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Something has happened to big banks along the way, where they no longer actually provide banking services to their customers. When I walk into a Wells Fargo bra

Something has happened to big banks along the way, where they no longer actually provide banking services to their customers. When I walk into a Wells Fargo branch now and sit down with a "banker" to take care of my accounts, it consists of sitting next to them while they call 1-800-WELLSFARGO for me and talk to a call center. There simply is no service anymore. I walked into my local branch to open up an IRA last week before the tax deadline, and they literally couldn't even do it for me in time because the person on the phone said "we'll do our best effort, no guarantee." I walked up to the teller, asked for a cashier check for the full amount in my accounts, and opened up an account next door at a small local bank (First Republic). They were able to sit down with me and immediately pull up all the paperwork to create and fund an IRA account with no hassle at all right there, no phone call involved. It was like night and day. These huge banks have simply become way too big, and it serves no one's interest but their own. They have zero incentive to provide actual customer service anymore. There needs to be a massive restructuring of our system to allow smaller banks to thrive and provide actual competition.

wpietri 9y ago
Agreed. I changed over to a local credit union from Bank of America a few years back. Their online banking is a bit more awkward, but I can always talk with an informed person, which more than makes up for it. My theory is that banks started out personal, but as they have consolidated have become ever more industrial in their scale and processes. Unfortunately, industrial-style human interaction is pretty awful. I think the massive restructuring will come as banks split tasks into a) fully automating the boring things, and b) creating really good tools that empower their front-line workers (instead of treating them as dumb peripherals). If our current major banks all went the way of Blockbuster during that process, I'll shed no tears. Few will, I imagine.
epc 9y ago
Chase seems to have moved their "hands on" banking to their "Private Bankers" (who you qualify for if you have some minimum amount of money or debt across your accounts).
- callmeed 9y ago
  Yes, I am a Chase Private Client and, to be honest, it's awesome. I call and a friendly human answers immediately. But beyond that, I think Chase does a pretty good job overall with in-branch customer service. Their online/mobile banking is great. They're the best big bank by far IMO.
  - wu_tang_chris 9y ago
    In-branch customer service has gotten super annoying in the last 3 or 4 years. I walk in to do something simple, there's like 8 bankers standing around in suits, doing nothing, and one of them rushes up to me like I just made their day and starts enthusiastically helping me with my simple thing... it's better than a long line and a disinterest in doing their job, but god damn it's creepy.
djschnei 9y ago
Unfortunately, the massive restructuring you're referring to would likely need to be in the form of deregulation. It's unfortunate because deregulating something is typically a non-discussion. Our banking regulations make almost no distinction between massive, "too big to fail" banks and small community banks. Like most regulation, it's the massive companies that can foot the bill for complying with regulation, creating barriers to entry into the market.
- aphextron 9y ago
  I didn't want to think you were right, but digging into this it seems to be the case. Dodd-Frank has apparently been a boon to big banks, and squashed competion [0]. "“Having a bank, it’s a sign of economic vitality,” he says. And it’s not just North Carolina. He notes the country has about 40 percent fewer banks today than when the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, passed in response to the recession and implementing the most significant changes to financial regulations since the Great Depression, was signed in 2010. Proponents of the measure said it would reduce the risk of another financial crisis by decreasing the concentration of resources in a handful of banks. Gwaltney says it’s done “the exact opposite.” “The five or 10 largest banks in the country are larger than they were at the passage of Dodd-Frank,” he says." [0] https://banksstreetpartners.com/news/what-happened-to-our-community-banks https://banksstreetpartners.com/news/what-happened-to-our-co...
- rdiddly 9y ago
  Why is it always a choice between poorly-written regulations and no regulations?
  - corey_moncure 9y ago
    Maybe writing regulations is hard. Have you tried it?
  - djschnei 9y ago
    Not sure... just seems to be a reality.
  - bluGill 9y ago
istorical 9y ago
I had a similar breaking point with Wells Fargo. I was about 20. Needed to get something notarized, someone mentioned that banks could do it. I googled and confirmed WF could do it for their customers so I went over to my nearest branch. Asked the front desk if I could get something notarized. They said sure and referred me to a banker at a desk. I walked over and sat down and told him I was looking to get something notarized. He said sure, but first can I ask if you've considered upgrading your bank account? I said I didn't think I was interested, but he decided it was worth a few minutes of my time to pull out a pamphlet and talk me through the benefits. I thought I was through it. But then he started asking me if I had considered opening an investment account. I told him that with my current earnings and burn rate it didn't make much sense. But he decided to walk me through the benefits. Then I thought surely, he must be ready to help me notarize my document. Nope. He wants to talk about - I don't remember - small business loans, life insurance? Something that made no sense to offer a 20 year old. Sat through that presentation. I'll make an aside - I was much less experienced with deflecting sales pitches at that age, today I'd have stopped it all much sooner. But I digress. After 10-20 minutes of pitches for products I never expressed interest in, he finally gave up and asked me what I needed notarized. I honestly don't remember what it was, but he turned around and instantly told me that they weren't able to do that type of notarization. Despite wasting so much of my time, they didn't even have the courtesy to make sure they'd be able to help me out afterwards before launching into their pitch. A few months later walked by a branch and on a whim decided it was a good time to close my account. Walked in, ask to close it, they said I had to wait, I said oh OK that's alright I'll just withdraw all of it. Good riddance.
- ellisv 9y ago
  > A few months later walked by a branch and on a whim decided it was a good time to close my account. Walked in, ask to close it, they said I had to wait, I said oh OK that's alright I'll just withdraw all of it. Good riddance. Careful, if it's not actually closed they'll hit you with fees.
  - citilife 9y ago
    And thats when he realized Wells Fargo got the last laugh, 10 years of late fees
lotsofpulp 9y ago
The cost of employing and training people who are able to do those tasks at each location might not be make up for the revenue they bring in. Online systems let you weed out those who are going to cost you in terms of labor hours, so you can trim the 20% of customers who take up 80% of the resources.
clairity 9y ago
yay! i hope more people come to this kind of realization that small banks & credit unions are soooo much better--better service, better rates, better products, more forgiving about penalties and fees, and so much better at treating you like a real live human. wells, chase, citi, BofA & the other big banks should be broken up into 100s of regional banks. lack of dignity and respect for customers follows from "too big to fail" (not to mention wasting trillions of our dollars without any punishment).
- twic 9y ago
  In the UK, there's this odd thing where some big high street banks have sub-brands that use the same core bank, but have their own customer service, online banking, etc. The Co-Operative has Smile, HSBC has First Direct. And these sub-brands generally have fantastic customer service! Why? Why not just have great customer service for the main bank? These sub-brands aren't, AFAIK, aimed at better-off customers who are worth more (there are examples of that too - Santander has Cater Allen), so it's not like there's some greater payoff to decent customer service. They are phone and online only, without physical branches, so there are lower costs. Perhaps it's that?
  - clairity 9y ago
    besides the lower prices due to operational efficiency that you mention, it's probably about having a different marketing mix (the 4 Ps--product, price, placement and promotion) to attract a different cusotmer segment. many of their customers probably don't even know or care that the sub-brand is owned by a high street bank. the sub-brand might also be part of a strategy to funnel younger, new customers into the fold. i'd say the main reason the main banks don't have good customer service is that they simply don't have to, and the actors therein have selfish aims. the fiefdoms of the large organization will typically divert resources to themselves (increase revenue, decrease operational expenses, and increase managerial compensation/headcount). consumer inertia allows this to happen (which is why i advocate moving away from big banks to promote competition and better service).
- blacksmith_tb 9y ago
  My impression was that most credit unions and small banks had pretty limited online banking, headaches with ATMs (not that I use them as much these days), etc. They are too small develop those services in-house, so I imagine they buy them as SaaS? Are they good enough now? I have Wells accounts I'd be happy to jettison...
samstave 9y ago
I once took out $25,000 from my WF account and asked for it in a cashiers check. I paid the $5 fee for the check (even though they had stated that it would be free) - then I took my money.... I came back ~1month later to re-deposit the check into SAME WF acct. They stated that they had to put a hold on the check for 14 days until they could verify the funds. For a WF issued cashiers check. From the SAME act the funds came out of. I changed banks that day.
- bluGill 9y ago
  It is easy to forge a cashiers check. Even if it is real, it is possible to erase the name on it and put something else on. Or you could have a fake id that makes it seem like you are really the person who it was written to. Those are just the types of fraud that come to mind immediately, those who work in banks probably know of more.
  - edc117 9y ago
    Worked in a bank when I was younger (Not WF). Was fairly trivial for us to confirm that the cashiers check was actually issued by us. It shouldn't have been held longer than a day at most, particularly not for a client.
- FireBeyond 9y ago
  Leaving aside that it's your money and yours to do with as you wish... Out of curiosity, if you care to disclose, what was your reasoning behind this? If I'm a bank, I can see a couple of red flags with this (maybe some obscure kiting, or similar), "take five digit sum from account, in a check made out to self - then one month later deposit same uncashed check into originating account"... and "verifying the funds" is not verifying availability, but 'minimizing possibility of sketchiness'.
