration should be enough to come up with all the reasons this is such a terrible idea.
But one that I can contribute from a slightly unusual perspective (working adjacent to financial fraud detection):
The aggrieved customer is very often completely wrong about whom to blame for a problem. They are working with incomplete information (we all are), they're in a heightened state of stress (money is at risk), they're grappling with bad models of confusing systems (finance is complicated), and at least half of them are less smart than average (by definition).
I would say that about 10% of customer service requests start out hostile and accusatory. Some are literally threatening violence. And about 99% of the time, the aggressive customer is wrong.
So how many innocent noses do you think should be improperly punched, for your social regulatory mechanism instincts to be satisfied?
Wow, that's the most poorly-thought out idea I've read in recent memory.
A few more seconds of consideration should be enough to come up with all the reasons this is such a terrible idea.
But one that I can contribute from a slightly unusual perspective (working adjacent to financial fraud detection):
The aggrieved customer is very often completely wrong about whom to blame for a problem. They are working with incomplete information (we all are), they're in a heightened state of stress (money is at risk), they're grappling with bad models of confusing systems (finance is complicated), and at least half of them are less smart than average (by definition).
I would say that about 10% of customer service requests start out hostile and accusatory. Some are literally threatening violence. And about 99% of the time, the aggressive customer is wrong.
So how many innocent noses do you think should be improperly punched, for your social regulatory mechanism instincts to be satisfied?
If things are so complex that someone can lose their money through an intricate set of rules, that's exactly the type of scummy behavior that we are talking about. It's not a matter of "whose" fault it is, but rather that a faceless group benefit from this type of behavior, and it is so complex that it is nearly impossible to avoid.
And there are no consequences.
Sometimes, it's a computer responsible for the decision.
These would not be so lightly regarded if someone had true consequences for this behavior. It turns into a complete lack of societal trust, something that people in turn are taken advantage by.
And there are no consequences.
Sometimes, it's a computer responsible for the decision.
These would not be so lightly regarded if someone had true consequences for this behavior. It turns into a complete lack of societal trust, something that people in turn are taken advantage by.
Yes, some groups leverage that complexity for their own benefit. Absolutely true. See also: every complex system ever.
But some systems are complex because they're complicated. And the net of, say, regulated banking, is socially beneficial.
So punish the scummy behavior with the avid prosecution of just laws, obviously.
But some systems are complex because they're complicated. And the net of, say, regulated banking, is socially beneficial.
So punish the scummy behavior with the avid prosecution of just laws, obviously.
The customer being able to cause a scene in your premises (in view of other customers), let alone being able to physically threaten and or hurt you is a good incentive to make sure customers have no reason to resort to such means.
You're less likely to ignore a potential bug if a customer can cause damage to your business (by causing a scene in the store or physically hurting employees) as opposed to being "contained" within endless bureaucracy and phone queues.
You're less likely to ignore a potential bug if a customer can cause damage to your business (by causing a scene in the store or physically hurting employees) as opposed to being "contained" within endless bureaucracy and phone queues.
I'm obviously not proposing it as a solution - just pointing out that this used to be part of the social regulatory calculus and now it's gone.
It's gone because it worked so poorly for society.
Most obvious consequence: the physically-strong can get more justice than the weak.
Which leads inevitably to: the physically-strong make the rules. And social regulation has failed.
Most obvious consequence: the physically-strong can get more justice than the weak.
Which leads inevitably to: the physically-strong make the rules. And social regulation has failed.
I wouldn't say that it's gone because it worked so poorly. It's gone for other reasons such as technological advances shifting so much business online where this behavior is no longer possible.
I don't think it worked poorly. While we didn't have a constant epidemic of customers fighting with customer service people, the possibility of it served as an effective deterrent for overly scummy behavior (from both sides actually) and the system self-regulated.
You can compare this to the amount of verbal abuse and harassment being published on the internet. Before the internet and social media people weren't constantly punching each other in the face, because the possibility of it successfully deterred abusive behavior that would prompt such reactions. With that possibility gone, abuse increased significantly given the lack of consequences.
It's kind of like mutually-assured destruction. Nobody uses it, but the possibility of it being used keeps everyone in check.
I don't think it worked poorly. While we didn't have a constant epidemic of customers fighting with customer service people, the possibility of it served as an effective deterrent for overly scummy behavior (from both sides actually) and the system self-regulated.
You can compare this to the amount of verbal abuse and harassment being published on the internet. Before the internet and social media people weren't constantly punching each other in the face, because the possibility of it successfully deterred abusive behavior that would prompt such reactions. With that possibility gone, abuse increased significantly given the lack of consequences.
It's kind of like mutually-assured destruction. Nobody uses it, but the possibility of it being used keeps everyone in check.
This is such a confusing take on human nature.
Do you think the implied-but-never-actualized threat of physical violence is the thing that makes in-person customer service succeed?
I think it's exactly the opposite.
In-person service is typically better because communication is higher-fidelity, and people are much more empathetic when their counterpart is physically present.
When communication and empathy fail, the threat of physical violence is still not a motivator because (in my little corner of the world), there is basically no threat. The shopkeeper isn't going to jump over the counter and throttle the customer, nor vice versa. Because society built laws and norms that prevent that from being a viable solution, and guarantee that choosing that path will lead to much more serious problems.
It's entirely rational, and we don't need a vague passive-aggressive quasi-threat of a punch in the nose to make it work. No system works all the time, and there are always Poor Impulse Control people who leave the store and come back with a shotgun. But I'd argue that those extremely rare cases are further proof that the in-person "threat of physical violence" does not play a part in making customer service work well.
Do you think the implied-but-never-actualized threat of physical violence is the thing that makes in-person customer service succeed?
I think it's exactly the opposite.
In-person service is typically better because communication is higher-fidelity, and people are much more empathetic when their counterpart is physically present.
When communication and empathy fail, the threat of physical violence is still not a motivator because (in my little corner of the world), there is basically no threat. The shopkeeper isn't going to jump over the counter and throttle the customer, nor vice versa. Because society built laws and norms that prevent that from being a viable solution, and guarantee that choosing that path will lead to much more serious problems.
It's entirely rational, and we don't need a vague passive-aggressive quasi-threat of a punch in the nose to make it work. No system works all the time, and there are always Poor Impulse Control people who leave the store and come back with a shotgun. But I'd argue that those extremely rare cases are further proof that the in-person "threat of physical violence" does not play a part in making customer service work well.
