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I'm sorry to say but this isn't a Chase specific problem. Chase is required by law to make the funds available after a couple days, just like all other banks. T

I'm sorry to say but this isn't a Chase specific problem. Chase is required by law to make the funds available after a couple days, just like all other banks. The OP's sister fell for a common scam that's been going on since forever, and Zelle warns you fairly explicitly to never send money to a stranger or else things like this could happen. Of course Chase isn't going to eat a $3,000 loss because a customer fell for a common scam and ignored Zelle's warnings and didn't even do a cursory look through the bank agreement which clearly explains how checks clear. The difference between the other services "taking responsibility" and "not shaking down their customers" and Chase Bank is that unlike a checking account, credit card transactions can be easily reversed. Once you send the money through Zelle, it's gone. That your sister was victimized is clearly terrible, but it doesn't change the fact that her negligence caused her bank to lose 3 grand, and your father is liable as a cosigner as well. She is reasonably expected to recognize that Craigslist arrangement as too good to be true, and she ignored Zelle's admonitions not to send money to strangers.

kenjackson 6y ago
It depends on what the definition of stranger is. At the point she sent the money she had entered a relationship as an employee. Granted, it was a new relationship, I think it is easy for most people to now think of this entity as no longer a stranger -- even though they probably should. As noted in a below thread, the solution can still be to make the funds available, but to note clearly that the actual funds may not really be there. As you note, this scam has been going on forever, and some simple UI changes could make it harder to execute, while not hindering the common case (non-scam).
Liron 6y ago
Ok but part of the reason people lower their skepticism is because they see their bank’s UI heavily implying that the check has cleared. The main point of the post is that banks’ UI about whether a check has cleared is very misleading and really needs to be changed.
- fakedang 6y ago
  Somebody who uses/deals with cheques in this day and age though kinda deserves it in my books. Cheques are themselves bad UX today.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    Local/county governments and landlords tend to pressure people to use checks in my experience (northeast US). Property taxes where I live, for instance, you can pay with a credit card or EFT but the fees are absurd. I don't know why people don't want to at least take an e-check, but that's the way it is.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    Please don't blame the victim.
  - throw_m239339 6y ago
    > Somebody who uses/deals with cheques in this day and age though kinda deserves it in my books. Cheques are themselves bad UX today. Nobody deserves to get scammed. This is puritan thinking, to blame the victim. People aren't supposed to understand every single thing and systems, and banks should do a proper job at educating their clients, if they care about good PR. Obviously, Chase and many more do not.
  - GeneralMayhem 6y ago
    In the United States, cheques remain the most reliable free-to-the-user way to move amounts of money above about $2000 from one individual to another. There are a bunch of companies that effectively give you ACS access, but they tend to have low limits due to KYC concerns. There's wire transfers, but those are pricy ($50/transaction is normal) unless you have very large deposits with the bank. Most banks will let you do transfers online, but often only to other account holders at the same institution, or else with Zelle or one of its clones, usually with the aforementioned ~$2k limit. The use case here is paying rent. I write exactly one cheque a month, and I haven't found a better way to do it that wouldn't either be expensive or require action on the landlord's part to set up a portal or something.
superhuzza 6y ago
While all of these things may be true, how does this stop Chase from implementing a new cheque status? This scam is so incredibly common and effective that I think we have to move beyond blaming individuals for making a mistake, and consider implementing a fairly simple safeguard.
Nextgrid 6y ago
Just because the law forces them to make the money available doesn't prevent them from putting a big warning on the associated transaction. Clearly, the bank knows how cheques work and how they can bounce 6 months down the line. They should make it clear to the user with a warning explaining "we are required to make this money available to you by law now, but this money can be taken back at anytime if the cheque ends up being fraudulent, and this can happen for up to 6 months down the line". The bank also knows (doing otherwise would make me doubt their competence to operate a bank) that this is a common scam and should similarly warn their customers about it. They also know (and have the data) to prove that a lot of people fall victim to this scam suggesting that there is a lack of knowledge in the majority of people when it comes to how cheques work and how they can bounce down the line after the money has already "cleared". Finally, when it comes to the law, the law was most likely drafted at a time where 1) there were no easier ways to transfer money instantly while making sure it's actually legitimate, so it was a necessary trade-off and 2) there were similarly no easy ways to irreversibly transfer money out of the country in an untraceable fashion, so that the majority of occurrences of such scams would also give better chance to law enforcement to actually trace the funds and make the victim whole, so the fact that someone could temporarily end up out of pocket was also not a big deal. Nowadays that particular law is clearly inadequate and is doing more harm than good, but laws take time to change (and no doubts there are vested interests at play that would want the system to remain as-is) and there's nothing preventing the banks doing their own part to "patch" the bug until a proper fix can be installed (by deprecating the whole cheque system altogether).
- Silhouette 6y ago
  It amazes me that in 2020, we still struggle to implement a simple system where someone can reliably and permanently transfer money to someone else as the default, expected behaviour of the financial system. There are far too many scams based on someone thinking they've got money they haven't, whether it's person-to-person because of weirdness about reversible money moves or someone successfully abusing some sort of chargeback or dispute mechanism against a merchant. It's not as if these things aren't well known by the industry. It just chooses not to do anything about them, and to continue to rely on fundamentally insecure and unreliable methods of moving money around when it is perfectly capable of implementing better ones.
morpheuskafka 6y ago
True, but--the bank should communicate clearly when the check has cleared, and display an intermediate icon that says "per the law/policy, you are allowed to access these funds now, but payment processing is not complete. if the payment does not clear, you must repay these funds." Also, if the bank really wanted to help, they could offer the services of its fraud unit in attempting to identify and have the check writer prosecuted. Honestly, it's time to kill checks. They have no place in today's world and can only cause problems.
rbecker 6y ago
> a customer fell for a common scam No, the bank fell for the scam. They cleared the fraudulent check. But their TOS says their customers are on the hook for mistakes made (and hidden - there's no way to tell if a transaction really cleared) by the bank.
ZainRiz 6y ago
I get what you’re saying, but the main complain I have is that Chase gave no indication that the funds were not guaranteed once the check appeared to have cleared The law only forces them to make the funds available, not to pretend that that funds cannot be reclaimed If the true status of the check had actually been made visible, then yes, Chase would have a much stronger position to claim their was irresponsible

