12 ms·

Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile want to access your bank account

78 points by mfiguiere 3y ago

helf 3y ago
[dead]
orev 3y ago
I suspect this is due (at least partially) to the relatively recent rise in credit card rewards. Many more cards than in the past are giving rewards, and that requires increasing the fees charged during the transaction. MC and Visa recently announced a fee increase, which tracks with this trend. In response, vendors are saying enough is enough and pushing customers away from credit cards.
singleshot_ 3y ago
> Like credit cards, ACH has fraud protections and payment-dispute procedures. “Similar to the Space Shuttle, my office has chairs.”
- tristor 3y ago
  Yeah, there’s effectively no protection on ACH if a giant corporation decides to screw you or makes a mistake.
kylehotchkiss 3y ago
AT&T charges me a different amount every month as it is. I can’t figure out why, the bill is too stupid complicated, but the amount varies between 10-20 month to month. Why would I ever trust those people to ACH my account an undefined amount each month? If the bill amount was actually fixed and predictable, sure. But that’ll never be the case. I really hope banks charge the carriers for bounced checks. That’s not something a consumer should have to do if their account is $3 too low because they funded the account for whatever the bill was last month.
fred_is_fred 3y ago
I checked my T-Mo today. I have autopay and it's still a CC and T-mo says still eligible for the discount, yet this article says it was rolled out in June/July. I wonder if I'm on an older plan that isn't affected by this?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
r00fus 3y ago
I use direct debit authorizations on all sorts of monthly payments to credit cards, telecom, etc and it's all good. Just because they have a debit authorization doesn't mean you can't contest or reverse the charge. That they aren't up-front on pricing is unfortunate (and somewhat unethical) but it seems the hidden lede here is how usurious the CC networks charges are. It's really time we had a modern payment network in the US (like Europe, India, Brazil, etc etc) so we didn't have to pay the CC tax.
tristor 3y ago
Meanwhile, I’ve learned the hard way to NEVER do ACH direct payment for recurring charges because it’s nearly impossible to successfully resolve a dispute and you give up all control of access to your funds to unaccountable corporate giants. I kept my credit card autopay and paid the extra, because the credit card provides some semblance of actual consumer protection.
dickersnoodle 3y ago
No.
modus__ponens 3y ago
https://archive.is/dAO6o https://archive.is/dAO6o
- FrameworkFred 3y ago
  ha, you got me...never-ending captcha
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    “Like others in the industry, we are making this change in response to credit-card fees,”
    - Arrath 3y ago
      What is driving the increases in fees from the credit card companies? Greed? Using the fees to fund ever more enticing rewards programs to attract customers?
      - jondwillis 3y ago
        Probably a combination of Greed, cost disease, and risk-free rates rising?
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
        What are you going to do, NOT accept card payments? The sky high rates in the US is because fuck you, deal with it. It's pretty explicitly wealth transfer from poor people to credit card companies, with a small kickback to well off credit card users to make it popular and hard to regulate.
        tracker1 3y ago
        You don't have to be well off to not buy more than you can afford. That said, I'd be perfectly fine if CCs disappeared altogether, and limited people to only debit accounts.
Zandikar 3y ago
This is one thing that privacy.com is great for. If it weren't for these companies no-credit card requirement, you could also use something like Capital Ones virtual credit card, and those aren't the only two offering such services. Privacy's is especially good imo as you can set spending limits and easily (un)pause cards and create new ones pretty easily. Even outside of trying to take advantage of auto-pay discounts, it's just a nice piece of mind to be able to be a hard check on an accounting "Oopsie", mine or theres. That said, not a fan of this overreach and general disregard for people's money. Yes, most people are terrible at managing their money, but hidden fees, auto pay not auto happening on the scheduled date, and general corporate greed, disrespect and distrust certainly doesn't help either.
- byteknight 3y ago
  I love the native integration with 1Pass
- proamdev123 3y ago
  I’m interested in using privacy.com, but I’m concerned that providing THEM access access to my accounts creates even more vulnerability. Fo they have any security protections that prevent them from draining my accounts (either accidentally or via hacker)?
