Hacker News Reader

Comment by mijoharas | Hacker News Reader

> I've opened another business account and a personal travel credit card with Chase

Out of interest, why would you do that after your previous experience with them?

The Chase Sapphire card was rated as the best travel card. I had no idea that I had been flagged personally at the time I applied.

I can't remember why I chose them for a business account. At the time I was working under the assumption that this was a "lightning strike" type of event which could have happened with any bank. I'm more inclined to believe it's Chase-specific now, or at least more likely with Chase, esp. based on other anecdotes in this thread! I was also inclined to believe that most large banks are terrible. For example, I have experienced extremely poor customer service with B of A, and Wells Fargo is a very sleazy company. However, my experience with Chase is by far the worst I've personally experienced.

I'm a very happy customer of Mercury Bank for my current business, FWIW.

> I'm more inclined to believe it's Chase-specific now, or at least more likely with Chase, esp. based on other anecdotes in this thread!

The only reason anecdotes in this thread are about Chase is that Chase is the bank you mentioned in your article. If you had mentioned any other of the big banks I am sure you would get similar anecdotes. All of the big banks work basically the same way. For example, as I commented in another response upthread, they probably all have similar "we can screw your business any time we like and there's nothing you can do about it" language in their terms of service.

> my experience with Chase is by far the worst I've personally experienced.

Have any of your experiences with other big banks been small business accounts? If not, that's an obvious reason for your Chase experience to be worse.

I’ve had business accounts with almost every large US bank. I’ve founded quite a few businesses - venture-backed and bootstrapped product and consulting companies, going back to the 90s. I’ll repeat: I’ve never had an experience as bad as the one I had with Chase. Not sure what would possess you to post something so condescending about a statement of opinion and then to make incorrect assumptions about the extent of my experience.

Also: the same company that got flagged by Chase had an account with Bank of America open at the same time and later opened accounts with a couple of other banks. No KYC issues with any of them despite exactly the same set of facts. And again, we did nothing even remotely shady or suspicious.

> I’ve had business accounts with almost every large US bank.

Ok. I would suggest making that very clear up front in your article. I think that would considerably increase the article's impact.

I’m not the OP and I didn’t write an article. I wrote a comment about my own experience with Chase, which you quoted and responded to.

> I’m not the OP and I didn’t write an article.

Oh, sorry, I didn't realize that. That was stupid of me.

Correction from the poster I was responding to: it is not his article. My comment about why the anecdotes in this thread are about Chase are still valid, but I did not realize that the poster I was responding to was not the article's author. So I should have said "mentioned in the article", and the last paragraph of my post is irrelevant to the poster I was responding to. Sorry for the confusion on my part.

These banks are too big to fail and get bail outs funded by taxpayers (and SMEs), and yet SMEs are too small to matter and entire livelihoods can be thrown to ruins based on ahat is often a very subjective and often erroneous risk process. I understand banks have to comply with laws and often complex risks but i doubt they would shutdown accounts of companies worth over $1B unless youre violating some serious laws and even then it would probably be done with a lot more caution due to risk of law suit.

I doubt Mercury can do much more as arent they just a vrand on top of a bank? Like Heroku vs AWS.

For all of the complaining about banking majors in the US here on HN, why don't more people bank _intentionally_ with credit unions, or at least local banks? When you open your account, make sure that the branch manager knows who you are and what your pattern of business will be. Open your account wearing good clothes (suit, if possible), and share a business card with your account rep and branch manager. Think old school, like it is the 1950s, and it will be much harder for them to terminate your accounts.

> why don't more people bank _intentionally_ with credit unions, or at least local banks

Simply put, national access to those banks. Traveling business owners who deal with cash will have access to physical banking locations all over the country. You cannot deposit cash in San Francisco for a bank that is local to only NYC.

    > Traveling business owners who deal with cash

Woah, you picked a strange edge case. What legitimate businesses in 2024 fit this category? I'm pretty sure that you can deposit cash at any ATM if that ATM and your card have either "Cirrus" or "Plus" interbank network compatibility.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com