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Comment by whitepoplar | Hacker News Reader

Story time: when I was fresh out of college, I deposited a check to my Schwab bank account via mobile deposit, but realized that I wasn't going to have enough time for the funds to clear before I needed to write a check from my account to my new landlord. I called Schwab customer service, not really thinking that they would do anything, but to my surprise, the banker said "Let's fix this for you!" and suggested that we conference call the counterparty check's bank to verbally confirm the funds, at which point he manually cleared the funds into my account and told me "You're good to go!" Schwab has some of the best customer service I've ever experienced, even for new (i.e. poor) grads ;)

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I don’t know if this is general policy for all accounts or if there’s some balance threshold to enable it, but these days Schwab will instantly clear up to $10,000 of checks deposited via Mobile Deposit.

If for whatever reason you don’t have overdraft protection, they will send out an email if an ACH presents which would cause an overdraft and they give you until 10:00am the next day to transfer in funds to cover it.

I read this yesterday and was really interested in the idea. I am looking to move my small business checking account from my current bank which is the poster child for everything that is wrong with brick and mortar banks. I dug a little further in to Schwab and for business accounts, the minimum balance is $250k. Bummer.

Check out Fidelity! They're every bit as good IMO.

That sounds pretty dubious to me. Either you deposited a check from your account held at a different bank or a check someone else gave you drawn on their account.

If it was your own account, then during the conference call you had to give out your personal information to identify yourself as the account holder at the other bank, all while the Schwab agent is listening in..

Or if it was someone else's account then that other bank's agent should never have discussed anything to do with that account with you and certainly not with some random other person (the Schwab agent) listening in.

What are you talking about?

The drafting bank always tells the depositing bank if those funds are available, which is what they did here: it’s how checks work. You would discover the same information yourself, when it cleared or didn’t.

If you take a check to the drafting bank, they’ll check the funds in the account right then and there and either pay you or tell you there are insufficient funds.

All that happened is they did it on the phone rather than through a clearing house or in person, but the exact same information was exchanged:

1. The account number and amount on the check was reported to the drafting bank, which both the depositor and his bank knew from the check already.

2. The drafting bank confirmed those funds were available, which would have been revealed when the check cleared or didn’t through other means.

Having a bank call another bank to clear a check isn’t uncommon — I’ve had it done with payroll checks for the same reason, that I needed to pay rent.

Not sure why this was dead, but I vouched for it.

A bit of Google searching appears to show that this is not an uncommon practice. [1]

https://www.consumerismcommentary.com/verify-funds-on-that-c...

Counterparty was a family member, also on the phone line, and who provided their permission to both Schwab and their bank to do it. My point still stands. It was highly unconventional and Schwab didn't have to do it, but they did in order to help me out. I'm sure it's not standard practice, and I wouldn't count on another banker doing the same, though Schwab has a knack for being customer-friendly.

Jesus F Christ.. that's even worse than my original scenarios! Now you have a family member whose personal information has been compromised to a random Schwab agent and even to you..

To me this would be a huge red flag.. the fact that Schwab apparently allows their customer service agents to play loose and fast with sensitive financial PII.

Source: I worked at a Global Top 20 bank for many years and this would absolutely be a fireable offence and the employee would be lucky not to be dragged into court by the bank and the government.

I totally understand where you're coming from, and it gives me pause when I think about it now, but I will say that in the moment it came across as a good faith effort and really did save the situation.

Why wouldn’t this require just the info on the check (routing + account #), which everyone involved probably already had/needed to answer the query?

It’s a balance of funds inquiry. Before you can discuss that kind of information about an account you need to identify the person as the account holder. I can’t call your bank and ask if you have enough funds to cover a cheque you wrote.

This doesn’t seem to be the case from the article [1] linked in a grandchild of your original post.

[1]: https://www.consumerismcommentary.com/verify-funds-on-that-c...

> If it was your own account, then during the conference call you had to give out your personal information to identify yourself as the account holder at the other bank

Not necessarily. Banks can call, using the account information on the cheque, to verify funds available. (The cheque writer's bank can then call the cheque writer, separately, to get consent.)

I did this to clear a paycheck to cash when a cash-strapped college student.

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