> the implied-but-never-actualized threat of physical violence is the thing that makes in-person customer service succeed? [emphasis mine]
It's not the thing, but I think it's one of the things, among others such as the ones you listed.
> there is basically no threat
Recent events such as shopkeepers or security guards being assaulted for requiring people to wear masks suggests otherwise. The threat is still very small, but I'd argue it exists and humans aren't always reasonable when it comes to evaluating risk probabilities and will probably overestimate the actual risk and adjust their behavior.
> society built laws and norms that prevent that from being a viable solution
People don't always act reasonably and the perpetrator being punished down the line doesn't change the fact you got your face smashed and needed to get stitches.
> But I'd argue that those extremely rare cases are further proof that the in-person "threat of physical violence" does not play a part in making customer service work well.
The other advantages of in-person communication (which you raised) is that both sides can "read the room" and adjust their behavior before the situation escalates to violence. A customer service person might be more likely to bend the rules when they are in front of a person that's visibly angry or violent so that the situation does not actually escalate that far.
It's not the thing, but I think it's one of the things, among others such as the ones you listed.
> there is basically no threat
Recent events such as shopkeepers or security guards being assaulted for requiring people to wear masks suggests otherwise. The threat is still very small, but I'd argue it exists and humans aren't always reasonable when it comes to evaluating risk probabilities and will probably overestimate the actual risk and adjust their behavior.
> society built laws and norms that prevent that from being a viable solution
People don't always act reasonably and the perpetrator being punished down the line doesn't change the fact you got your face smashed and needed to get stitches.
> But I'd argue that those extremely rare cases are further proof that the in-person "threat of physical violence" does not play a part in making customer service work well.
The other advantages of in-person communication (which you raised) is that both sides can "read the room" and adjust their behavior before the situation escalates to violence. A customer service person might be more likely to bend the rules when they are in front of a person that's visibly angry or violent so that the situation does not actually escalate that far.
> It's gone because it worked so poorly for society.
No it’s not. It’s gone because it only works on kulaks and the kulak class is very small now.
No it’s not. It’s gone because it only works on kulaks and the kulak class is very small now.
I don't think you're responding to an advocate for violence. I think the mere possibility of violence that comes with face-to-face interactions modifies people's behavior.
>I can’t help but feel that society has lost a critical social regulatory mechanism, in the form of being able to physically beat up people who repeatedly exhibit scummy behavior. If some airline or bank puts you on hold for 4 hours, there’s no way to throw a few punches or whatever at the people who are responsible.
Yes, beating up the low level, minimum wage employee who has zero power over your circumstances is definitely the right way to resolve disputes with a corporation.
edit: /s
Yes, beating up the low level, minimum wage employee who has zero power over your circumstances is definitely the right way to resolve disputes with a corporation.
edit: /s
My comment is precisely that the people who are actually responsible for your problems are shielded from repercussions by either minimum wage support reps or automated phone systems.
What are you suggesting, that without telephones, you can beat the front line worker up, in hopes that he'll get mad and beat his boss up, and the violence will continue up the chain until it reaches the person responsible?
Translation for ya:
Viva la Revolution - IE Off with the aristocrat's heads, is far less likely these days for lots of reasons.
Though neither the parent author, nor I, are advocating for that response, I'm using it as an extreme to tug your frame of focus along the correct discussion axis.
The least of which is that the super wealthy have both private and public security forces on speed dial. Even minor protest groups or 'gentleman's disputes' like a more basic bare assault of vigilante protest are also off the table. There is no available check against uncouth behavior which violates the social and moral expectations.
Viva la Revolution - IE Off with the aristocrat's heads, is far less likely these days for lots of reasons.
Though neither the parent author, nor I, are advocating for that response, I'm using it as an extreme to tug your frame of focus along the correct discussion axis.
The least of which is that the super wealthy have both private and public security forces on speed dial. Even minor protest groups or 'gentleman's disputes' like a more basic bare assault of vigilante protest are also off the table. There is no available check against uncouth behavior which violates the social and moral expectations.
But how does that have anything to do with being "shielded from repercussions by either minimum wage support reps or automated phone systems"? If you really have a grievance against Chime's CEO or whatever, you can still inflict violence on them. Look up their corporate office address, procure a weapon, wait outside until they leave work, and then do... whatever. There are many reasons why we don't see people inflict violence on "the people who are actually responsible for your problems", but it's not because of "minimum wage support reps or automated phone systems".
No, not at all. I’m suggesting that the level of structural abstraction is a problem precisely because it prevents people from directing their rage where it actually matters.
Suppose your hypothetical was true, and whenever you had a grievance you would speak directly to an c-suite officer. What makes you think the corporate officer in question wouldn't take preventive measures to protect themselves from violence? Business in sketchy neighborhoods place their employees/cash register behind bulletproof glass to prevent this exact issue. If a small business can afford that kind of stuff to protect their minimum wage employee, I'm sure c-suite officers of multinational corporations can afford something equal or better.
If they had to bear the cost in any way, they would be incentivized to reduce the amount of pain they're inflicting on customers. And of course I'm not literally proposing that people go and beat up execs; I'm just pointing out that for basically however long human civilization has existed, the scale was such that you always knew who, specifically, was causing you problems. Now it's all hidden behind a bunch of bullshit.
>If they had to bear the cost in any way, they would be incentivized to reduce the amount of pain they're inflicting on customers
Maybe? That might nudge execs into providing better customer service experience, but if I were an exec I sure as hell am not going to let my well-being depend on good customer experience alone. Eventually you're going to get a crazed lunatic that good customer service can't defuse, and for that reason I'm going to still require physical barriers and/or armed bodyguards.
Maybe? That might nudge execs into providing better customer service experience, but if I were an exec I sure as hell am not going to let my well-being depend on good customer experience alone. Eventually you're going to get a crazed lunatic that good customer service can't defuse, and for that reason I'm going to still require physical barriers and/or armed bodyguards.
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I think getting rid of arbitration and allowing at least small claims court, coupled with an effective small claims court system and encouraging people to use it, could be very effective.
This is particularly true in cases where the actual issue is obvious and just stuck in a bog of internal bureaucracy. Now a company lawyer, who has a strong incentive to resolve the issue, access to said bureaucracy, and a certain extent of power to say "we're now doing X because The Law demands it, even if the stupid process says otherwise, make it happen" is dealing with it.