  - samstave 9y ago
    I was going through a divorce and needed the funds secured until I could deal with legal issues to ensure that they would be available
deleted 9y ago
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TuringNYC 9y ago
Sounds bad, but you should see some Citibank branches -- they dont even make the call for you nor do you get a place to sit down -- I was trying to resolve an issue and the representative literally took me to an in-bank phone booth, dialed the number and handed the phone to me. Basically -- deal with call-center-hell while standing up. What's the point? The good news is that this behavior is not universal, I looked around and there are banks with great customer service (in my case, i found ChaseManhattan to be superb, though it may be due to my "tier" and how much money i keep with them.)
- samstave 9y ago
  Whats your "tier" and how much money do you keep with them? Please reply with mothers maiden name, SSN and DOB.
- reaperducer 9y ago
  On the topic of "tiers," I have found that with Citibank, when my credit card has a small balance, I get really good phone support. If my card has a medium balance (say, $2,000 to $9,000), I get shoved off to a third-world call center. But when my balance climbs over $20,000, I get the good service again. Yes, my balance fluctuates wildly month-to-month. Travel.
Rapzid 9y ago
I wonder if all these small banks have to re-invent the SaaS wheel, or if there is a company out there providing a banking platform to them...
- nitrogen 9y ago
  There are definitely vendors for at least some of the backend and web services a starting bank will need. I've forgotten any of the names I've heard, though.
- mikestew 9y ago
  First Tech in the Pacific Northwest used to invent their own wheel, and it was great. Usable UI, 2FA; I had no complaints. Then they switched to what I assume is some pre-packaged SaaS. It's awful. Not even an attempt at MFA, just UID/PWD and off you go. UI sucks. Stuff doesn't work if you don't allow popups, but doesn't fail in such a way as to make root cause obvious ("here's an obscure error message with a string of hex numbers..."). I wish they'd go back to what they had.
- budd3005 9y ago
  There are a healthy assortment of fintech offerings for banking clustered in Austin and on the West Coast, maybe more. Check out Q2 and Malauzai in Austin (there are are several, these are just the two I have evaluated) for a stack that is agnostic of the core system and provides almost all banking functions across channels. This kind of thing isn't cheap though, and bank boards are notoriously conservative when it comes to innovation, especially for small banks.
  - gukov 9y ago
    Specifically, how do you even migrate a bank to a new platform?
- chiph 9y ago
  One such is Jack Henry. I just interviewed with them (but didn't get the job, which is too bad as I really wanted to work there). They offer everything you need to start a bank or credit union, at a couple of different complexity levels.
heurist 9y ago
It's definitely an industry ripe for rebirth. For instance, I should be able to partition my money into several lightweight accounts - one for groceries, one for home expenses, investment, etc - and automatically have fractions of my deposits sent to those accounts so my budgeting and money management are handled without any effort on my part. I should have lightweight cards available for each of those accounts with online card management (request/terminate cards, track per-card spending); multiple cards per account so I can give my wife full use of "grocery" card, and alerts/notifications when I am spending too much in an account/not efficiently allocating the full amount/potentially using a card improperly; financial projections; and so on. Most consumer products and customer services should be totally accessible through a web interface. All of this could be built on top of today's banking infrastructure as a mostly-frontend service but instead I'm forced to give my personal information to services like Mint (who can not and will not ever do what I actually need it to do) or trust Random Startup #347 with access to my bank account because banks are monoliths without technical capacity or consumer-oriented business practices. I imagine some upstart will eventually come along with a better solution but banking regulation (though absolutely necessary in many ways) will hinder growth of any challenger. If anyone has any recommendations in the meantime, please let me know!
- sandeeps_ 9y ago
  You can try capital one 360 account. It allows you to create virtual accounts for different categories. It doesn’t have all the features you desire, but is better than most other banks in this respect.
  - kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
    Capitol One has one of the largest advertising budgets at > $1.5B. Seems a bit insane to support an organization that is willing to send so much revenue out the door when a good chunk of it could be recaptured by its customers.
    - gascan 9y ago
      If it matters, Capital One 360 is, or at least was, the old ING Direct USA. The whole division was acquired by Capital One.
emodendroket 9y ago
In principle this makes sense, but I've had pretty negative experiences dealing with community banks, where the tellers weren't any better, but there wasn't an 800 line for them to go to.
- rhizome 9y ago
  Thanks for sharing.
hanklazard 9y ago
Agreed. The only reason I have an account with a large bank (BofA) is for safe deposit box. Otherwise I use a local bank (Cambridge Savings Bank, MA) and have been very happy with their services.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
Different banks have different levels of service. Often times a local, non-national branded, bank will have the services and service you might expect from your banker. Of course if they get to successful they get sucked into a bigger non-service oriented bank. Wells Fargo seems to be particularly bad about things. I had a 'lifetime free checking account' with a local bank that ended up getting bought by Wells Fargo. About 3 years in to having my Checking there they tried to charge me a fee for it. I pointed out it was 'lifetime free' and they agreed to honor that when they bought the previous bank. They acquiesced and for the next year it was free. Then the fees started up again. Another call, another mea culpa, and quiet. Then the fees started up again. At that point I severed my banking relationship with them. (which I suppose is what they wanted)
sethammons 9y ago
I only know horror stories from Wells Fargo. My only experience was wanting to break a $100 bill. I went up to the teller and asked for change, and they could not break the bill for a non-customer. Mind blown. I just walked next door to the grocery and bought a $1 thing of gum. My favorite terrible story was a founder I know. His company just got funded and he got is first paycheck in a while, and he deposited it his Wells account. Well, he had a second account that was requiring payment, so they drained his primary account to level out the other account without telling him. He found out when his wife called him saying she was unable to buy groceries. Oh, and this was Christmas.
- jstarfish 9y ago
  I had the same experience as you with Bank of America (come on, you're a bank. This degree of shitty service does not entice me into wanting to become a customer). Even my credit union can be a pain in the ass. I had a check made out to my wife that needed to be deposited immediately. She signed it over to me and I took it to the CU. She wasn't on that account so they wouldn't deposit it without her being there. I went right outside and forced it through the ATM, which didn't make such stupid demands. Your second story is a textbook example of why you should never open credit/loan accounts with a bank if you already have checking/savings there. You lose all leverage in negotiating debts, since they'll just take what they feel is owed when they get fed up with your delinquency. Wells Fargo did that to me, but I've seen that right reserved at more banks than just them.
Skunkleton 9y ago
Semi-related: If you have any entities (power company, cell phone provider, etc..) setup to directly pull their payments from your account, these can cause the account to re-open, and then overdraft. Be careful.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  That sounds very unethical.
  - zrobotics 9y ago
    We are still talking about Wells Fargo, right? In my experience with them, I would say the adjective 'unethical' is hilariously redundant.
  - Skunkleton 9y ago
    Its how banks work I guess? I think the agreement that you enter when you allow direct EFT states something to that effect. It's a crock of shit.
binarymax 9y ago
If only more people did what you did, take your money to the local bank or credit union. If they don't have any more customers they can't pull these shenanigans. I've been with a credit union (ESL) for 5 years now and they are amazing.
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
I got an email recently from WF about the issue with them opening accounts in customer's names without them knowing. The email said something to the effect of contact them if I think an account was opened that I didn't authorize. Why the heck is the burden on ME to go look?
- criddell 9y ago
  How can they determine if the form they have with your signature on it is fraudulent or not?
jobu 9y ago
The _only_ benefit of a large bank like Wells Fargo is that they're nearly everywhere, and I can deposit or withdraw money from any branch without paying a fee. They do not offer any other service or product that comes close to competing with my local credit union (or even most small banks).
- theandrewbailey 9y ago
  If your credit union has shared branching, they're everywhere too. https://co-opcreditunions.org/locator/ https://co-opcreditunions.org/locator/
  - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
    Shared branching on credit unions is awesome.
swlkr 9y ago
This sounds like huge tech companies as well
ajcodez 9y ago
Similar experience trying to send international wire. Totally clueless.
Covzire 9y ago
I've heard it said that people change their spouses more often than they do their banks.
curiousgeorgio 9y ago
> There needs to be a massive restructuring of our system to allow smaller banks to thrive and provide actual competition. Hmm... does there really need to be any restructuring though? It sounds like you "opened up an account next door at a small local bank" without any problem, so the choices are there, and your choices in banking really aren't that limited. Your frustration with bigger banks seems to be related to the fact that as banks become bigger, their clientele also tends to be represented by more and more corporations and high net worth individuals. Those clients undoubtedly contribute a larger percentage to the bank's bottom line, so their focus naturally shifts to serving those types more than the average person with a personal checking account. Just because McDonalds is the easy choice, that doesn't mean it's the only choice. McDonalds' existence (or that of the big banks) doesn't mean the system is broken - only that our collective preferences probably need to change.
