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My parents put $2000 in a Dwolla account, did nothing with it, and two months later decided to withdraw it. Dwolla put a hold on it for over a week without any

by suivix 15y ago

My parents put $2000 in a Dwolla account, did nothing with it, and two months later decided to withdraw it. Dwolla put a hold on it for over a week without any notification, and my father finally decided to call. On the phone they said 'well you know, $2000 is a lot of money'. My parents had to send over scanned photo identification just to get their money out. Anyways, what I learned is that Dwolla's customer service is terrible. I don't recommend it to anybody.

antidaily 15y ago
Sounds like Neteller or something. Remember them?
- nixarn 15y ago
  I had to use them at one point. Never again!
davidandgoliath 15y ago
So because Dwolla's customer service tried to protect your parents, they're horrible? Just curious. I used to think my bank was evil because they'd process every check manually adding delays -- but it's saved me in a few fraud cases. (They're still evil for many other reasons though)
- breck 15y ago
  > So because Dwolla's customer service tried to protect your parents, they're horrible? This is a common marketing lie. This actually isn't trying to protect his parents. This is greatly inconveniencing his parents in order to protect themselves in a cheaper fashion. Preventing theft is hard. Preventing theft while not punishing users is extremely hard. And so lots of banks and services take the easy route: forcing complicated passwords, OTP's, holds, "sitekeys", security questions, et cetera. True protection would be: "Behind the scenes we are going to do everything we can stop thieves. And, in the very rare cases where they succeed and access your account, we'll cover it 100%. And, we're not going to make you stab yourself in the eye every time you want to create an account, or send, receive or withdraw funds." Then it's up to Dwolla to build in strong defensive and offensive measures to combat online thieves, without making 99.9% of its users suffer for the 00.1% of people that are looking to steal. tldr; these "security measures" absolutely suck and I can't wait for the service that comes along and says "we did the hard security work so you don't have to". P.S. Dwolla looks awesome. I signed up. Am very impressed. I realize EVERYONE has these PitA security measures and I'm sure the Dwolla guys hate them just as much as me and have plans to eliminate them eventually. I just had to respond to the marketing bs.
  - rick888 15y ago
    "Preventing theft while not punishing users is extremely hard. And so lots of banks and services take the easy route: forcing complicated passwords, OTP's, holds, "sitekeys", security questions, et cetera." You will always be inconvenienced by security measures. All of the things you described is the company working "behind the scenes". "tldr; these "security measures" absolutely suck and I can't wait for the service that comes along and says "we did the hard security work so you don't have to"." The problem is that if you got your money stolen, like you wrote above, you expect the company to pay for it 100%. If security was reduced to the levels you are describing, more money would get stolen and the company would be liable. Why would any company want to take this risk? For any company or bank dealing with money, image is everything. Customers will leave if they can't trust someone with their money. I know I would. "This is a common marketing lie. This actually isn't trying to protect his parents. This is greatly inconveniencing his parents in order to protect themselves in a cheaper fashion." I would gladly start a company with less security if you sign a statement saying that my company isn't liable for any money stolen because of the inconvenience of higher security.
    - breck 15y ago
      > You will always be inconvenienced by security measures. Ah, but we won't. Curious people will find a way. Look around you, they always do.
kahawe 15y ago
Well, looks like they learned from the pros... paypal asked me for my name, address, credit card and bank account verification and on top of that a scanned passport AND a utilities bill - I find this absolutely outrageous.

by suivix 15y ago

antidaily 15y ago

Sounds like Neteller or something. Remember them?

nixarn 15y ago
I had to use them at one point. Never again!

davidandgoliath 15y ago

So because Dwolla's customer service tried to protect your parents, they're horrible? Just curious. I used to think my bank was evil because they'd process every check manually adding delays -- but it's saved me in a few fraud cases. (They're still evil for many other reasons though)

breck 15y ago
> So because Dwolla's customer service tried to protect your parents, they're horrible? This is a common marketing lie. This actually isn't trying to protect his parents. This is greatly inconveniencing his parents in order to protect themselves in a cheaper fashion. Preventing theft is hard. Preventing theft while not punishing users is extremely hard. And so lots of banks and services take the easy route: forcing complicated passwords, OTP's, holds, "sitekeys", security questions, et cetera. True protection would be: "Behind the scenes we are going to do everything we can stop thieves. And, in the very rare cases where they succeed and access your account, we'll cover it 100%. And, we're not going to make you stab yourself in the eye every time you want to create an account, or send, receive or withdraw funds." Then it's up to Dwolla to build in strong defensive and offensive measures to combat online thieves, without making 99.9% of its users suffer for the 00.1% of people that are looking to steal. tldr; these "security measures" absolutely suck and I can't wait for the service that comes along and says "we did the hard security work so you don't have to". P.S. Dwolla looks awesome. I signed up. Am very impressed. I realize EVERYONE has these PitA security measures and I'm sure the Dwolla guys hate them just as much as me and have plans to eliminate them eventually. I just had to respond to the marketing bs.
- rick888 15y ago
  "Preventing theft while not punishing users is extremely hard. And so lots of banks and services take the easy route: forcing complicated passwords, OTP's, holds, "sitekeys", security questions, et cetera." You will always be inconvenienced by security measures. All of the things you described is the company working "behind the scenes". "tldr; these "security measures" absolutely suck and I can't wait for the service that comes along and says "we did the hard security work so you don't have to"." The problem is that if you got your money stolen, like you wrote above, you expect the company to pay for it 100%. If security was reduced to the levels you are describing, more money would get stolen and the company would be liable. Why would any company want to take this risk? For any company or bank dealing with money, image is everything. Customers will leave if they can't trust someone with their money. I know I would. "This is a common marketing lie. This actually isn't trying to protect his parents. This is greatly inconveniencing his parents in order to protect themselves in a cheaper fashion." I would gladly start a company with less security if you sign a statement saying that my company isn't liable for any money stolen because of the inconvenience of higher security.
  - breck 15y ago
    > You will always be inconvenienced by security measures. Ah, but we won't. Curious people will find a way. Look around you, they always do.

kahawe 15y ago

Well, looks like they learned from the pros... paypal asked me for my name, address, credit card and bank account verification and on top of that a scanned passport AND a utilities bill - I find this absolutely outrageous.