In most cases, I'd expect the lawyer to resolve it before he has to coach and send an employee to represent the company at the court, costing hundreds to thousands.
It also scales really poorly, effectively motivating companies to resolve issues before they get to that stage.
This is particularly true in cases where the actual issue is obvious and just stuck in a bog of internal bureaucracy. Now a company lawyer, who has a strong incentive to resolve the issue, access to said bureaucracy, and a certain extent of power to say "we're now doing X because The Law demands it, even if the stupid process says otherwise, make it happen" is dealing with it.
In most cases, I'd expect the lawyer to resolve it before he has to coach and send an employee to represent the company at the court, costing hundreds to thousands.
It also scales really poorly, effectively motivating companies to resolve issues before they get to that stage.
Anecdotally, I recently got stuck in one of these automated loops for an airline and they said there was going to be a wait time of like 10 hours. After fiddling around I eventually found the call back option and they called me at 2 AM, so I missed the call.
So, I drove to the nearest airport and went to the service desk. I got my problem fixed in about 5 minutes. I do agree something needs to be done about these customer service loops, if I didn't get my problem resolved I wouldn't have been able to go on my family trip, that we had been talking about with the kids for months. It is beyond ridiculous, in a fair and sensible some government agency would be able to prevent these things, but here we are.
So, I drove to the nearest airport and went to the service desk. I got my problem fixed in about 5 minutes. I do agree something needs to be done about these customer service loops, if I didn't get my problem resolved I wouldn't have been able to go on my family trip, that we had been talking about with the kids for months. It is beyond ridiculous, in a fair and sensible some government agency would be able to prevent these things, but here we are.
Seems to still exist in India
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-18/riot-brok...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-18/riot-brok...
Good for them!
to be fair, this was never the intention of "automated customer handling" the system I built while working there though got ruined -- the actual low level employees at Chime do not in anyway agree with this automated bullshit.
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People like this should be using credit unions, not banks.
Credit Unions where created to service customers that would not profitable for a normal bank, many decades ago I was one of those customers... Still today, even though my financial situation is far better, refuse to put any of my money in bank after the treatment I received from them. I have been with my current credit union for 20+ years, I love them, every loan I have gotten from auto to mortgage in the last 15 years is also run through a credit union...
Credit Unions is where it is at, people need to be educated to use them
Credit Unions where created to service customers that would not profitable for a normal bank, many decades ago I was one of those customers... Still today, even though my financial situation is far better, refuse to put any of my money in bank after the treatment I received from them. I have been with my current credit union for 20+ years, I love them, every loan I have gotten from auto to mortgage in the last 15 years is also run through a credit union...
Credit Unions is where it is at, people need to be educated to use them
I agree. I got started with a CU because their service is so much better than any bank I've dealt with. There are nearly no service charges for normal things. I have access to a cooperative no-charge ATM network with about 30,000 locations. I can get in-person service from credit unions I don't even belong to thanks to a large partnership network.
A few years ago, we needed to buy another car. I filled out the loan application on my CU's website. Someone from the CU called me an hour later to tell me the APR and maximum loan amount, and to recommend a list of local dealerships that other members had good experiences with. The car salesperson did the usual "let me see if we can get you a better financing deal!" sort of thing, and when we showed him our loan paperwork, he stopped: "I've never seen an interest rate that low. I can't beat it. That's amazing."
I love my credit union and I can't imagine a plausible scenario where I'd ever go back to using a bank.
A few years ago, we needed to buy another car. I filled out the loan application on my CU's website. Someone from the CU called me an hour later to tell me the APR and maximum loan amount, and to recommend a list of local dealerships that other members had good experiences with. The car salesperson did the usual "let me see if we can get you a better financing deal!" sort of thing, and when we showed him our loan paperwork, he stopped: "I've never seen an interest rate that low. I can't beat it. That's amazing."
I love my credit union and I can't imagine a plausible scenario where I'd ever go back to using a bank.
Sure, but consider the marketing. Opening an account at a credit union requires:
- Knowing the credit union exists and which ones someone can join (not all of them are "anyone in [region]")
- Going to the credit union during business hours (no mean feat; several of the credit unions around me have shorter hours on Friday and three hours on Saturday)
- Qualifying for an account, and not just membership. Lots of credit unions pull Chexsystems--credit reports for checking accounts--and a report from the traditional Big Three and having poor credit will be a bar to an account (something that the ProPublica article points out as a reason people use Chime).
Those steps even presuppose that you find a credit union that, itself, isn't abusive. I was a member of one that was outright terrible and had miserable fees, but I had to stick with them for a year longer than needed because of a bankruptcy. There's nothing endemic to a credit union that requires it to be a "nice" entity, just that their structure makes it more probable.
And it all comes down to how many of us on this site are financially savvy or at least have a better understanding of the pros/cons of how banks and credit unions and "fintech apps" work. The people being targeted by the marketing for Chime are less likely to have that same set of information, and are winding up abused as a result.
- Knowing the credit union exists and which ones someone can join (not all of them are "anyone in [region]")
- Going to the credit union during business hours (no mean feat; several of the credit unions around me have shorter hours on Friday and three hours on Saturday)
- Qualifying for an account, and not just membership. Lots of credit unions pull Chexsystems--credit reports for checking accounts--and a report from the traditional Big Three and having poor credit will be a bar to an account (something that the ProPublica article points out as a reason people use Chime).
Those steps even presuppose that you find a credit union that, itself, isn't abusive. I was a member of one that was outright terrible and had miserable fees, but I had to stick with them for a year longer than needed because of a bankruptcy. There's nothing endemic to a credit union that requires it to be a "nice" entity, just that their structure makes it more probable.
And it all comes down to how many of us on this site are financially savvy or at least have a better understanding of the pros/cons of how banks and credit unions and "fintech apps" work. The people being targeted by the marketing for Chime are less likely to have that same set of information, and are winding up abused as a result.
Our CU lets you apply online. I've been to their physical location once in my life, and that's when a scammer stole my debit card number. I could either wait for the replacement to show up in the mail, or swing by their office to pick one up over lunch.
Credit Unions (at least around here) have started being just as bad as banks to get any services from. I know a few people who got jobs and then "weren't a good fit" for the local credit union. They went the Walmart route.