mhneu 9y ago
Monopoly control, or near-monopoly-control, of many markets is hurting consumers and average citizens at the expense of a small number of CEOs. Some good thinking on this: In context of amazon https://newrepublic.com/article/119769/amazons-monopoly-must-be-broken-radical-plan-tech-giant https://newrepublic.com/article/119769/amazons-monopoly-must... In context of tech firms, Google, Facebook http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/interrogation/2017/10/why_it_s_time_to_panic_about_the_power_of_big_technology.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/interrogation/2017/...
013a 9y ago
One piece of it is actually regulation. When you're dealing with huge amounts of yellow tape and you have millions of customers, the overhead cost of providing services is absolutely sky high. Many of their clients don't even make them money; think of the Starbucks barista that has $1000 in checking and no savings. Sure they can turn some of that money around into interest, but the cost-per-customer of lawyers, compliance, auditing, etc is far higher. Any of the banks that are actually offering decent interest rates on deposits are online banks, because it enables them to centralize and automate all of their operations in one place. Credit Unions are similar. They usually serve a smaller community, which means they're centralized and have less overhead. They are also beholden to different less-strict laws. I've heard this first-hand from the founder/CEO of a small local bank. Every time they write a loan they are forced to provide the customer with a 200-page "book" of all the compliance and regulation surrounding that loan. The client immediately throws it in the trash, every time. It hurts the bank, because they have to print that, audit it, have lawyers look it over, maintain it. It also hurts the client; these laws are meant to inform consumers, but in reality they irresponsibly only require banks to throw incomprehensible amounts of information at consumers. Like website Terms of Service, consumers never read it, they just trust what the bank teller tells them.
- edmccard 9y ago
  >Every time they write a loan they are forced to provide the customer with a 200-page "book" of all the compliance and regulation surrounding that loan. This must vary by state; I recently took out a small loan from my local bank in Pennsylvania and the information I went home with came out to about 15 pages. >When you're dealing with huge amounts of yellow tape and you have millions of customers I thought the conventional wisdom was that onerous regulation actually favored huge businesses with "millions of customers" -- for example, the effort of having to "print that, audit it, have lawyers look it over, maintain it" is a fixed cost so the cost per customer is smaller for larger banks.
  - 013a 9y ago
    That is absolutely true. My meaning is that the big banks are the only banks that have survived all the regulation, and the only reason they can survive is because they're increasingly centralizing all of their operations and shitting on average customers who earn them essentially no money.
abalone 9y ago
HN meta-analysis: You will see mostly anecdotal evidence here that facilitates confirmation bias. Whatever you think of the subject at hand, threads like this mainly serve to let people vent more than offering actual insight. (FWIW I have anecdotal evidence that both my local Wells Fargo and another big bank branch seemed to be stepping up service quality in response to the scandal. But again, that's not actually worth anything apart from demonstrating that anecdotes are insufficient.)
ddingus 9y ago
Very strongly agreed.
khana 9y ago
Amen.
Consultant32452 9y ago
In the absence of a quality local bank or credit union, I can't speak highly enough about e-banking at places like Fidelity or Schwab. They're huge banks but you can open new accounts online in no time. You can use literally any ATM in the country and they'll pay whatever fees you are charged. No minimum balance, bill pay, basically every feature you should be able to expect from a bank these days. The ONLY downside I've thought of, even though I haven't encountered it yet, is if you need to get a lot of cash you might have to jump through hoops. But you can get at least $200 from most ATMs so that's only a problem if you're going to pay cash for a car or something.
- astura 9y ago
  That's any ATM in the world, not just country. I always have a local bank just for the one time you need to go to a branch for something dumb once every ~5 years.
fastball 9y ago
That's the promise of a lot of FinTech. Building out services that are digital first so that the quality of service provided is actually scalable.
arca_vorago 9y ago
>These huge banks have simply become way too big, and it serves no one's interest but their own. They have zero incentive to provide actual customer service anymore. There needs to be a massive restructuring of our system to allow smaller banks to thrive and provide actual competition. Thats not the plan though. Now that they have IMF'd almost the whole world, they have no one elses pie to take from... so they are turning inwards. In order to do this, they are murdering and executing [1](American Psycho reference, but lots of literal truth there too) their way to the top, but not just in banking... in all industries. (bayer-monsanto being a good example). What we need is anti-trust/anti-monopoly laws to actually be enforced... oh wait... the same bankers that need regulating basically own congress and many more. I'll never forget looking up my podunk Texas congressmans public financing and wonder why so many NY banks were donating to him. Until we find a way to start fixing congress (the closest to the people of the 3 branches) this will just happen again and again. [1]https://llwproductions.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/big-banks-mergers.jpg https://llwproductions.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/big-banks... Personally, after hunting terrorists for the government in my youth, I've come to the conclusion that bankers are the real terrorists. Financial terrorists.
- Mc91 9y ago
  Looking at that chart...unremarked is the 1991 $1.9 billion merger of Manufacturers Hanover with Chemical...it's more a commentary on the reality than the chart, a $1.9 billion bank merger doesn't make the cut as being important enough in the current post-Glass–Steagall "too big to fail" TARP banks...I interviewed for an IT role with the old Manny Hanny group within Chase Manhattan bank in the late 1990s...they were a bank buried within a larger bank, and soon to merge with JP Morgan and a host of other banks.
  - arca_vorago 9y ago
    Yeah quite a lot of people don't understand the power of holding or just "financial services" companies in todays economy. They are quiet giants in most respects. For example, in the "147-corporations who rule the world paper"[1] I noticed number 13 was Franklin Resources Inc. Never heard of them, but apparently as a holding company they are one of the most powerful in the world... with many more like them. [1]https://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf https://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf
grajaganDev 9y ago
First Republic is awesome - I know several other founders who use them for their business banking.
cm2187 9y ago
Replace "bank" by "silicon valley company" and you can pretty much make the same critics.
ScottBurson 9y ago
I gave up on Wells Fargo over 15 years ago and have never regretted it for a moment. Small credit unions are just fine. I'll never again use a big bank.
Bye_Felicia 9y ago
Same EXACT thing with Sprint, however at the oligopoly Sprint, you have little choice. This appears to happen with any proto-monopolistic entity. The problem is, unlike government protected 'businesses' like cell phone and cable companies, there is no monopoly in the Banking sector. So, WHY, why are people still drawn to the lowest common denominator big banks for their accounts? It makes not sense. I'm leaving this month from my own big bank, after their "FREE" online banking as long as you don't bother us, e-checking account, went from free to $12 a month.
AltcoinReport 9y ago
It seems like whenever you go to a bank, it's simply a time for them to try to sell you on credit lines and new accounts. Everything is handled in big offices and super dysfunctional.
malloreon 9y ago
I've been banking with First Republic now for over a decade and the service has been nothing short of spectacular. People I know are shocked when I tell them I enjoy going to the bank - I've never waited for more than 10 seconds to be helped, and they have done everything I asked within minutes. And, not for nothing, they are constantly baking delicious chocolate chip cookies, too. More than once I have stopped at the bank for no reason just to get another cookie.
jonodubs 9y ago
yes I walked into a branch the other day to open a business account. The staff sat me in a room and tele-conferenced me to some other branch to go through the process of opening an account with someone-off site.
donatj 9y ago
I opened an account with a local credit union after years of using Wells Fargo and the difference in service was stark.
pellucide 9y ago
Genuine question.. why doesnt everyone just go and create a credit union account.
alanfalcon 9y ago
Read "The Used Car Salesman Defense" section in this issue of Matt Levine's "Money Stuff": https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-20/explaining-trades-is-more-profitable-than-doing-them https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-20/explainin... It boils down to this: "Banks are always trying to get customers to think of them as trusted agents, while reserving the right to act as rapacious counterparties." I like Matt Levine because his "I was on the inside" voice is pragmatic and straightforward, and often makes me stop and say, "Huh."
skizm 9y ago
I mean I don’t think they care about consumer banking. They care about banking with businesses and institutions. The personal checking accounts are basically marketing toward that end.
adventurer 9y ago
I have a feeling First Republic tends to care about consumer banking at this point because it's just not a big bank yet. But how much customer service do you need, anyway? I step foot in an actual bank maybe once a year, if that.
- deleted 9y ago
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rmk 9y ago
You just compared Apples and Oranges. First Republic is typically for the higher-earning, higher net-worth individual, whereas Wells Fargo caters to a much broader set. Not to say that Wells Fargo should not provide better service, but I just want to point out that these are two different types of banks. I had a similar experience with Bank of America. The person who was supposed to help me was rude, untrained, and actually caused a lot of problems without addressing my original request (close my account); I later got help from a higher-up (actually trained) who did provide a modicum of service. I had a much better experience at a Credit Union.
- acdha 9y ago
