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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...

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.

>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.

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.

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.

> 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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 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.

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.

The "possibility" of violence which is known to never occur is an empty threat and will be ignored just as quickly.

Exactly. Which is why threatening a telemarketer is absurd.

>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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Seems to still exist in India

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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...

>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...

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

But if any bank could freeze these assets, where do you suggest the 3 months be stored? Bitcoin? Under your mattress?

Yes and yes?

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.

>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.

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.

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.