While there seems to be a correlation where credit unions have better service, it's not a hard rule. Small local banks can also be friendly and responsive.
The key is to avoid large companies where your call will be "placed in a bucket of stomach fluid", and even worse, when you visit the branch the person trying to help you will be at the mercy of the same exact customer service line.
I'm glad you found a smaller business to trust.
The key is to avoid large companies where your call will be "placed in a bucket of stomach fluid", and even worse, when you visit the branch the person trying to help you will be at the mercy of the same exact customer service line.
I'm glad you found a smaller business to trust.
Credit Unions don't take out splashy ads all over the place though (maybe they should).
I agree with your point. Credit Unions are pretty safe and tend to be rooted in the community in which they operate in.
I agree with your point. Credit Unions are pretty safe and tend to be rooted in the community in which they operate in.
"And of course there's a binding arbitration agreement, requiring all arbitration actions to be on an individual basis."
The CFPB Arbitration Rule "prohibits covered providers of certain consumer financial products and services from using an agreement with a consumer that provides for arbitration of any future dispute between the parties to bar the consumer from filing or participating in a class action concerning the covered consumer financial product or service." [1]
I also have this vague recollection of a story recently about a law firm filing large numbers of arbitration complaints against companies, resulting in very large bills for those companies, because they are required to pay for an authorized arbitrator for each and every arbitration complaint. Unfortunately, I can't find the link to the story.
So it sounds as if the people being ripped off by Chime do have some recourse, if they can just get together with a law firm that specializes in class action lawsuits.
[1] https://www.consumerfinance.gov/rules-policy/final-rules/arb...
The CFPB Arbitration Rule "prohibits covered providers of certain consumer financial products and services from using an agreement with a consumer that provides for arbitration of any future dispute between the parties to bar the consumer from filing or participating in a class action concerning the covered consumer financial product or service." [1]
I also have this vague recollection of a story recently about a law firm filing large numbers of arbitration complaints against companies, resulting in very large bills for those companies, because they are required to pay for an authorized arbitrator for each and every arbitration complaint. Unfortunately, I can't find the link to the story.
So it sounds as if the people being ripped off by Chime do have some recourse, if they can just get together with a law firm that specializes in class action lawsuits.
[1] https://www.consumerfinance.gov/rules-policy/final-rules/arb...
>large numbers of arbitration complaints
Doordash tried to weasel out of their arbitration clause but was denied.
[0]https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/doordash-or...
Doordash tried to weasel out of their arbitration clause but was denied.
[0]https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/doordash-or...
In my ideal world this clause would be struck down as illegal, but not only that, the company would be fined for even trying to put that in the contract. Furthermore, the lawyers involved would receive formal warnings that they will be disbarred if they keep it up.
>In my ideal world this clause would be struck down as illegal
unlikely. A big part of the problem is that the government has deputized financial institutions with enforcing anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing laws, and those institution face stiff penalties in the event such transactions slip through.
unlikely. A big part of the problem is that the government has deputized financial institutions with enforcing anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing laws, and those institution face stiff penalties in the event such transactions slip through.
There is a big difference between "we will freeze your assets when we have a reasonable belief that we are legally required to" and (to paraphrase) "we will do whatever the fuck we want for any or no reason, we may not even give notice".
they changed their core values / agreements after I left but when I was there: DON'T HIDE BEHIND FINE PRINT was a core value. It no longer is as they've grown and that makes me quite sad.
I used to like these kind of bank startups because they usually have a much more polished user interface/well designed app, but they definitely do stuff like this.
Simple was the first big one. Then they got acquired. Then shut down. I switched to a bank called N26 that after 2 months flagged my account for "suspicious activity" and asked me to reupload identification documents. They rejected every single attempt I tried then shut down my account. I then do some reading and turns out they do this to a ton of people.
Having a fancy looking debit card and a nice app isn't worth the drama. I'd love to see one of these fintech startups actually last and not get acquired or turn into a way to market to consumers but it's looking pretty grim.
Simple was the first big one. Then they got acquired. Then shut down. I switched to a bank called N26 that after 2 months flagged my account for "suspicious activity" and asked me to reupload identification documents. They rejected every single attempt I tried then shut down my account. I then do some reading and turns out they do this to a ton of people.
Having a fancy looking debit card and a nice app isn't worth the drama. I'd love to see one of these fintech startups actually last and not get acquired or turn into a way to market to consumers but it's looking pretty grim.
This is absolutely asinine. Find lawyers who will take these cases. Let’s make them feel the pain!
sure! lets have these people living at the absolute edge of their means take time, have the knowledge to find a good attorney, have transporation, and have the capital to pay a retainer...Meanwhile, not having access to their funds has serious immediate consequences that can (1) mean it the customer can't bring the case to fruition and/or (2) make any resolution effectively meaningless.
This is where a justice system and a law system diverge...justice without meaningful access is symbolic.
This is where a justice system and a law system diverge...justice without meaningful access is symbolic.
To be fair, any bank can freeze your account for any reason.
You can mitigate this somewhat by having accounts with multiple banks, but even then they can all be frozen at once. The benefit of a traditional bank is at least you can show up with an ID and beg for your money.
Chime does indeed market to those who aren't financially doing great, but it's a very complicated situation. Everyone should have a minimum of 3 months in living expenses saved, but very few do
You can mitigate this somewhat by having accounts with multiple banks, but even then they can all be frozen at once. The benefit of a traditional bank is at least you can show up with an ID and beg for your money.
Chime does indeed market to those who aren't financially doing great, but it's a very complicated situation. Everyone should have a minimum of 3 months in living expenses saved, but very few do
And what good does it do me to have three months, six months, or heck 3 years worth of living expenses saved if the financial institution I've saved it with tells me that the account has been closed and the funds have been confiscated?
We make fun of old people who lived through the Great Depression for keeping their money as cash or gold, but if this is the future of finance, well, gold bars under the mattress are looking batter and better with each passing day.
We make fun of old people who lived through the Great Depression for keeping their money as cash or gold, but if this is the future of finance, well, gold bars under the mattress are looking batter and better with each passing day.
>We make fun of old people who lived through the Great Depression for keeping their money as cash or gold, but if this is the future of finance, well, gold bars under the mattress are looking batter and better with each passing day.
