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I had my only personal UK bank account frozen without warning for weeks. The first I knew of it was when the call centre wouldnt answer the phone for 45mins fro
by Terry_Roll 5y ago
I had my only personal UK bank account frozen without warning for weeks. The first I knew of it was when the call centre wouldnt answer the phone for 45mins from the shop where I had just tried to use the card. Had to abandon the process and go home. Next morning, call the bank call centre, do security get told they cant talk to me. The processes to get the account activated was interesting, I couldnt complain to the govt ombudsman until I had exhausted the complaints process with the bank. Problem was the bank wouldnt talk to me, every time I called the call centre, passed security checks they would tell me they couldnt talk to me, so you are kept in a legal limbo of sorts. Govt ombudsman couldnt do anything until the 1st stage had been completed. So the rules are exploitable as most lawyers will also demonstrate in court.
So yes have some cash but behind the scenes data sharing does go on, it could be a simple conversation down the pub or a contract to process some data or provide a service.
Signwritten vans & trucks give the game away to neighbours as to whats going on.
Get some crypto where you can draw cash out of a machine, there are plenty of bitcoin machines and online crypto currency exchanges to move money around the world. When the Greek govt debt crisis kicked off, bitcoins spiked as people moved their money out of Greece, some events like this will also trigger a spike in crypto because its less bulky remembering a string than shipping tonnes of gold across borders.
The less reliant you become on any one entity the less any one entity can mess you up especially when you dont agree with their politics, methods or employer.
- danuker 5y agoWasn't the fact that they told you they could not talk to you considered "exhausting" the process?
- zivkovicp 5y agoThis is probably good advice, just remember that crypto is also digital and totally transparent (mostly). If you obtain your crypto via an exchange, then your wallet can be positively linked to your physical person, and (eventually) prohibiting transactions by blacklisting wallets would be trivial. :( I imagine that is a ways off still because crypto is not _that_ mainstream, but I suspect the time to get started and make the effort to anonymise your wallet is now.
- roenxi 5y agoThe first generation of crypto is totally transparent, if people need to start using crypto to have political freedom of expression then no doubt more anonymous systems will gain prominence. There'll be something that draws broad parallels between the HTTP -> HTTPS transition.
- loceng 5y agoOnce there are laws in place to force a check at a central service for blocked funds, certainly very easy them. We must fix and strengthen our governments - there's no way around that.
- dijonman2 5y agoI’m confused. Shouldn’t we weaken our governments ability to freeze an account without due process?
- EL_Loco 5y agoI think parent means that by weakening your government's ability to do things without due process is strengthening it. Assuming that your government has at its basis a respect for such things as due process, individual privacy etc.
- selestify 5y agoMonero is a good thing to look into. Even if you don’t want to hold it yourself, swapping in and out of it will make the “paper” trail that much harder to follow.
- paypalthrowaway 5y agoI’ve heard a lot of reports of popular exchanges freezing accounts of customers who traded with other exchanges that don’t have strong KYC requirements. How am I supposed to exchange for Monero if Coinbase (and the state of New York) dislike it? I’m not trying to be sarcastic. I genuinely don’t know what to do in order to use Monero.
- hughrr 5y agoHad the same thing with HSBC. I opened another bank account and keep a spare one going all the time. Also always keep £500 rolled up in £20 notes somewhere. And make sure you don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago> Also always keep £500 rolled up in £20 notes somewhere This is good advice, always have some cash around; in these uncertain times, I'd even argue to increase the amount. Make sure to have a record somewhere that you have it (a photo on your phone with e.g. ID and a dated newspaper? I dunno) so that IF you get your home broken into, you can prove it to your insurance. Of course, there's plenty of places to hide a stack of bills, or distribute it across multiple spots. If you're concerned about the downfall of the economy, you can get 'slabs' of valuable metals as well, that can be broken off into smaller denominations. The downside of going for those (at least in NL) is that you can't really use them to bet on the price of gold going up or down, because as a consumer you have to pay VAT for them (21%).
- simonjgreen 5y agoThe "trick" in the UK here is to use gold coins, as they are a currency. There's a plethora of places that will bulk sell you gold coins to use as a store of wealth.
- Reason077 5y agoAll investment gold is exempt from VAT in the UK, including gold bars etc. However, legal tender gold coins, minted by the Royal Mint, may have additional advantages as they are also exempt from other taxes such as capital gains tax.