  > You just compared Apples and Oranges. First Republic is typically for the higher-earning, higher net-worth individual, whereas Wells Fargo caters to a much broader set. Okay, so pick any other bank which serves the entire community — whether it's a small credit union, a smaller regional bank, or a larger one which isn't BofA (I use TD Bank). The service will still be worlds better and they won't periodically require massive fraud prosecutions. It has nothing to do with the customers and everything to do with the corporate culture.
  - rmk 9y ago
    My point was only about the type of service you can expect at a bank of this type. Therefore, I gave another anecdote (my experience at a comparable bank, and another at a smaller/different type of bank). I agree that the culture at Wells Fargo appears to have been one of rapacious greed. What I do not understand is how the previous CEO and his underling (the woman who retired) were not hauled before a judge on a range of criminal charges. Maybe CFPB does not have prosecuting power, but surely they can refer to DoJ for prosecution?
- eldavido 9y ago
  First Republic really isn't any different than Wells Fargo. They talk a big game about personal service but it's the same bullshit. (Speaking from firsthand experience of moving from WF to FRB.) You'll talk to a different person every time you go in, their website isn't great (though the recent upgrade has helped), and their mortgage products require absurdly high down payments (20-30%) to be rate competitive with WF/Citi/Chase (as of 2017/Q4). They also have absurdly high minimums for many accounts (3-4k), though they do have nice features like fee-free out-of-network ATM use. I really want to believe there's something better. But I think the real choice is between "local bank" -- shitty website, hard-to-use ATMs that require putting checks in envelopes, bad hours OR a big national bank, where you're a number, but the software is good, there are branches everywhere, they have a good mobile app/good ATMs, etc. My personal philosophy has become, "I'm ok being a number because I'm pretty average personally, but I want a local bank for business banking." It's worked so far.
HenryBemis 9y ago
Having worked in "big banks", I can say that there is a complete disconnect on the top. These people (on the top) sit on an ivory tower, think that they will bark orders and the slaves will obey. They become so big and slow-moving, that only by insane cost-cutting (at the expense of real customer service) keeps them viable, and keeps the shareholders happy. The disconnect from the ground (and being surrounded by cronies and yes-men/women who keep them blind and stupid) causes the poor service.
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
  > "big banks" Is it (even) worse in banking, or is this just something that happens to all companies above a certain size? I can totally see it being the case that a more heavily regulated industry suffers more, but that's pure conjecture.
suyash 9y ago
I had very similar experience at one of the large banks, no one cared about helping me, everyone just directed me to go online on their website to call the 1-800 number. What's the point of Physical Banking Centers anymore. Not the mention the horrendous wait for the customer care to answer the phone when called.
golergka 9y ago
Is that a US thing? Here, all the customer-having banks have all their services available through the app, with very quick and helpful support through chat. I didn't even had to come to their office to open an account – they delivered the card together with the documents I had to sign. This industry has been radically transformed in the last few years, just as taxis. I thought it happened everywhere, especially in US.
- astura 9y ago
  How you described is how it works in the US too. I have opened up dozens of accounts at banks and it's always been that easy - never had to go to a branch or anything. Closing the account is usually very easy as well. The reason I open and close so many accounts is churning the sign up bonuses.
belorn 9y ago
In Sweden bank provide two forms of services. All digital services which is what they are strongly pushing for, and ATM machines where customers withdraws (with a max of $1500 per week) and store owners can deposits in a few special machines in the "large" cities. Practically no office deal with cash and the few remaining is purely for consultations. Through all this digitization and cost savings the numbers of banks has gone down. From a infrastructure perspective it has never been as cheap and easy to start up a bank, and yet what we see is the opposite. Now why do we not see new competition in banking?
- tolle 9y ago
  Probably because the massive amount of regulations that have been added in the last century means starting with nothing is a massive undertaking if you aim at providing a full service bank. Startups are popping up, but usually they only do one thing. And a limited set of that one service at that.
haZard_OS 9y ago
Agreed. I rely mostly on my credit union for financial matters and eschew large banks whenever possible. The service I get at my credit union and a local bank (that I won't name for obvious reasons) is light-years ahead of what I have received in the past from larger institutions.
erikb 9y ago
The illusion here is that it ever was different. A new bank, a small bank, a new office in your location with strong competition, that's the short term situations where you get real service. A well established bank won't even try to hide that they are just screwing you, because it costs too big a share of the money they screw out of you. A few months (or maybe years?) ago here on HN I read a nice small article about that you always get screwed, not just with banks. Everywhere! The question is how, how much, and what for. Try to get screwed for a good reason, and if not possible at least for the smallest possible amount. Not in the article but my experience so far: Try not get mad at the getting screwed part because it can't be avoided. And try not to imagine a fantasy world in which the screwing never happened before.
endgame 9y ago
Have you been following the royal commission into banking that the current Australian government was dragged into, kicking and screaming all the way? The system around the world needs to be bleached clean by some harsh sunlight and broken apart so these messed up incentives are untangled.
kn0where 9y ago
I use Wells Fargo for one purpose: obtaining foreign currency. I keep my actual money in savings and checking accounts with Ally, and the minimum $300 in my Wells Fargo 0.01% APY (lol) savings account (so they don't charge me $5/month fees). In exchange for this, if I'm traveling out of the country and don't want to rely solely on ATMs and credit cards, I first transfer some money into my WF account, and then I can go to the bank and pick up some, say, Canadian dollars, only paying the exchange rate (which last time I did this was equivalent to the rate on ATMs and credit cards). If it's not CAD/Euros/Pesos, I just call and they can order it for me. When I was a teenager, my WF account was my main account, and every single time I went into the bank they tried to sign me up for a checking account. Wasn't surprised one bit when the scandal hit. (Fortunately, they never created any accounts for me.)
- astura 9y ago
  >I'm traveling out of the country and don't want to rely solely on ATMs and credit cards Ummm... Why not? There's plenty of accounts that refund ATM fees. I don't want to have to stop at the bank on my way out and i especially don't want to carry around more than $60 in cash. Especially in a foreign country!
lsiebert 9y ago
Yeah. I already had an account with Charles Schwab (based in San Francisco), and I set up a roth IRA for this year in about 5 minutes by myself, online. So it's not that financial institutions can't be good at this, it's that the big banks fundamentally don't care about customers who aren't wealthy or institutional in nature. But there are definitely alternatives like credit unions, online banks, and brokerage firms with banking services. Not that everyone of these is good, but you have options, especially if you live in a city, like most people on HN probably do. Quit big banks. Join a credit union, tell your friends about it. Encourage your employer to switch banks too, if you are in a position to do so.
- exolymph 9y ago
  Schwab is huge, so I'm skeptical that your good experience with them supports the thesis that you stated.
  - lsiebert 9y ago
    It's a brokerage firm with some banking features. Brokerage firms understand that investors have options on where to take their money, whereas banks like Wells Fargo often seem to forget that.
joering2 9y ago
I agree with your experience, same in Bank of America. I walked in to report fraud, a teller gets on the phone and call someone on the same number as I would from the back of my card. Bank of America is a master at minimizing cost - they are introducing vATMs - virtual assistant ATM - its a regular ATM but with two-way camera so you talk with banker that is obviously located somewhere else. Just 2 months ago someone was helping me with perfect English and she said shes in Texas. Just few days ago, same location I connect and there is a guy in turban around his head, with broken English and clock on the wall I can see pointing 3am (it was around 2pm EST). So there you have it. I bet within 2 years they will complete transition and 99% of branches will have those vATMs at the cost of 70% savings in location, wages, etc. I am slowly shifting to smaller bank though where people know me by name, I deal with same people who help me without using phone and sometimes even computer. So far BB&T and First Republic are very good choices. Mandatory: 37 banks become just 4 https://www.visualnews.com/2016/01/25/37-banks-became-4-banks-just-2-decades/ https://www.visualnews.com/2016/01/25/37-banks-became-4-bank...
dpkonofa 9y ago
When you go to any major metropolitan city in the United States, the downtown area will typically have several large skyscrapers. Take a look some time and note how many can be included in one of these 3 categories - banks, health "care", or financial services. Our priorities as a nation are fucked and the big banks are just a giant reminder to everyone. The fact that these companies are so huge and making so much money is ridiculous.
closeparen 9y ago
Wells Fargo and BofA have earned a negative reputation for "the big banks," but in my experience, Chase and Citi are perfectly fine ACH + ATM utilities. (YMMV if you aren't the kind of customer they want, i.e. playing close to $0 or making weird high-volume transfers). Regardless of customer service concerns, the rates on other financial services are simply more favorable at specialist firms. American Express for rewards credit cards, Vanguard for investment, Marcus or Ally for cash savings, etc. A local bank or credit union with impeccable customer service around a full suite of services is still probably not worth the money you're leaving on the table.
aaavl2821 9y ago
Agreed. Scarily, a lot of consultants and industry watchers foresee the healthcare industry going through the same wave of consolidation that banks did in the 1980s and 1990s -- they even use it as a metaphor for what they think will happen. I think that's something to worry about