kenjackson 6y ago

It depends on what the definition of stranger is. At the point she sent the money she had entered a relationship as an employee. Granted, it was a new relationship, I think it is easy for most people to now think of this entity as no longer a stranger -- even though they probably should. As noted in a below thread, the solution can still be to make the funds available, but to note clearly that the actual funds may not really be there. As you note, this scam has been going on forever, and some simple UI changes could make it harder to execute, while not hindering the common case (non-scam).

Liron 6y ago

Ok but part of the reason people lower their skepticism is because they see their bank’s UI heavily implying that the check has cleared. The main point of the post is that banks’ UI about whether a check has cleared is very misleading and really needs to be changed.

fakedang 6y ago
Somebody who uses/deals with cheques in this day and age though kinda deserves it in my books. Cheques are themselves bad UX today.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  Local/county governments and landlords tend to pressure people to use checks in my experience (northeast US). Property taxes where I live, for instance, you can pay with a credit card or EFT but the fees are absurd. I don't know why people don't want to at least take an e-check, but that's the way it is.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Please don't blame the victim.
- throw_m239339 6y ago
  > Somebody who uses/deals with cheques in this day and age though kinda deserves it in my books. Cheques are themselves bad UX today. Nobody deserves to get scammed. This is puritan thinking, to blame the victim. People aren't supposed to understand every single thing and systems, and banks should do a proper job at educating their clients, if they care about good PR. Obviously, Chase and many more do not.
- GeneralMayhem 6y ago
  In the United States, cheques remain the most reliable free-to-the-user way to move amounts of money above about $2000 from one individual to another. There are a bunch of companies that effectively give you ACS access, but they tend to have low limits due to KYC concerns. There's wire transfers, but those are pricy ($50/transaction is normal) unless you have very large deposits with the bank. Most banks will let you do transfers online, but often only to other account holders at the same institution, or else with Zelle or one of its clones, usually with the aforementioned ~$2k limit. The use case here is paying rent. I write exactly one cheque a month, and I haven't found a better way to do it that wouldn't either be expensive or require action on the landlord's part to set up a portal or something.