  - fourg 3y ago
    You could create a new checking account with your same bank that you give privacy.com access to and keep a low balance on. Still involves making sure it has enough to cover your privacy.com virtual card expenses.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- DrBenCarson 3y ago
  Privacy cards don't qualify for the debit card discount with T-Mobile. I suspect it's the same for all the ISPs.
morninglight 3y ago
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/why-your-wireless-carrier-wants-to-access-your-bank-account/ar-AA1fZCBN https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/why-your-wir...
- everybodyknows 3y ago
  > Wireless carriers want to give you a monthly discount. You just have to pay them with your bank account. Not quite. The notice I got from T-mobile was that my bill would go up by $5 unless I handed over my bank account info for the direct charge.
JEDI-HACKER 3y ago
[dead]
jondwillis 3y ago
Currently I am using prepaid debit cards (I’m sure it will only be a short time until this is prevented) to pay my T-mobile bill.
kccqzy 3y ago
A lot of credit cards offer something like "lost phone protection" whereby you get reimbursed if you lost your phone, but only when you pay the phone bill using that credit card. Such insurance must be expensive and I suppose that's why fees are increasing.
retrocryptid 3y ago
Because that's where the money is.
tomtai 3y ago
This title feels misleading somehow. I was expecting some sort of access that let them see your transactions like an open banking affordability check or to get spending habit data...but it's just a direct debit? News came out today that MasterCard and Visa are upping their CC fees so the reasoning from the carriers makes sense. If anything it's good they're passing the saving on?
alarsama 3y ago
It is not clear in the article who will keep debit cards as accepted forms of payment. At least for mobile providers who will still offer debit for payment in the future, you do not have to provide your bank account number. Though you do lose out on credit card benefits like points/rewards and the ease of disputing charges. For those whose mobile providers will switch to only using bank account numbers for payments and want the ability to be able to block access to the account if that account number is somehow compromised, I would recommend looking into Qube Money [1]. Among many other awesome functions (like being a great budgeting tool), it allows you to create different “Qubes” (pronounced “cubes”, think digital cash envelope) that you place money in and allocate towards different bills. It’s similar to Privacy and Capital One’s virtual credit cards in that each Qube is assigned a unique debit card number. More importantly, each Qube gets its own bank account number. Closing a Qube and opening a new Qube with a new bank account number is easy. There are more great features, but I figure this was most relevant to the topic. [1] https://qubemoney.com/ https://qubemoney.com/
- ryaneager 3y ago
  I second the Qube recommendation. After Simple died I was looking for a good replacement, Qube more then fits the bill and even has features I wish Simple did.
atomicfiredoll 3y ago
With the number of breaches T-Mobile has had (as mentioned in the article,) there's no reason to trust a company like that any more personal information than strictly necessary. If they were to to and corner people in to giving more, it sounds like a good reason to stop doing business with them.
isykt 3y ago
> About 85% of American consumers with bank accounts are comfortable making recurring payments using those accounts, said John Anderson. He is head of product at Plaid, a fintech company that links vendors with customers’ bank accounts. Plaid, who got sued for abusing their access to people’s bank info. Fuck that guy.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  I, frankly, do not understand why Plaid doesn't work more like Privacy.com. If a company must have the ridiculous stance that they need to access my bank account, and Plaid is linking them together, why can't Plaid have a popup saying, "Company X will access your Bank account. Company X may not withdraw, at any time, more than $25 or <fill in the blank amount here> without your consent on a monthly basis. You may need to fill this form again if you ever purchase or subscribe to anything requiring greater amounts of money transferred. < OK > < Cancel >" Someone might say, "that would make Plaid require a money transmitter license" or something similar. I would argue, why should Plaid not need a money transmitter license for literally handling bank account login information?
  - joecot 3y ago
    Privacy.com works like it does, giving consumer protections, because the consumer with the bank account is the customer. Plaid works like it does, letting companies take your money with no restrictions, because the company is the customer, and the consumer with the bank account is the product. If a company offers you a service and that service is free, you are not the customer, you are the product.
dtansek 3y ago
What the hell good is a 2%-3% cash back on a credit card when they're fucking you for 26% of your balance every month? When I was in 10th grade in 1968, our Social Studies teacher told us that any interest rate over 8% was a violation of the usury laws, to protect the public from loansharking. So when did loansharking become legal with these credit cards?
bubblematrix 3y ago
It has nothing to do with credit card processing fees, or data-mining. Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile want you to connect a bank account to further tie an identity to a phone number / account. This comes at request of the government. They do not want anonymous cellular users.