wpietri 9y ago

Agreed. I changed over to a local credit union from Bank of America a few years back. Their online banking is a bit more awkward, but I can always talk with an informed person, which more than makes up for it. My theory is that banks started out personal, but as they have consolidated have become ever more industrial in their scale and processes. Unfortunately, industrial-style human interaction is pretty awful. I think the massive restructuring will come as banks split tasks into a) fully automating the boring things, and b) creating really good tools that empower their front-line workers (instead of treating them as dumb peripherals). If our current major banks all went the way of Blockbuster during that process, I'll shed no tears. Few will, I imagine.

epc 9y ago

Chase seems to have moved their "hands on" banking to their "Private Bankers" (who you qualify for if you have some minimum amount of money or debt across your accounts).

callmeed 9y ago
Yes, I am a Chase Private Client and, to be honest, it's awesome. I call and a friendly human answers immediately. But beyond that, I think Chase does a pretty good job overall with in-branch customer service. Their online/mobile banking is great. They're the best big bank by far IMO.
- wu_tang_chris 9y ago
  In-branch customer service has gotten super annoying in the last 3 or 4 years. I walk in to do something simple, there's like 8 bankers standing around in suits, doing nothing, and one of them rushes up to me like I just made their day and starts enthusiastically helping me with my simple thing... it's better than a long line and a disinterest in doing their job, but god damn it's creepy.

djschnei 9y ago

Unfortunately, the massive restructuring you're referring to would likely need to be in the form of deregulation. It's unfortunate because deregulating something is typically a non-discussion. Our banking regulations make almost no distinction between massive, "too big to fail" banks and small community banks. Like most regulation, it's the massive companies that can foot the bill for complying with regulation, creating barriers to entry into the market.

aphextron 9y ago
I didn't want to think you were right, but digging into this it seems to be the case. Dodd-Frank has apparently been a boon to big banks, and squashed competion [0]. "“Having a bank, it’s a sign of economic vitality,” he says. And it’s not just North Carolina. He notes the country has about 40 percent fewer banks today than when the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, passed in response to the recession and implementing the most significant changes to financial regulations since the Great Depression, was signed in 2010. Proponents of the measure said it would reduce the risk of another financial crisis by decreasing the concentration of resources in a handful of banks. Gwaltney says it’s done “the exact opposite.” “The five or 10 largest banks in the country are larger than they were at the passage of Dodd-Frank,” he says." [0] https://banksstreetpartners.com/news/what-happened-to-our-community-banks https://banksstreetpartners.com/news/what-happened-to-our-co...
rdiddly 9y ago
Why is it always a choice between poorly-written regulations and no regulations?
- corey_moncure 9y ago
  Maybe writing regulations is hard. Have you tried it?
- djschnei 9y ago
  Not sure... just seems to be a reality.
- bluGill 9y ago

istorical 9y ago

I had a similar breaking point with Wells Fargo. I was about 20. Needed to get something notarized, someone mentioned that banks could do it. I googled and confirmed WF could do it for their customers so I went over to my nearest branch. Asked the front desk if I could get something notarized. They said sure and referred me to a banker at a desk. I walked over and sat down and told him I was looking to get something notarized. He said sure, but first can I ask if you've considered upgrading your bank account? I said I didn't think I was interested, but he decided it was worth a few minutes of my time to pull out a pamphlet and talk me through the benefits. I thought I was through it. But then he started asking me if I had considered opening an investment account. I told him that with my current earnings and burn rate it didn't make much sense. But he decided to walk me through the benefits. Then I thought surely, he must be ready to help me notarize my document. Nope. He wants to talk about - I don't remember - small business loans, life insurance? Something that made no sense to offer a 20 year old. Sat through that presentation. I'll make an aside - I was much less experienced with deflecting sales pitches at that age, today I'd have stopped it all much sooner. But I digress. After 10-20 minutes of pitches for products I never expressed interest in, he finally gave up and asked me what I needed notarized. I honestly don't remember what it was, but he turned around and instantly told me that they weren't able to do that type of notarization. Despite wasting so much of my time, they didn't even have the courtesy to make sure they'd be able to help me out afterwards before launching into their pitch. A few months later walked by a branch and on a whim decided it was a good time to close my account. Walked in, ask to close it, they said I had to wait, I said oh OK that's alright I'll just withdraw all of it. Good riddance.

ellisv 9y ago
> A few months later walked by a branch and on a whim decided it was a good time to close my account. Walked in, ask to close it, they said I had to wait, I said oh OK that's alright I'll just withdraw all of it. Good riddance. Careful, if it's not actually closed they'll hit you with fees.
- citilife 9y ago
  And thats when he realized Wells Fargo got the last laugh, 10 years of late fees

lotsofpulp 9y ago

The cost of employing and training people who are able to do those tasks at each location might not be make up for the revenue they bring in. Online systems let you weed out those who are going to cost you in terms of labor hours, so you can trim the 20% of customers who take up 80% of the resources.

clairity 9y ago

yay! i hope more people come to this kind of realization that small banks & credit unions are soooo much better--better service, better rates, better products, more forgiving about penalties and fees, and so much better at treating you like a real live human. wells, chase, citi, BofA & the other big banks should be broken up into 100s of regional banks. lack of dignity and respect for customers follows from "too big to fail" (not to mention wasting trillions of our dollars without any punishment).

twic 9y ago
In the UK, there's this odd thing where some big high street banks have sub-brands that use the same core bank, but have their own customer service, online banking, etc. The Co-Operative has Smile, HSBC has First Direct. And these sub-brands generally have fantastic customer service! Why? Why not just have great customer service for the main bank? These sub-brands aren't, AFAIK, aimed at better-off customers who are worth more (there are examples of that too - Santander has Cater Allen), so it's not like there's some greater payoff to decent customer service. They are phone and online only, without physical branches, so there are lower costs. Perhaps it's that?
- clairity 9y ago
  besides the lower prices due to operational efficiency that you mention, it's probably about having a different marketing mix (the 4 Ps--product, price, placement and promotion) to attract a different cusotmer segment. many of their customers probably don't even know or care that the sub-brand is owned by a high street bank. the sub-brand might also be part of a strategy to funnel younger, new customers into the fold. i'd say the main reason the main banks don't have good customer service is that they simply don't have to, and the actors therein have selfish aims. the fiefdoms of the large organization will typically divert resources to themselves (increase revenue, decrease operational expenses, and increase managerial compensation/headcount). consumer inertia allows this to happen (which is why i advocate moving away from big banks to promote competition and better service).
blacksmith_tb 9y ago
My impression was that most credit unions and small banks had pretty limited online banking, headaches with ATMs (not that I use them as much these days), etc. They are too small develop those services in-house, so I imagine they buy them as SaaS? Are they good enough now? I have Wells accounts I'd be happy to jettison...

samstave 9y ago

I once took out $25,000 from my WF account and asked for it in a cashiers check. I paid the $5 fee for the check (even though they had stated that it would be free) - then I took my money.... I came back ~1month later to re-deposit the check into SAME WF acct. They stated that they had to put a hold on the check for 14 days until they could verify the funds. For a WF issued cashiers check. From the SAME act the funds came out of. I changed banks that day.

bluGill 9y ago
It is easy to forge a cashiers check. Even if it is real, it is possible to erase the name on it and put something else on. Or you could have a fake id that makes it seem like you are really the person who it was written to. Those are just the types of fraud that come to mind immediately, those who work in banks probably know of more.
- edc117 9y ago
  Worked in a bank when I was younger (Not WF). Was fairly trivial for us to confirm that the cashiers check was actually issued by us. It shouldn't have been held longer than a day at most, particularly not for a client.
FireBeyond 9y ago
Leaving aside that it's your money and yours to do with as you wish... Out of curiosity, if you care to disclose, what was your reasoning behind this? If I'm a bank, I can see a couple of red flags with this (maybe some obscure kiting, or similar), "take five digit sum from account, in a check made out to self - then one month later deposit same uncashed check into originating account"... and "verifying the funds" is not verifying availability, but 'minimizing possibility of sketchiness'.
- samstave 9y ago
  I was going through a divorce and needed the funds secured until I could deal with legal issues to ensure that they would be available

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

TuringNYC 9y ago

Sounds bad, but you should see some Citibank branches -- they dont even make the call for you nor do you get a place to sit down -- I was trying to resolve an issue and the representative literally took me to an in-bank phone booth, dialed the number and handed the phone to me. Basically -- deal with call-center-hell while standing up. What's the point? The good news is that this behavior is not universal, I looked around and there are banks with great customer service (in my case, i found ChaseManhattan to be superb, though it may be due to my "tier" and how much money i keep with them.)

samstave 9y ago
Whats your "tier" and how much money do you keep with them? Please reply with mothers maiden name, SSN and DOB.
reaperducer 9y ago
On the topic of "tiers," I have found that with Citibank, when my credit card has a small balance, I get really good phone support. If my card has a medium balance (say, $2,000 to $9,000), I get shoved off to a third-world call center. But when my balance climbs over $20,000, I get the good service again. Yes, my balance fluctuates wildly month-to-month. Travel.