If only we had some way to store value that was more liquid and easier to store than pieces of gold...!
If only we had some way to store value that was more liquid and easier to store than pieces of gold...!
>And what good does it do me to have three months, six months, or heck 3 years worth of living expenses saved if the financial institution I've saved it with tells me that the account has been closed and the funds have been confiscated
You have those funds spread out across multiple accounts, so if one goes down you still have access to some cash. you know, like a high availability cluster.
You have those funds spread out across multiple accounts, so if one goes down you still have access to some cash. you know, like a high availability cluster.
They're talking about an event such as being put on the terrorism no banking list, or being abused with lawsuits that you can't win and having your money stolen via those lawsuits.
It'd take having physical, inconfiscable assets to protect from that.
It'd take having physical, inconfiscable assets to protect from that.
> They're talking about an event such as being put on the terrorism no banking list, or being abused with lawsuits that you can't win and having your money stolen via those lawsuits.
That's not the impression I got. I was thinking of your account being closed by mistake because of fraud/AML system false positives, not because the legal system was invoked against you.
That's not the impression I got. I was thinking of your account being closed by mistake because of fraud/AML system false positives, not because the legal system was invoked against you.
Or, you know, we could champion legislation that would prevent these banking institutions from arbitrarily seizing your money.
Even if you're sure you don't have flaky hardware, you should still have multiple servers with failover. In the same way, even if you're sure that the law is on your side when it comes to arbitrary seizures, you should keep multiple accounts.
The feature that has been lost was actually a property of writing checks. When you use a debit card, or use a website to make an online payment, you're ultimately asking permission and the bank is free to say "no" with little repercussion. Whereas if you write a check on your account, pass it to someone else, who passes it to their bank, who presents it to your bank, your bank wantonly dishonoring the check would result in a much larger fallout.
Push transactions also put the paying bank on the hook for whether the transaction was fraudulent or not. Whereas with a pull transaction, it is up to the receiving bank to clean up the mess from any fraud. This is why banks (especially smaller banks) will put daily limit on the ACH transfers you can initiate, but will process whatever externally-initiated ACHs land on your account.
Push transactions also put the paying bank on the hook for whether the transaction was fraudulent or not. Whereas with a pull transaction, it is up to the receiving bank to clean up the mess from any fraud. This is why banks (especially smaller banks) will put daily limit on the ACH transfers you can initiate, but will process whatever externally-initiated ACHs land on your account.
>Whereas if you write a check on your account, pass it to someone else, who passes it to their bank, who presents it to your bank, your bank wantonly dishonoring the check would result in a much larger fallout.
I doubt that the law would be on your side if the bank called and told you that your account was closed, and you continued writing checks. At best that would prevent situations mentioned in the article where your account was frozen without your notice, but you'll still be out $10k while that's being resolved.
I doubt that the law would be on your side if the bank called and told you that your account was closed, and you continued writing checks. At best that would prevent situations mentioned in the article where your account was frozen without your notice, but you'll still be out $10k while that's being resolved.
Yes, obviously if you have received notice your account is closed, and you continue writing checks, you're on the hook for writing bad checks. The point is that any in flight checks would cause a problem for the banks, which discourages traditional banks from adopting "innovative" ideas like freezing accounts en masse based on machine learning snake oil.
>The point is that any in flight checks would cause a problem for the banks, which discourages traditional banks from adopting "innovative" ideas like freezing accounts en masse based on machine learning snake oil.
Is this what's happening here? The way I read the story it sounded like they froze the account and then the customer only noticed because her card was declined, rather than her account being frozen because she tried to use it. Even if the banks couldn't do "in flight checks" (because people use checks rather than debit cards), it doesn't prevent them from using "machine learning snake oil" to randomly close accounts.
Is this what's happening here? The way I read the story it sounded like they froze the account and then the customer only noticed because her card was declined, rather than her account being frozen because she tried to use it. Even if the banks couldn't do "in flight checks" (because people use checks rather than debit cards), it doesn't prevent them from using "machine learning snake oil" to randomly close accounts.
I didn't say that it prevents banks from closing accounts, rather they're discouraged. If a bank really thinks an account is fraudulent, they need to stop processing checks drawn on the account. Since doing so creates fallout they have to deal with, they're incentivized to only declare an account fraudulent if they're pretty damn sure. Whereas with a totally online account, the only downside is losing that customer.
When your relatively small banking app generates more consumer complaints than Wells Fargo, you're really doing something very wrong.
I would caution that before people try to blame the victims here ("don't use small banks!" "don't use banking apps!" etc), these things happen with large/established banks too. With accounts just being randomly locked for a "fraud investigation" that can take weeks (particularly for cash movements over 10K).
What my spouse and me are doing is we have two checking accounts at different banks with a different one of us as the primary. Pay-checks are received at one, and a scheduled transfer moves some money to the second, and bills paid from both. That way even if one of our accounts did get suspended while a hassle, we could weather is with relative ease.
I would caution that before people try to blame the victims here ("don't use small banks!" "don't use banking apps!" etc), these things happen with large/established banks too. With accounts just being randomly locked for a "fraud investigation" that can take weeks (particularly for cash movements over 10K).
What my spouse and me are doing is we have two checking accounts at different banks with a different one of us as the primary. Pay-checks are received at one, and a scheduled transfer moves some money to the second, and bills paid from both. That way even if one of our accounts did get suspended while a hassle, we could weather is with relative ease.
Is something like this possible with M1 Finance?
I don’t understand why people choose a bank based on anything except excellent customer service. Its the one thing you need from them urgently when something inevitably fucks up.
I lobbied for this heavily and was involved in the firing of CS lead who fucking sucked as his job (sorry for the language), it was always an uphill battle and one I was willing to die on. They still to this day do a shit job here.
I choose my bank based on low cost, because that's the only really visible variable.
"Excellent customer service" for me means never having to talk to the bank because everything just works, and it's incredibly difficult to judge how good banks are at that.
"Excellent customer service" for me means never having to talk to the bank because everything just works, and it's incredibly difficult to judge how good banks are at that.
Nothing ever works perfectly all the time though. I find it's best to judge companies (and people) by how well/badly they recover from cock-ups. Same approach to trusting reviews - ignore good ones, read the worst ones and see if you can live with whatever criticism you find.
Ex-employee of chime here, joined early on (think first 10 employees) and spent half a decade working there.