- Terry_Roll 5y agoDifferent devices for different banking, ie an iphone & mobile data for HSBC, a laptop and ADSL for Lloyds, the library, PC World & other shops with computers on display with net access for other bank accounts, besides the obligatory friend network, doing the above. Being in a city helps you blend into the background, being in the countryside will be like a virtual lock down. Make sure you have a passport, because myself and someone else spent the best part of an hour or two trying to past Google's I'm not a robot when trying to get a passport. The fact Govt uses Googles I'm not a Robot should also show you there is more to Google than meets the eye. I can see why the rich have dual citizenship and multiple passports, with the richest having diplomatic passports, making them untouchable anywhere in the world! It might seem like a lot of effort, but when you realise who easy it is to set people up, buy off judges, police, medical experts, etc, you'll realise blackmail can come from everyone and anyone including your family, because there are some messed up beliefs out there.
- maccard 5y agoOr you could use two bank accounts? These things happen even day to day, sometimes cards fail, or a card reader acts up. I find it hard to see that the next logical leap from "one bank account in a country" is "global volatile decentralized currency with incredibly expensive transaction fees" > its less bulky remembering a string than shipping tonnes of gold across borders. Assuming you completely disregard the computation costs, yes.
- auggierose 5y agoCard reader acting up is very different from your bank account being frozen for weeks.
- maccard 5y agoAgreed, however it's also an experience that almost everyone has had, and the straightforward solution (carry two cards from two different banks) _also_ tends to resolve the issue of your bank account being frozen.
- auggierose 5y agoI've never had that experience, and it is a bit ridiculous of you to claim that. I am sure if everyone had that experience, cashless wouldn't be so popular. Did you have that experience to be locked out of your bank account for weeks?
- dustymcp 5y agoHave multiple creditcards aswell, i have a mastercard and a visa for this sort of thing
- razius 5y ago
- gampleman 5y agoI've been told by Citizen's Advice before that if they don't want to talk to you, the best is to send a physical letter to their registered place of business with a clause such as "You have 7 business days to respond" etc. This then firmly places a time limit on how much stalling they can do.
- Terry_Roll 5y agoThats assuming Citizens Advice will even help you. My local Citizens Advice wouldnt help me, but thats headed up by a retired copper. Edit: I've always found his ability to track me down in the middle of some woods when I was out walking to be a rather curious use of technology considering he was retired and wouldnt have access to mobile phone triangulation facilities or the gps facilities on my phone. However he outed himself when he went back to get some answers for me!
- circlefavshape 5y agoWhy was your account frozen?
- Terry_Roll 5y agoUnusually I was asked I was transferring some money, never been asked before why I was moving my money, but earlier like 5-10mins earlier I had read on the DailyMail about some US/UK military abuses going on which annoyed me, so when I was asked why I was moving it, I replied "maybe I'm going to join ISIS". That was all I said, nothing else said, but lets face it, you cant even tell if you are talking to the staff in the call centre or if the phone company/security services are doing a man in the middle attack, international phone standards and internal phone standards make so much possible. People get setup without even knowing it but the setup might not occur until years or decades later.
- DeathArrow 5y agoBetter than crypto, you can store some money in a foreign bank account with a debit card attached and withdraw from the ATM when you need.
- hanselot 5y agoSo the same problem, just a different bank?
- ekianjo 5y agoyou think those cant be blocked?
- i_like_waiting 5y agoafaik its complicated to create bank account in country where you don't live no? I always had to provide proof of address or something, from that country, which is complicated if you are not millionaire with property here and there.
- tiborsaas 5y agoThere are plenty of fintech companies that allow you to keep money without much hassle. Also, when you are on vacation, consider paying a visit to a bank, it's not that hard.
- malka 5y agoIn the UE it is quite easy
- smcl 5y agoWhere is that? Typo for UAE?
- vianneychevalie 5y agoEuropean Union ; in French "Union Européenne", "UE"
- hkt 5y agoCredit unions are also good for this: they won't necessarly have the modern comforts of a bank, but your local one (if you have one) will do cash based accounts, in person. They still KYC but since they're not plugged in to swift etc they might work well as a backup plan in situations like yours.
- inter_netuser 5y agoThey are plugged into SWIFT, if not directly, then whoever happens to be their backoffice provider, which is usually a large bank. They are all subject to the same regs, and most credit unions aren't any better than large banks.
- hkt 5y agoI'm writing from the UK where most credit unions don't offer interbank transfers or cards. If you need somewhere to stow cash, it is likely they won't be as heavily overseen by regulators here. Some are less basic but many are, I suspect, small enough to fly under the radar.