Rapzid 9y ago

I wonder if all these small banks have to re-invent the SaaS wheel, or if there is a company out there providing a banking platform to them...

nitrogen 9y ago
There are definitely vendors for at least some of the backend and web services a starting bank will need. I've forgotten any of the names I've heard, though.
mikestew 9y ago
First Tech in the Pacific Northwest used to invent their own wheel, and it was great. Usable UI, 2FA; I had no complaints. Then they switched to what I assume is some pre-packaged SaaS. It's awful. Not even an attempt at MFA, just UID/PWD and off you go. UI sucks. Stuff doesn't work if you don't allow popups, but doesn't fail in such a way as to make root cause obvious ("here's an obscure error message with a string of hex numbers..."). I wish they'd go back to what they had.
budd3005 9y ago
There are a healthy assortment of fintech offerings for banking clustered in Austin and on the West Coast, maybe more. Check out Q2 and Malauzai in Austin (there are are several, these are just the two I have evaluated) for a stack that is agnostic of the core system and provides almost all banking functions across channels. This kind of thing isn't cheap though, and bank boards are notoriously conservative when it comes to innovation, especially for small banks.
- gukov 9y ago
  Specifically, how do you even migrate a bank to a new platform?
chiph 9y ago
One such is Jack Henry. I just interviewed with them (but didn't get the job, which is too bad as I really wanted to work there). They offer everything you need to start a bank or credit union, at a couple of different complexity levels.

heurist 9y ago

It's definitely an industry ripe for rebirth. For instance, I should be able to partition my money into several lightweight accounts - one for groceries, one for home expenses, investment, etc - and automatically have fractions of my deposits sent to those accounts so my budgeting and money management are handled without any effort on my part. I should have lightweight cards available for each of those accounts with online card management (request/terminate cards, track per-card spending); multiple cards per account so I can give my wife full use of "grocery" card, and alerts/notifications when I am spending too much in an account/not efficiently allocating the full amount/potentially using a card improperly; financial projections; and so on. Most consumer products and customer services should be totally accessible through a web interface. All of this could be built on top of today's banking infrastructure as a mostly-frontend service but instead I'm forced to give my personal information to services like Mint (who can not and will not ever do what I actually need it to do) or trust Random Startup #347 with access to my bank account because banks are monoliths without technical capacity or consumer-oriented business practices. I imagine some upstart will eventually come along with a better solution but banking regulation (though absolutely necessary in many ways) will hinder growth of any challenger. If anyone has any recommendations in the meantime, please let me know!

sandeeps_ 9y ago
You can try capital one 360 account. It allows you to create virtual accounts for different categories. It doesn’t have all the features you desire, but is better than most other banks in this respect.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  Capitol One has one of the largest advertising budgets at > $1.5B. Seems a bit insane to support an organization that is willing to send so much revenue out the door when a good chunk of it could be recaptured by its customers.
  - gascan 9y ago
    If it matters, Capital One 360 is, or at least was, the old ING Direct USA. The whole division was acquired by Capital One.

emodendroket 9y ago

In principle this makes sense, but I've had pretty negative experiences dealing with community banks, where the tellers weren't any better, but there wasn't an 800 line for them to go to.

rhizome 9y ago
Thanks for sharing.

hanklazard 9y ago

Agreed. The only reason I have an account with a large bank (BofA) is for safe deposit box. Otherwise I use a local bank (Cambridge Savings Bank, MA) and have been very happy with their services.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

Different banks have different levels of service. Often times a local, non-national branded, bank will have the services and service you might expect from your banker. Of course if they get to successful they get sucked into a bigger non-service oriented bank. Wells Fargo seems to be particularly bad about things. I had a 'lifetime free checking account' with a local bank that ended up getting bought by Wells Fargo. About 3 years in to having my Checking there they tried to charge me a fee for it. I pointed out it was 'lifetime free' and they agreed to honor that when they bought the previous bank. They acquiesced and for the next year it was free. Then the fees started up again. Another call, another mea culpa, and quiet. Then the fees started up again. At that point I severed my banking relationship with them. (which I suppose is what they wanted)

sethammons 9y ago

I only know horror stories from Wells Fargo. My only experience was wanting to break a $100 bill. I went up to the teller and asked for change, and they could not break the bill for a non-customer. Mind blown. I just walked next door to the grocery and bought a $1 thing of gum. My favorite terrible story was a founder I know. His company just got funded and he got is first paycheck in a while, and he deposited it his Wells account. Well, he had a second account that was requiring payment, so they drained his primary account to level out the other account without telling him. He found out when his wife called him saying she was unable to buy groceries. Oh, and this was Christmas.

jstarfish 9y ago
I had the same experience as you with Bank of America (come on, you're a bank. This degree of shitty service does not entice me into wanting to become a customer). Even my credit union can be a pain in the ass. I had a check made out to my wife that needed to be deposited immediately. She signed it over to me and I took it to the CU. She wasn't on that account so they wouldn't deposit it without her being there. I went right outside and forced it through the ATM, which didn't make such stupid demands. Your second story is a textbook example of why you should never open credit/loan accounts with a bank if you already have checking/savings there. You lose all leverage in negotiating debts, since they'll just take what they feel is owed when they get fed up with your delinquency. Wells Fargo did that to me, but I've seen that right reserved at more banks than just them.

Skunkleton 9y ago

Semi-related: If you have any entities (power company, cell phone provider, etc..) setup to directly pull their payments from your account, these can cause the account to re-open, and then overdraft. Be careful.

JustSomeNobody 9y ago
That sounds very unethical.
- zrobotics 9y ago
  We are still talking about Wells Fargo, right? In my experience with them, I would say the adjective 'unethical' is hilariously redundant.
- Skunkleton 9y ago
  Its how banks work I guess? I think the agreement that you enter when you allow direct EFT states something to that effect. It's a crock of shit.

binarymax 9y ago

If only more people did what you did, take your money to the local bank or credit union. If they don't have any more customers they can't pull these shenanigans. I've been with a credit union (ESL) for 5 years now and they are amazing.

JustSomeNobody 9y ago

I got an email recently from WF about the issue with them opening accounts in customer's names without them knowing. The email said something to the effect of contact them if I think an account was opened that I didn't authorize. Why the heck is the burden on ME to go look?

criddell 9y ago
How can they determine if the form they have with your signature on it is fraudulent or not?

jobu 9y ago

The _only_ benefit of a large bank like Wells Fargo is that they're nearly everywhere, and I can deposit or withdraw money from any branch without paying a fee. They do not offer any other service or product that comes close to competing with my local credit union (or even most small banks).

theandrewbailey 9y ago
If your credit union has shared branching, they're everywhere too. https://co-opcreditunions.org/locator/ https://co-opcreditunions.org/locator/
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  Shared branching on credit unions is awesome.

swlkr 9y ago

This sounds like huge tech companies as well

ajcodez 9y ago

Similar experience trying to send international wire. Totally clueless.

Covzire 9y ago

I've heard it said that people change their spouses more often than they do their banks.

curiousgeorgio 9y ago

> There needs to be a massive restructuring of our system to allow smaller banks to thrive and provide actual competition. Hmm... does there really need to be any restructuring though? It sounds like you "opened up an account next door at a small local bank" without any problem, so the choices are there, and your choices in banking really aren't that limited. Your frustration with bigger banks seems to be related to the fact that as banks become bigger, their clientele also tends to be represented by more and more corporations and high net worth individuals. Those clients undoubtedly contribute a larger percentage to the bank's bottom line, so their focus naturally shifts to serving those types more than the average person with a personal checking account. Just because McDonalds is the easy choice, that doesn't mean it's the only choice. McDonalds' existence (or that of the big banks) doesn't mean the system is broken - only that our collective preferences probably need to change.

mhneu 9y ago

Monopoly control, or near-monopoly-control, of many markets is hurting consumers and average citizens at the expense of a small number of CEOs. Some good thinking on this: In context of amazon https://newrepublic.com/article/119769/amazons-monopoly-must-be-broken-radical-plan-tech-giant https://newrepublic.com/article/119769/amazons-monopoly-must... In context of tech firms, Google, Facebook http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/interrogation/2017/10/why_it_s_time_to_panic_about_the_power_of_big_technology.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/interrogation/2017/...