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  This should be further up. It's painfully obvious.
lelandfe 3y ago
Any clue if this affects prepaid customers as well? I really have to stay on my toes with these carriers, my bill always creeps up over the years.
- jabroni_salad 3y ago
  I can't speak for at&t but tmobile prepaid does not get an autopay discount at all so they are technically not affected.
- leesalminen 3y ago
  We switched to US Mobile prepaid data pools a few months ago. $9/line + $2/GB per month. I found some code online [0] that runs every hour and purchases an additional GB if my remaining amount falls below a threshold. It’s been working great for us. We dropped our bill for 2 lines from ~$100/mo to $21/mo. [0] https://github.com/dbrand666/usmobile-lifeguard/tree/main https://github.com/dbrand666/usmobile-lifeguard/tree/main
  - judge2020 3y ago
    Although your service might be slowed down for people paying more via first-party. This is an informative post about the QCI: https://fixverizon.com/2023/01/12/qci-prioritization-for-carriers-and-their-mvnos/ https://fixverizon.com/2023/01/12/qci-prioritization-for-car... if you don't feel like your service is slow during the times you use your wireless, then there's no harm in using MVNOs.
    - leesalminen 3y ago
      Yes, of course there can be QCI stuff happening. We don't go to big events where you'd typically run into de-prioritization, but of course, YMMV.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    ($9 x 2) => $21 - $18 = $3. You can pay $2/GB per month, and they let you buy .5GB? That's crazy they don't force whole increments. Also, you're only using 3GB per month of data? That's crazy too!
pgm8705 3y ago
Seems like ATT may have screwed this up even worse. They seemingly dropped my autopay discount to $5 from $10 claiming that I am using a credit card, when I'm using my checking account as I always have for the past 10 years.
- Bilal_io 3y ago
  Xfinity did the same. I had to switch from credit card to bank account to keep my $10 discount. If I recall correctly the deadline was July 31st
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    In these United States, it's rather perilous to use your direct ACH bank account. The protections around this method are so minimal, hope you'll never have a dispute with a creditor. Which is exactly why ACH is the cheapest/most discounted method.
    - camhenlin 3y ago
      Yep, not worth the additional discount for me. I'm not giving AT&T my bank account information or any authorizations around it
    - delfinom 3y ago
      Which is why I love credit unions. I roll with multiple checking accounts at no cost. It makes giving out ACH details less iffy ;)
      - 7thzero 3y ago
        Same here. I think of this approach as a form of "financial firewalling"
      - salad-tycoon 3y ago
        I’m pretty terrible at this stuff but just got into a couple of CU and capital one, I’m branching out. Help me understand, you have one checking account for one recurrent bill and then manually make sure that checking account has enough balance to cover that one recurring bill every month? That way nobody can drain your main funds, right? But what if there’s a big charge then you would be overdrafted? I also saw qube recommended here on another thread as a simple way to make and close accounts easily (I think that’s the idea). Unrelated, I like the extra protection credit cards give and the extra warranty and theft clauses. Hope visa and MC can get their act together.
paxys 3y ago
The plan is $75 in big bold letters on the website and every other bit of marketing material, but I have to pay $85 if I want to use a credit card, or a prepaid debit card, or Apple/Google pay, or mail a check, or go to the store and pay cash. Why is this not a clear case of false advertising?
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > Why is this not a clear case of false advertising? Because it's actually available for $75. Suppose they ran the same ad and didn't accept any of those other payment methods at all.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y ago
    The unusual requirements to actually pay 75 are not explicitly defined anywhere that I’ve found and I’ve read almost all the fine print if not all of it. This is plainly false advertising. If I go to a grocery store and everything is labeled one price but I get charged 10% more because I’m paying with a card and the only notice is a little sign hanging near the bathrooms down a disgusting hallway no guest goes down, then the bad faith checkbox notice posting is prima facie evidence of intent to defraud. This could be successfully prosecuted under federal wire fraud statutes, considering the litany of more tenuous precedent thanks to our war on drugs, if anyone with real power in this country had a spine or belief in justice.
- Damogran6 3y ago
  Because politically, there's been zero interest in actually enforcing the law where large companies making money are concerned.
