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My account was abused because of SIM swap. It was banned. I explained them that I did not do it. They won't budge. We need to enforce tech companies to have pr

My account was abused because of SIM swap. It was banned. I explained them that I did not do it. They won't budge. We need to enforce tech companies to have proper customer support. We need to make a regulation that enables users to appeal or sue tech companies decision about their account. No more 'fix through hacker news submission or reply' please.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
The term you're looking for is an "Ombudsman". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman
- TheChaplain 7y ago
  It's a great idea as long as they have teeth to make shady businesses fear them.
eqtn 7y ago
We just need a law stating that if a website cross certain number of active users(registered) in a country they should have physical customer care offices. When they reach 10m,they should have it in every district(just like phone service centers). Its nice to think about this although these companies are rich and can lobby against these kind of laws.
- valuearb 7y ago
  Yep, because more laws solve every problem without unintended side effects! Or, just hear me out, you could stop using services that don’t meet your high customer support standards?
  - __s 7y ago
    Their suggestion is a bit far reaching, but their point is that eventually the user count of a service reaches a point where due to network effects individuals aren't able to effectively shop around
    - adjkant 7y ago
      Agreed completely. I think it's quite easy to imagine that a virtual version of this law could be enacted to require that they actually deal with these situations in a timely manner.
  - Eldt 7y ago
    So what, keep trying different services and getting burned until... eventually... you don't get burned?
    - stronglikedan 7y ago
      > and getting burned until... eventually... you have nothing left to burn
  - RHSeeger 7y ago
    I'm not entirely sure that not allowing them to just close your account, never talk to you again, and walk away with your money is "high customer support standards".
- cortesoft 7y ago
  Every district? I think you underestimate how big a country like the United States is, and how few 10 million users are for web sites. Facebook has one of the highest revenue per user at $7 a year... so 10 million users would get them about $70 million in revenue a year.. take a phone company like Verizon... they have 2300 stores in the US.... if our hypothetical web company opened up 2300 stores, they would only have $30k per store... and that is just revenue, not taking into account any other expenses. If they had zero other expenses and just ran the offices, they wouldn’t even be able to hire one worker for each store....
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
Paypal is less of a tech company and more of a finance company. This kind of behavior is caused by rules that put the cost of fraud on the payment processor rather than the customer, even though the payment processor's primary tools to prevent it basically involve locking the customer's account based on vague suspicion and hearsay. When someone has stolen your identity, there isn't really anything you can tell someone to prove you're you. Having your password or SSN or access to your email or the answers to your security questions tell them nothing. The perpetrator could have those things. Your account may have been created by the perpetrator to begin with and the person whose name is on it has never even used their service. How are they supposed to tell? Even if you're you, the perpetrator may still have access to whatever method was used to access your account to begin with and if they turned it back on there would be more fraud (which causes the payment processor to lose money instead of you). So your account is locked forever and you can pound sand. The alternative to people getting locked out of their accounts is having accounts without reversible transactions. You don't want this for your brokerage account, but you do want it for the account you're using to buy things with petty cash. Because then the account never has more than $1000 in it to begin with, which limits your losses to that amount, but then the payment processor doesn't have any incentive to ban your account because the losses are yours. If you're careless and reuse passwords, you might lose the $1000, but you don't get banned forever from making financial transactions. Then you learn your lesson and do better next time. That would also result in lower transaction fees, because most of the transaction fees go to paying the cost of fraud protection. And it would reintroduce the incentive to prevent fraud to the people best situated to do that (stop reusing passwords, people), so there would also be less fraud, which is better for everybody.
- zxcvbn4038 7y ago
  PayPal is the worst - a couple days ago they disabled my password (including both 2FAs) and sent me an e-mail asking me to reset it. The only way to reset it is via SMS which I don’t do. I’m locked out of my account now and also support now since the only way to contact them is by logging in. I’m hoping Synchrony has an in with them because I have balances on PayPal MasterCard and PayPal line of credit that can only be accessed by logging in.

toomuchtodo 7y ago

The term you're looking for is an "Ombudsman". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman

TheChaplain 7y ago
It's a great idea as long as they have teeth to make shady businesses fear them.

eqtn 7y ago

We just need a law stating that if a website cross certain number of active users(registered) in a country they should have physical customer care offices. When they reach 10m,they should have it in every district(just like phone service centers). Its nice to think about this although these companies are rich and can lobby against these kind of laws.

valuearb 7y ago
Yep, because more laws solve every problem without unintended side effects! Or, just hear me out, you could stop using services that don’t meet your high customer support standards?
- __s 7y ago
  Their suggestion is a bit far reaching, but their point is that eventually the user count of a service reaches a point where due to network effects individuals aren't able to effectively shop around
  - adjkant 7y ago
    Agreed completely. I think it's quite easy to imagine that a virtual version of this law could be enacted to require that they actually deal with these situations in a timely manner.
- Eldt 7y ago
  So what, keep trying different services and getting burned until... eventually... you don't get burned?
  - stronglikedan 7y ago
    > and getting burned until... eventually... you have nothing left to burn
- RHSeeger 7y ago
  I'm not entirely sure that not allowing them to just close your account, never talk to you again, and walk away with your money is "high customer support standards".
cortesoft 7y ago
Every district? I think you underestimate how big a country like the United States is, and how few 10 million users are for web sites. Facebook has one of the highest revenue per user at $7 a year... so 10 million users would get them about $70 million in revenue a year.. take a phone company like Verizon... they have 2300 stores in the US.... if our hypothetical web company opened up 2300 stores, they would only have $30k per store... and that is just revenue, not taking into account any other expenses. If they had zero other expenses and just ran the offices, they wouldn’t even be able to hire one worker for each store....

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

Paypal is less of a tech company and more of a finance company. This kind of behavior is caused by rules that put the cost of fraud on the payment processor rather than the customer, even though the payment processor's primary tools to prevent it basically involve locking the customer's account based on vague suspicion and hearsay. When someone has stolen your identity, there isn't really anything you can tell someone to prove you're you. Having your password or SSN or access to your email or the answers to your security questions tell them nothing. The perpetrator could have those things. Your account may have been created by the perpetrator to begin with and the person whose name is on it has never even used their service. How are they supposed to tell? Even if you're you, the perpetrator may still have access to whatever method was used to access your account to begin with and if they turned it back on there would be more fraud (which causes the payment processor to lose money instead of you). So your account is locked forever and you can pound sand. The alternative to people getting locked out of their accounts is having accounts without reversible transactions. You don't want this for your brokerage account, but you do want it for the account you're using to buy things with petty cash. Because then the account never has more than $1000 in it to begin with, which limits your losses to that amount, but then the payment processor doesn't have any incentive to ban your account because the losses are yours. If you're careless and reuse passwords, you might lose the $1000, but you don't get banned forever from making financial transactions. Then you learn your lesson and do better next time. That would also result in lower transaction fees, because most of the transaction fees go to paying the cost of fraud protection. And it would reintroduce the incentive to prevent fraud to the people best situated to do that (stop reusing passwords, people), so there would also be less fraud, which is better for everybody.

zxcvbn4038 7y ago
PayPal is the worst - a couple days ago they disabled my password (including both 2FAs) and sent me an e-mail asking me to reset it. The only way to reset it is via SMS which I don’t do. I’m locked out of my account now and also support now since the only way to contact them is by logging in. I’m hoping Synchrony has an in with them because I have balances on PayPal MasterCard and PayPal line of credit that can only be accessed by logging in.