013a 9y ago

One piece of it is actually regulation. When you're dealing with huge amounts of yellow tape and you have millions of customers, the overhead cost of providing services is absolutely sky high. Many of their clients don't even make them money; think of the Starbucks barista that has $1000 in checking and no savings. Sure they can turn some of that money around into interest, but the cost-per-customer of lawyers, compliance, auditing, etc is far higher. Any of the banks that are actually offering decent interest rates on deposits are online banks, because it enables them to centralize and automate all of their operations in one place. Credit Unions are similar. They usually serve a smaller community, which means they're centralized and have less overhead. They are also beholden to different less-strict laws. I've heard this first-hand from the founder/CEO of a small local bank. Every time they write a loan they are forced to provide the customer with a 200-page "book" of all the compliance and regulation surrounding that loan. The client immediately throws it in the trash, every time. It hurts the bank, because they have to print that, audit it, have lawyers look it over, maintain it. It also hurts the client; these laws are meant to inform consumers, but in reality they irresponsibly only require banks to throw incomprehensible amounts of information at consumers. Like website Terms of Service, consumers never read it, they just trust what the bank teller tells them.

edmccard 9y ago
>Every time they write a loan they are forced to provide the customer with a 200-page "book" of all the compliance and regulation surrounding that loan. This must vary by state; I recently took out a small loan from my local bank in Pennsylvania and the information I went home with came out to about 15 pages. >When you're dealing with huge amounts of yellow tape and you have millions of customers I thought the conventional wisdom was that onerous regulation actually favored huge businesses with "millions of customers" -- for example, the effort of having to "print that, audit it, have lawyers look it over, maintain it" is a fixed cost so the cost per customer is smaller for larger banks.
- 013a 9y ago
  That is absolutely true. My meaning is that the big banks are the only banks that have survived all the regulation, and the only reason they can survive is because they're increasingly centralizing all of their operations and shitting on average customers who earn them essentially no money.

abalone 9y ago

HN meta-analysis: You will see mostly anecdotal evidence here that facilitates confirmation bias. Whatever you think of the subject at hand, threads like this mainly serve to let people vent more than offering actual insight. (FWIW I have anecdotal evidence that both my local Wells Fargo and another big bank branch seemed to be stepping up service quality in response to the scandal. But again, that's not actually worth anything apart from demonstrating that anecdotes are insufficient.)

ddingus 9y ago

Very strongly agreed.

khana 9y ago

Amen.

Consultant32452 9y ago

In the absence of a quality local bank or credit union, I can't speak highly enough about e-banking at places like Fidelity or Schwab. They're huge banks but you can open new accounts online in no time. You can use literally any ATM in the country and they'll pay whatever fees you are charged. No minimum balance, bill pay, basically every feature you should be able to expect from a bank these days. The ONLY downside I've thought of, even though I haven't encountered it yet, is if you need to get a lot of cash you might have to jump through hoops. But you can get at least $200 from most ATMs so that's only a problem if you're going to pay cash for a car or something.

astura 9y ago
That's any ATM in the world, not just country. I always have a local bank just for the one time you need to go to a branch for something dumb once every ~5 years.

fastball 9y ago

That's the promise of a lot of FinTech. Building out services that are digital first so that the quality of service provided is actually scalable.

arca_vorago 9y ago

>These huge banks have simply become way too big, and it serves no one's interest but their own. They have zero incentive to provide actual customer service anymore. There needs to be a massive restructuring of our system to allow smaller banks to thrive and provide actual competition. Thats not the plan though. Now that they have IMF'd almost the whole world, they have no one elses pie to take from... so they are turning inwards. In order to do this, they are murdering and executing [1](American Psycho reference, but lots of literal truth there too) their way to the top, but not just in banking... in all industries. (bayer-monsanto being a good example). What we need is anti-trust/anti-monopoly laws to actually be enforced... oh wait... the same bankers that need regulating basically own congress and many more. I'll never forget looking up my podunk Texas congressmans public financing and wonder why so many NY banks were donating to him. Until we find a way to start fixing congress (the closest to the people of the 3 branches) this will just happen again and again. [1]https://llwproductions.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/big-banks-mergers.jpg https://llwproductions.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/big-banks... Personally, after hunting terrorists for the government in my youth, I've come to the conclusion that bankers are the real terrorists. Financial terrorists.

Mc91 9y ago
Looking at that chart...unremarked is the 1991 $1.9 billion merger of Manufacturers Hanover with Chemical...it's more a commentary on the reality than the chart, a $1.9 billion bank merger doesn't make the cut as being important enough in the current post-Glass–Steagall "too big to fail" TARP banks...I interviewed for an IT role with the old Manny Hanny group within Chase Manhattan bank in the late 1990s...they were a bank buried within a larger bank, and soon to merge with JP Morgan and a host of other banks.
- arca_vorago 9y ago
  Yeah quite a lot of people don't understand the power of holding or just "financial services" companies in todays economy. They are quiet giants in most respects. For example, in the "147-corporations who rule the world paper"[1] I noticed number 13 was Franklin Resources Inc. Never heard of them, but apparently as a holding company they are one of the most powerful in the world... with many more like them. [1]https://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf https://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf

grajaganDev 9y ago

First Republic is awesome - I know several other founders who use them for their business banking.

cm2187 9y ago

Replace "bank" by "silicon valley company" and you can pretty much make the same critics.

ScottBurson 9y ago

I gave up on Wells Fargo over 15 years ago and have never regretted it for a moment. Small credit unions are just fine. I'll never again use a big bank.

Bye_Felicia 9y ago

Same EXACT thing with Sprint, however at the oligopoly Sprint, you have little choice. This appears to happen with any proto-monopolistic entity. The problem is, unlike government protected 'businesses' like cell phone and cable companies, there is no monopoly in the Banking sector. So, WHY, why are people still drawn to the lowest common denominator big banks for their accounts? It makes not sense. I'm leaving this month from my own big bank, after their "FREE" online banking as long as you don't bother us, e-checking account, went from free to $12 a month.

AltcoinReport 9y ago

It seems like whenever you go to a bank, it's simply a time for them to try to sell you on credit lines and new accounts. Everything is handled in big offices and super dysfunctional.

malloreon 9y ago

I've been banking with First Republic now for over a decade and the service has been nothing short of spectacular. People I know are shocked when I tell them I enjoy going to the bank - I've never waited for more than 10 seconds to be helped, and they have done everything I asked within minutes. And, not for nothing, they are constantly baking delicious chocolate chip cookies, too. More than once I have stopped at the bank for no reason just to get another cookie.

jonodubs 9y ago

yes I walked into a branch the other day to open a business account. The staff sat me in a room and tele-conferenced me to some other branch to go through the process of opening an account with someone-off site.

donatj 9y ago

I opened an account with a local credit union after years of using Wells Fargo and the difference in service was stark.

pellucide 9y ago

Genuine question.. why doesnt everyone just go and create a credit union account.

alanfalcon 9y ago

Read "The Used Car Salesman Defense" section in this issue of Matt Levine's "Money Stuff": https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-20/explaining-trades-is-more-profitable-than-doing-them https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-20/explainin... It boils down to this: "Banks are always trying to get customers to think of them as trusted agents, while reserving the right to act as rapacious counterparties." I like Matt Levine because his "I was on the inside" voice is pragmatic and straightforward, and often makes me stop and say, "Huh."

skizm 9y ago

I mean I don’t think they care about consumer banking. They care about banking with businesses and institutions. The personal checking accounts are basically marketing toward that end.

adventurer 9y ago

I have a feeling First Republic tends to care about consumer banking at this point because it's just not a big bank yet. But how much customer service do you need, anyway? I step foot in an actual bank maybe once a year, if that.

deleted 9y ago
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rmk 9y ago

You just compared Apples and Oranges. First Republic is typically for the higher-earning, higher net-worth individual, whereas Wells Fargo caters to a much broader set. Not to say that Wells Fargo should not provide better service, but I just want to point out that these are two different types of banks. I had a similar experience with Bank of America. The person who was supposed to help me was rude, untrained, and actually caused a lot of problems without addressing my original request (close my account); I later got help from a higher-up (actually trained) who did provide a modicum of service. I had a much better experience at a Credit Union.