I can guess as to what is going on here.
I am not sure if my NDA still covers me talking about stuff there, but most likely is what has happened was folks either: not using their accounts (this will trigger eventual closer) or legitimately engaging in practices that would be... improper in any banking system. It's important to note that Chime is not a bank either. These closing actually most likely happened BECAUSE of Bancorp, and not because Bancorp wasn't policing Chime properly. There is a lot of CSR practices that occur there that aren't great and that is mostly due to the fact they refuse(d?) to spend the money to scale up the actual human teams as well as finding folks who also didn't want to rip chime off themselves from the CSR department (I know of one such case that I can't get into).
They are having serious growing pains which imo still is of course no excuse for not caring for the customers, but I have seen a lot of these cases and I have seen a lot of what people have been doing then run to the media to complain about, Chime doesn't just willy nilly close accounts without a serious reason. A lot of the times the customers are mad they couldn't pull a fast one on the risk team... Anyway, I am not really here to defend them. If you have any other questions I could probably answer them.
That said, I chalk this up to their massive size (well over 12,000,000 customers) and a large portion of refusing to scale up Human Resources and instead trying to use to tech to deal with a lot of this. A few complaints like this aren't all that weird, bigger banks have way more complaints and do way worse things.
Edit: I really can't talk about what I know would cause these things to happen, as, it would tip of fraudsters or people who legit have the feds after them. But the tools we used to figure this stuff out were pretty advanced.
Edit 2: In my tenure, I saw lots of systematic fraud and also saw lots of those exact people take to social media to complain about it. That is anecdotal of course. But I saw a lot of shit that would blow your minds. I also saw many individuals engaging in fraud that they may not have even realized was fraud. One such example was the everyday Jane/John trying to deposit the same check multiple times when they knew full and well it was deposited first. Not to mention the number of dick picks people sent in via check deposit. Thanks to patents from other banks I was not allowed to deploy the ML platform I built for the mobile app to capture ONLY the check and its information, as opposed to human parts that shouldn't be in the picture.
Edit 3: Again, I am not defending them, but if you are not in Finance then honestly you're out of your depth understanding what is going on here. No offense.
Edit 4: This also reminds me of the time Bancorp went down for like 3 days and everyone took to twitter to say that China hacked Chime which was both funny, sad, and scary. Of course that isn't what happened, Bancorp is just fucking shitty.
I can guess as to what is going on here.
I am not sure if my NDA still covers me talking about stuff there, but most likely is what has happened was folks either: not using their accounts (this will trigger eventual closer) or legitimately engaging in practices that would be... improper in any banking system. It's important to note that Chime is not a bank either. These closing actually most likely happened BECAUSE of Bancorp, and not because Bancorp wasn't policing Chime properly. There is a lot of CSR practices that occur there that aren't great and that is mostly due to the fact they refuse(d?) to spend the money to scale up the actual human teams as well as finding folks who also didn't want to rip chime off themselves from the CSR department (I know of one such case that I can't get into).
They are having serious growing pains which imo still is of course no excuse for not caring for the customers, but I have seen a lot of these cases and I have seen a lot of what people have been doing then run to the media to complain about, Chime doesn't just willy nilly close accounts without a serious reason. A lot of the times the customers are mad they couldn't pull a fast one on the risk team... Anyway, I am not really here to defend them. If you have any other questions I could probably answer them.
That said, I chalk this up to their massive size (well over 12,000,000 customers) and a large portion of refusing to scale up Human Resources and instead trying to use to tech to deal with a lot of this. A few complaints like this aren't all that weird, bigger banks have way more complaints and do way worse things.
Edit: I really can't talk about what I know would cause these things to happen, as, it would tip of fraudsters or people who legit have the feds after them. But the tools we used to figure this stuff out were pretty advanced.
Edit 2: In my tenure, I saw lots of systematic fraud and also saw lots of those exact people take to social media to complain about it. That is anecdotal of course. But I saw a lot of shit that would blow your minds. I also saw many individuals engaging in fraud that they may not have even realized was fraud. One such example was the everyday Jane/John trying to deposit the same check multiple times when they knew full and well it was deposited first. Not to mention the number of dick picks people sent in via check deposit. Thanks to patents from other banks I was not allowed to deploy the ML platform I built for the mobile app to capture ONLY the check and its information, as opposed to human parts that shouldn't be in the picture.
Edit 3: Again, I am not defending them, but if you are not in Finance then honestly you're out of your depth understanding what is going on here. No offense.
Edit 4: This also reminds me of the time Bancorp went down for like 3 days and everyone took to twitter to say that China hacked Chime which was both funny, sad, and scary. Of course that isn't what happened, Bancorp is just fucking shitty.
Sounds accurate from my experience working in fintech (crypto, not banking, but subject to many the same regulations). We would literally have customers with dozens of transactions referring to drug deals, close their account (as required by both federal law and our banking partners), and then have them go around filing complaints and starting reddit threads about how bad we are for closing their account. You can't take complaints like this at face value without knowing the full story (even if people complain to the media).
The reality in the US is that financial institutions are liable for detecting any and all illegal activity on their platforms, reporting it to FinCEN, and closing accounts. If you fail to do this you lose your money transmission licenses and/or banking partnership. Depending on the exact nature of the issue, holding customer money hostage can even be a legal requirement.
Scaling up support at fintech companies is definitely hard, and certainly the companies can and should do a better job of this. But dealing with the regulatory burden is also crazy difficult, and many folks doing shady stuff (fraud, drugs, money laundering, CP, etc etc) are more likely to use the newer platforms.
Real banks often just don't have to deal with this as much, because they make you sign up in person, with ID, and ask you all sorts of questions about your source of income etc up front. However, real banks can and do also close customer accounts (used to be very common for folks who bought crypto with their checking account, for example).
The reality in the US is that financial institutions are liable for detecting any and all illegal activity on their platforms, reporting it to FinCEN, and closing accounts. If you fail to do this you lose your money transmission licenses and/or banking partnership. Depending on the exact nature of the issue, holding customer money hostage can even be a legal requirement.
Scaling up support at fintech companies is definitely hard, and certainly the companies can and should do a better job of this. But dealing with the regulatory burden is also crazy difficult, and many folks doing shady stuff (fraud, drugs, money laundering, CP, etc etc) are more likely to use the newer platforms.