superhuzza 6y ago

While all of these things may be true, how does this stop Chase from implementing a new cheque status? This scam is so incredibly common and effective that I think we have to move beyond blaming individuals for making a mistake, and consider implementing a fairly simple safeguard.

Nextgrid 6y ago

Just because the law forces them to make the money available doesn't prevent them from putting a big warning on the associated transaction. Clearly, the bank knows how cheques work and how they can bounce 6 months down the line. They should make it clear to the user with a warning explaining "we are required to make this money available to you by law now, but this money can be taken back at anytime if the cheque ends up being fraudulent, and this can happen for up to 6 months down the line". The bank also knows (doing otherwise would make me doubt their competence to operate a bank) that this is a common scam and should similarly warn their customers about it. They also know (and have the data) to prove that a lot of people fall victim to this scam suggesting that there is a lack of knowledge in the majority of people when it comes to how cheques work and how they can bounce down the line after the money has already "cleared". Finally, when it comes to the law, the law was most likely drafted at a time where 1) there were no easier ways to transfer money instantly while making sure it's actually legitimate, so it was a necessary trade-off and 2) there were similarly no easy ways to irreversibly transfer money out of the country in an untraceable fashion, so that the majority of occurrences of such scams would also give better chance to law enforcement to actually trace the funds and make the victim whole, so the fact that someone could temporarily end up out of pocket was also not a big deal. Nowadays that particular law is clearly inadequate and is doing more harm than good, but laws take time to change (and no doubts there are vested interests at play that would want the system to remain as-is) and there's nothing preventing the banks doing their own part to "patch" the bug until a proper fix can be installed (by deprecating the whole cheque system altogether).

Silhouette 6y ago
It amazes me that in 2020, we still struggle to implement a simple system where someone can reliably and permanently transfer money to someone else as the default, expected behaviour of the financial system. There are far too many scams based on someone thinking they've got money they haven't, whether it's person-to-person because of weirdness about reversible money moves or someone successfully abusing some sort of chargeback or dispute mechanism against a merchant. It's not as if these things aren't well known by the industry. It just chooses not to do anything about them, and to continue to rely on fundamentally insecure and unreliable methods of moving money around when it is perfectly capable of implementing better ones.

morpheuskafka 6y ago

True, but--the bank should communicate clearly when the check has cleared, and display an intermediate icon that says "per the law/policy, you are allowed to access these funds now, but payment processing is not complete. if the payment does not clear, you must repay these funds." Also, if the bank really wanted to help, they could offer the services of its fraud unit in attempting to identify and have the check writer prosecuted. Honestly, it's time to kill checks. They have no place in today's world and can only cause problems.

rbecker 6y ago

> a customer fell for a common scam No, the bank fell for the scam. They cleared the fraudulent check. But their TOS says their customers are on the hook for mistakes made (and hidden - there's no way to tell if a transaction really cleared) by the bank.

ZainRiz 6y ago

I get what you’re saying, but the main complain I have is that Chase gave no indication that the funds were not guaranteed once the check appeared to have cleared The law only forces them to make the funds available, not to pretend that that funds cannot be reclaimed If the true status of the check had actually been made visible, then yes, Chase would have a much stronger position to claim their was irresponsible