acdha 9y ago
> You just compared Apples and Oranges. First Republic is typically for the higher-earning, higher net-worth individual, whereas Wells Fargo caters to a much broader set. Okay, so pick any other bank which serves the entire community — whether it's a small credit union, a smaller regional bank, or a larger one which isn't BofA (I use TD Bank). The service will still be worlds better and they won't periodically require massive fraud prosecutions. It has nothing to do with the customers and everything to do with the corporate culture.
- rmk 9y ago
  My point was only about the type of service you can expect at a bank of this type. Therefore, I gave another anecdote (my experience at a comparable bank, and another at a smaller/different type of bank). I agree that the culture at Wells Fargo appears to have been one of rapacious greed. What I do not understand is how the previous CEO and his underling (the woman who retired) were not hauled before a judge on a range of criminal charges. Maybe CFPB does not have prosecuting power, but surely they can refer to DoJ for prosecution?
eldavido 9y ago
First Republic really isn't any different than Wells Fargo. They talk a big game about personal service but it's the same bullshit. (Speaking from firsthand experience of moving from WF to FRB.) You'll talk to a different person every time you go in, their website isn't great (though the recent upgrade has helped), and their mortgage products require absurdly high down payments (20-30%) to be rate competitive with WF/Citi/Chase (as of 2017/Q4). They also have absurdly high minimums for many accounts (3-4k), though they do have nice features like fee-free out-of-network ATM use. I really want to believe there's something better. But I think the real choice is between "local bank" -- shitty website, hard-to-use ATMs that require putting checks in envelopes, bad hours OR a big national bank, where you're a number, but the software is good, there are branches everywhere, they have a good mobile app/good ATMs, etc. My personal philosophy has become, "I'm ok being a number because I'm pretty average personally, but I want a local bank for business banking." It's worked so far.

HenryBemis 9y ago

Having worked in "big banks", I can say that there is a complete disconnect on the top. These people (on the top) sit on an ivory tower, think that they will bark orders and the slaves will obey. They become so big and slow-moving, that only by insane cost-cutting (at the expense of real customer service) keeps them viable, and keeps the shareholders happy. The disconnect from the ground (and being surrounded by cronies and yes-men/women who keep them blind and stupid) causes the poor service.

yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
> "big banks" Is it (even) worse in banking, or is this just something that happens to all companies above a certain size? I can totally see it being the case that a more heavily regulated industry suffers more, but that's pure conjecture.

suyash 9y ago

I had very similar experience at one of the large banks, no one cared about helping me, everyone just directed me to go online on their website to call the 1-800 number. What's the point of Physical Banking Centers anymore. Not the mention the horrendous wait for the customer care to answer the phone when called.

golergka 9y ago

Is that a US thing? Here, all the customer-having banks have all their services available through the app, with very quick and helpful support through chat. I didn't even had to come to their office to open an account – they delivered the card together with the documents I had to sign. This industry has been radically transformed in the last few years, just as taxis. I thought it happened everywhere, especially in US.

astura 9y ago
How you described is how it works in the US too. I have opened up dozens of accounts at banks and it's always been that easy - never had to go to a branch or anything. Closing the account is usually very easy as well. The reason I open and close so many accounts is churning the sign up bonuses.

belorn 9y ago

In Sweden bank provide two forms of services. All digital services which is what they are strongly pushing for, and ATM machines where customers withdraws (with a max of $1500 per week) and store owners can deposits in a few special machines in the "large" cities. Practically no office deal with cash and the few remaining is purely for consultations. Through all this digitization and cost savings the numbers of banks has gone down. From a infrastructure perspective it has never been as cheap and easy to start up a bank, and yet what we see is the opposite. Now why do we not see new competition in banking?

tolle 9y ago
Probably because the massive amount of regulations that have been added in the last century means starting with nothing is a massive undertaking if you aim at providing a full service bank. Startups are popping up, but usually they only do one thing. And a limited set of that one service at that.

haZard_OS 9y ago

Agreed. I rely mostly on my credit union for financial matters and eschew large banks whenever possible. The service I get at my credit union and a local bank (that I won't name for obvious reasons) is light-years ahead of what I have received in the past from larger institutions.

erikb 9y ago

The illusion here is that it ever was different. A new bank, a small bank, a new office in your location with strong competition, that's the short term situations where you get real service. A well established bank won't even try to hide that they are just screwing you, because it costs too big a share of the money they screw out of you. A few months (or maybe years?) ago here on HN I read a nice small article about that you always get screwed, not just with banks. Everywhere! The question is how, how much, and what for. Try to get screwed for a good reason, and if not possible at least for the smallest possible amount. Not in the article but my experience so far: Try not get mad at the getting screwed part because it can't be avoided. And try not to imagine a fantasy world in which the screwing never happened before.

endgame 9y ago

Have you been following the royal commission into banking that the current Australian government was dragged into, kicking and screaming all the way? The system around the world needs to be bleached clean by some harsh sunlight and broken apart so these messed up incentives are untangled.

kn0where 9y ago

I use Wells Fargo for one purpose: obtaining foreign currency. I keep my actual money in savings and checking accounts with Ally, and the minimum $300 in my Wells Fargo 0.01% APY (lol) savings account (so they don't charge me $5/month fees). In exchange for this, if I'm traveling out of the country and don't want to rely solely on ATMs and credit cards, I first transfer some money into my WF account, and then I can go to the bank and pick up some, say, Canadian dollars, only paying the exchange rate (which last time I did this was equivalent to the rate on ATMs and credit cards). If it's not CAD/Euros/Pesos, I just call and they can order it for me. When I was a teenager, my WF account was my main account, and every single time I went into the bank they tried to sign me up for a checking account. Wasn't surprised one bit when the scandal hit. (Fortunately, they never created any accounts for me.)

astura 9y ago
>I'm traveling out of the country and don't want to rely solely on ATMs and credit cards Ummm... Why not? There's plenty of accounts that refund ATM fees. I don't want to have to stop at the bank on my way out and i especially don't want to carry around more than $60 in cash. Especially in a foreign country!

lsiebert 9y ago

Yeah. I already had an account with Charles Schwab (based in San Francisco), and I set up a roth IRA for this year in about 5 minutes by myself, online. So it's not that financial institutions can't be good at this, it's that the big banks fundamentally don't care about customers who aren't wealthy or institutional in nature. But there are definitely alternatives like credit unions, online banks, and brokerage firms with banking services. Not that everyone of these is good, but you have options, especially if you live in a city, like most people on HN probably do. Quit big banks. Join a credit union, tell your friends about it. Encourage your employer to switch banks too, if you are in a position to do so.

exolymph 9y ago
Schwab is huge, so I'm skeptical that your good experience with them supports the thesis that you stated.
- lsiebert 9y ago
  It's a brokerage firm with some banking features. Brokerage firms understand that investors have options on where to take their money, whereas banks like Wells Fargo often seem to forget that.

joering2 9y ago

I agree with your experience, same in Bank of America. I walked in to report fraud, a teller gets on the phone and call someone on the same number as I would from the back of my card. Bank of America is a master at minimizing cost - they are introducing vATMs - virtual assistant ATM - its a regular ATM but with two-way camera so you talk with banker that is obviously located somewhere else. Just 2 months ago someone was helping me with perfect English and she said shes in Texas. Just few days ago, same location I connect and there is a guy in turban around his head, with broken English and clock on the wall I can see pointing 3am (it was around 2pm EST). So there you have it. I bet within 2 years they will complete transition and 99% of branches will have those vATMs at the cost of 70% savings in location, wages, etc. I am slowly shifting to smaller bank though where people know me by name, I deal with same people who help me without using phone and sometimes even computer. So far BB&T and First Republic are very good choices. Mandatory: 37 banks become just 4 https://www.visualnews.com/2016/01/25/37-banks-became-4-banks-just-2-decades/ https://www.visualnews.com/2016/01/25/37-banks-became-4-bank...

dpkonofa 9y ago

When you go to any major metropolitan city in the United States, the downtown area will typically have several large skyscrapers. Take a look some time and note how many can be included in one of these 3 categories - banks, health "care", or financial services. Our priorities as a nation are fucked and the big banks are just a giant reminder to everyone. The fact that these companies are so huge and making so much money is ridiculous.

closeparen 9y ago

Wells Fargo and BofA have earned a negative reputation for "the big banks," but in my experience, Chase and Citi are perfectly fine ACH + ATM utilities. (YMMV if you aren't the kind of customer they want, i.e. playing close to $0 or making weird high-volume transfers). Regardless of customer service concerns, the rates on other financial services are simply more favorable at specialist firms. American Express for rewards credit cards, Vanguard for investment, Marcus or Ally for cash savings, etc. A local bank or credit union with impeccable customer service around a full suite of services is still probably not worth the money you're leaving on the table.

aaavl2821 9y ago

Agreed. Scarily, a lot of consultants and industry watchers foresee the healthcare industry going through the same wave of consolidation that banks did in the 1980s and 1990s -- they even use it as a metaphor for what they think will happen. I think that's something to worry about