Real banks often just don't have to deal with this as much, because they make you sign up in person, with ID, and ask you all sorts of questions about your source of income etc up front. However, real banks can and do also close customer accounts (used to be very common for folks who bought crypto with their checking account, for example).
This was common in our experience as well, without being a HUGE BANK you really do have to actually police this stuff.
>A few complaints like this aren't all that weird, bigger banks have way more complaints and do way worse things.
The article directly contradicts what you're saying. Do you think the piece paints an unfair or inaccurate characterization of the complaints? (from the article)
>Of the 920 complaints filed about Chime, 197 were tagged as involving a “closed account.” The CFPB’s complaints are labeled inconsistently, and many of the other 723 also detail problems involving accounts that were closed against customers’ will. By comparison, Wells Fargo, a bank with six times as many customers and a lengthy recent history of misbehavior in its consumer bank, has 317 CFPB complaints tagged for closed accounts over the same time period. Marcus, the new online bank created by Goldman Sachs, with 4 million customers, has generated seven such complaints.
The article directly contradicts what you're saying. Do you think the piece paints an unfair or inaccurate characterization of the complaints? (from the article)
>Of the 920 complaints filed about Chime, 197 were tagged as involving a “closed account.” The CFPB’s complaints are labeled inconsistently, and many of the other 723 also detail problems involving accounts that were closed against customers’ will. By comparison, Wells Fargo, a bank with six times as many customers and a lengthy recent history of misbehavior in its consumer bank, has 317 CFPB complaints tagged for closed accounts over the same time period. Marcus, the new online bank created by Goldman Sachs, with 4 million customers, has generated seven such complaints.
I think that people are more quick to react against Chime than they are the folks who also hold their insurance, mortgages, and possibly other things. Lest they have even more issues with the bank. I don't doubt Chime handles things wrong, but I do know that every person on that team when I was there did there best to try and resolve the issue.
This comment makes no sense. If my bank closed my account without warning and revoked access to all my funds, it wouldn't matter if they had my mortgage or not: I'm going to make a complaint.
>I do know that every person on that team when I was there did there best to try and resolve the issue
"My colleagues had good intentions back when I worked there" is nothing against the facts. If you had read the article, you'd see that Wells Fargo, the bank that everyone loves to hate--with 6x the customers of Chime!--has only slightly more complaints for "closed account."
It's nice for you, as a former employee, to imagine that people are unfairly complaining more about Chime taking away all their money. But you could just as easily make the reverse argument: Chime users are less wealthy than users of other platforms and are therefore less likely to have the time and wherewithal to complain to the CFPB.
You probably don't like that argument, but you have to admit that I am presenting exactly as much evidence as you are.
>I do know that every person on that team when I was there did there best to try and resolve the issue
"My colleagues had good intentions back when I worked there" is nothing against the facts. If you had read the article, you'd see that Wells Fargo, the bank that everyone loves to hate--with 6x the customers of Chime!--has only slightly more complaints for "closed account."
It's nice for you, as a former employee, to imagine that people are unfairly complaining more about Chime taking away all their money. But you could just as easily make the reverse argument: Chime users are less wealthy than users of other platforms and are therefore less likely to have the time and wherewithal to complain to the CFPB.
You probably don't like that argument, but you have to admit that I am presenting exactly as much evidence as you are.
It's true, but the comment does make sense. It happens all the time, some people complain, some don't. Wells Fargo was more than happy to let fraudsters and all sorts of legal impropriety happen under their books. Might be one reason they had less complaints. Chime, doesn't have that benefit of being Wells Fargo's size tbh.
Your assumption that these were scammers trying to pressure Chime to reopen their account contradicts explicit statements in the article:
> Chime confirmed that five of the anecdotes were well-founded; the company acknowledged making mistakes and returned each customers’ funds.
> The company confirmed, in interviews for this article, that it should not have closed Robertson’s account.
The article also addresses your claim that
> A few complaints like this aren't all that weird, bigger banks have way more complaints
by directly comparing the numbers, and Chime had by far the most (per customer):
> Of the 920 complaints filed about Chime, 197 were tagged as involving a “closed account.” The CFPB’s complaints are labeled inconsistently, and many of the other 723 also detail problems involving accounts that were closed against customers’ will. By comparison, Wells Fargo, a bank with six times as many customers and a lengthy recent history of misbehavior in its consumer bank, has 317 CFPB complaints tagged for closed accounts over the same time period. Marcus, the new online bank created by Goldman Sachs, with 4 million customers, has generated seven such complaints.
If I had to guess, it's growing pains combined with a "growth is more important than a few people accidentally getting crushed underneath" approach combined with pressure to do more about the fraud that led to this. If they're doing this and still accepting new customers, they're fully responsible for the pain they're inflicting.
At the very least, they could have tried to _actually_ make things right with the affected people:
> We have made efforts to make things right with these members.” (Robertson said that, beyond unfreezing her funds, Chime has not contacted her.)
This would mean compensating them for the time wasted, the stress and anguish caused, and financial cost (e.g. payday loans) incurred.
> Chime confirmed that five of the anecdotes were well-founded; the company acknowledged making mistakes and returned each customers’ funds.
> The company confirmed, in interviews for this article, that it should not have closed Robertson’s account.
The article also addresses your claim that
> A few complaints like this aren't all that weird, bigger banks have way more complaints
by directly comparing the numbers, and Chime had by far the most (per customer):
> Of the 920 complaints filed about Chime, 197 were tagged as involving a “closed account.” The CFPB’s complaints are labeled inconsistently, and many of the other 723 also detail problems involving accounts that were closed against customers’ will. By comparison, Wells Fargo, a bank with six times as many customers and a lengthy recent history of misbehavior in its consumer bank, has 317 CFPB complaints tagged for closed accounts over the same time period. Marcus, the new online bank created by Goldman Sachs, with 4 million customers, has generated seven such complaints.
If I had to guess, it's growing pains combined with a "growth is more important than a few people accidentally getting crushed underneath" approach combined with pressure to do more about the fraud that led to this. If they're doing this and still accepting new customers, they're fully responsible for the pain they're inflicting.
At the very least, they could have tried to _actually_ make things right with the affected people:
> We have made efforts to make things right with these members.” (Robertson said that, beyond unfreezing her funds, Chime has not contacted her.)
This would mean compensating them for the time wasted, the stress and anguish caused, and financial cost (e.g. payday loans) incurred.
> I chalk this up to their massive size (well over 12,000,000 customers) and a large portion of refusing to scale up Human Resources and instead trying to use to tech to deal with a lot of this.
This is the unfortunate side of disruptive tech. It can't - and shouldn't - replace people. But it seems the allure of cost controls is too strong even if it hurts customers, and eventually the business.
This is the unfortunate side of disruptive tech. It can't - and shouldn't - replace people. But it seems the allure of cost controls is too strong even if it hurts customers, and eventually the business.
I argued this constantly, I was in charge of mobile and it made me furious when bad CSR resulted in our actually pretty great mobile apps getting bad reviews. I am also guilty of creating the chat bot that is used by Chime, though I created it for a very different purpose from how it is used today and management basically mutilated something that actually worked pretty great.
As someone sitting kinda on the outside of fintech/finance, it just feels like there's a lot less value add and market oversaturation these days from "hipster app with Bancorp account".
I previously had Simple (rest in peace), and was totally okay with it, but it clearly wasn't worth it to BBVA/PNC. I went to SoFi just because they're making moves to get their own charter, rather than sitting with Bancorp.
Now you've got Robinhood, Credit Karma, Chime, etc etc all running Bancorp backing accounts so really there's no fundamental difference between any of them.
I previously had Simple (rest in peace), and was totally okay with it, but it clearly wasn't worth it to BBVA/PNC. I went to SoFi just because they're making moves to get their own charter, rather than sitting with Bancorp.
Now you've got Robinhood, Credit Karma, Chime, etc etc all running Bancorp backing accounts so really there's no fundamental difference between any of them.
I can't really talk about it, but that charter things is... in their minds
Their terms are awful.[1] They can do whatever they want.
Compare the terms from Bank of America, especially the "Withdrawal" section.[2] There are restrictions on how soon you can withdraw how much, and they tell you those up front. You can get at least $225 the day after a deposit. For new customers within 30 days of opening the account, withdrawals over $5,525 may be required to wait up to 5 days. For large cash withdrawals, you may need to go to a "cash vault" center and provide you own armored car. Stuff like that.
[1] https://www.chime.com/policies/chime/chime-user-agreement/#t... [2] https://www.bankofamerica.com/salesservices/deposits/resourc...
Compare the terms from Bank of America, especially the "Withdrawal" section.[2] There are restrictions on how soon you can withdraw how much, and they tell you those up front. You can get at least $225 the day after a deposit. For new customers within 30 days of opening the account, withdrawals over $5,525 may be required to wait up to 5 days. For large cash withdrawals, you may need to go to a "cash vault" center and provide you own armored car. Stuff like that.
[1] https://www.chime.com/policies/chime/chime-user-agreement/#t... [2] https://www.bankofamerica.com/salesservices/deposits/resourc...
>[1] https://www.chime.com/policies/chime/chime-user-agreement/#t...
>You may terminate acceptance of this Agreement at any time by permanently deleting the Application in its entirety from the Authorized Device
Who wrote this agreement? Clearly they have no idea how apps or online accounts work.
>You may terminate acceptance of this Agreement at any time by permanently deleting the Application in its entirety from the Authorized Device
Who wrote this agreement? Clearly they have no idea how apps or online accounts work.
This is amazing. "Just delete the app" was commonly proposed as a joke solution on /r/wallstreetbets for people who managed to get their account deep into the red with one of the "infinite leverage" exploits.
This is because Bank of America is a bank and Chime is not. Regulation CC requires much of what you just listed. First $200 available fast, and within a few days, the first $5000.
> But remember, the Expedited Funds Availability Act requires the first $200 of a deposit that is not already subject to next-day availability to be made available by the first business day following the day of deposit.
> Deposits into accounts of new customers (open for less than 30 days)--Next-day availability applies only to cash, electronic payments, and the first $5,000 of any other next-day items; the remaining amount from next-day items must be available by the ninth business day. You may choose any availability schedule for deposits of other checks into the accounts of these new customers.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/regcc/regcc.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedited_Funds_Availability_A...
> But remember, the Expedited Funds Availability Act requires the first $200 of a deposit that is not already subject to next-day availability to be made available by the first business day following the day of deposit.
> Deposits into accounts of new customers (open for less than 30 days)--Next-day availability applies only to cash, electronic payments, and the first $5,000 of any other next-day items; the remaining amount from next-day items must be available by the ninth business day. You may choose any availability schedule for deposits of other checks into the accounts of these new customers.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/regcc/regcc.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedited_Funds_Availability_A...
Regulation CC requires much of what you just listed.
Which is the whole point.
Which is the whole point.
I had an fraudulent account opened in Chime with my name/info (about a year ago). I contacted support when I received some weird marketing email for this service I never signed up for. I tried to talk to their support as it was obviously fraudulent and they wanted me to send in License/Docs proving my identity. Didn't trust them with a photo copy of my license since they were obviously terrible and just froze my credit.
Got the email today that the account was finally closed. Stay as far away from this company as you can.
Got the email today that the account was finally closed. Stay as far away from this company as you can.
What could they have done better here? I'd be more concerned had they just closed the account without verifying your identity, that would be bad.
They could've sent me a confirmation link since the email was linked but the login credentials were the fraudsters (couldn't reset via email). Though that obviously has issues as well.
I'm not entirely sure, but there was no way I was going to give out sensitive information (imo) to a website that I'm not familiar with. Even at the time I was trying to get support, It felt like the company wasn't even legit.
No great answer here. Maybe escalate to a manager and have a more involved conversation.
I'm not entirely sure, but there was no way I was going to give out sensitive information (imo) to a website that I'm not familiar with. Even at the time I was trying to get support, It felt like the company wasn't even legit.
No great answer here. Maybe escalate to a manager and have a more involved conversation.
If you had been aware of this before opening your Chime account would you still have done so? I would not. Losing my money, and then having it tied up in a frustrating and incompetent process is just not worth the risk. I will be closing my Chime account immediately. This needs more attention.
This sounds exactly like what has been reported as happening to One Finance over maybe the last month. Accounts being unexpected closed for "fraud" reasons, unable to say why they are closed, etc... One is also a "virtual bank" technology company that uses a banking partner. Reports are over in the subreddit for One: https://www.reddit.com/r/OneFinance/
[1]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...