  - downrightmike 3y ago
    In fact we printed 20% of all money ever printed because they couldn't go two weeks without normal cash inflow. Edit: This was just in 2020, and is true, doesn't matter if you don't like it. We'll all be paying higher taxes now forever for it. And the value of the currency will devalue to the point where it is easier to payback, because that's what inflation does.
lvspiff 3y ago
I had the notice from t-mobile however every time i went to change my autopay settings from a CC i was presented a page saying "not available at this time". I then get to a screen where i updated debit and bank and marked it as "default" but come to find i didnt find the hidden box to migrate over to autopay. I still dont know where that it. i got stuck with the $5 hit this month.
NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
I have been extremely satisfied with the service from my MVNO. I am subscribed to the bottom-tier plan, with 500MiB/mo of data. I currently pay the bill monthly through electronic BillPay. If I ever go over my data cap in a month, I will be automatically upgraded to the next tier plan. Here's the catch: my current plan is grandfathered, and no longer available to switch back. Once I "accidentally" upgrade, I'll be stuck there. No big deal, right? It's another $5/mo. Well, guess how much the AutoPay discount is?
- paxys 3y ago
  What MVNO gives you 500 GiB/mo of data?
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    Er, sorry, MiB.
    - paxys 3y ago
      Yeah, thought so. I'd personally go through that in an hour. MVNOs are great but only if you barely use the service and don't care about getting throttled at peak times.
      - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
        My usage patterns are quite miserly. I rarely go out, perhaps once a week. When I do, if I feel like I need constant connectivity, then I activate Battery Saver and Data Saver first, then Mobile Data. Basically I only use text-based web pages while I'm out and about. No streaming audio or video or downloads. I suppose there's not a lot going on in the background polling, either. Of course I hop back on WiFi wherever possible, my ISP makes that easy. I've been doing this routine for at least a year, and I have warnings set when I'm up around 480MiB. I've never gotten a cap warning, although I've had a few warnings that "Chrome has used more data than usual!"
maerF0x0 3y ago
Mint mobile has been 100% good to me over the years, save for the rare surprising lack of network (I found a spot in the middle of a city that I get 0 coverage shockingly). I'd recommend them to everyone, but they've been sold to T-Mobile and I'm skeptical it won't be broken soon enough. But for $180 a year I was getting 5GB data, unlimited voice+text. I also spent about $20 a year on roaming extras when I'd go to Canada for a couple weeks. GoogleFi was probably my best experience when on android, but they didn't support iOS and their fee was notably higher than mint too. ($65 a month iirc?). GoogleFi was unlimited, better coverage, unlimited usage in Canada (my main roaming on home sim card) , and includes a bunch of extras like storage, youtube etc.
- dahfizz 3y ago
  I am also a happy long-term mint customer. I hope T-Mobile treats us well
- malfist 3y ago
  You've made multiple comments on this post about how great mint mobile is. Why?
  - prepend 3y ago
    Perhaps they like mint and it’s relevant because mint doesn’t do any extra fees to use the most common form of payment.
  - neogodless 3y ago
    The person you're replying to made 2 comments on this post, and only one of them mentioned Mint Mobile. Try Ctrl+F to search for their username.
  - maerF0x0 3y ago
    Edit you're correct, I fixed the posts :)
- judge2020 3y ago
  Google FI is a bit more expensive since their QCI level is the same as T-Mobile's first-party premium plans, so theoretically you won't be slowed down if the T-Mobile tower handling your data is overloaded, while T-Mobile "Essentials" and other MVNOs using T-Mobile will be slowed down. https://fixverizon.com/2023/01/12/qci-prioritization-for-carriers-and-their-mvnos/ https://fixverizon.com/2023/01/12/qci-prioritization-for-car...
maerF0x0 3y ago
I actually agree with this change, creditcards in the 2020s is just racketeering. Why? Because afaik almost all transactions are digital now, and they charge an absurd rake for every transaction they process. A 3% transaction fee seems like little until you realize the profit margin is only 6% ... why should they get 50% of the spoils? Companies like Amzn, costco, HEB, and now cell carriers are all moving towards their own cards which allows them to greatly reduce the fees incurred. CC fees and corruption is one argument in favor of CBDC. (granted there are plenty of reasons against)
- gumby 3y ago
  The credit card gives me protection from overcharging and other shenanigans that a bank draft does not.
  - yomlica8 3y ago
    Yeah, I don't like any 'pull' bill payment at all. I know exactly why they do it. It is a lot harder to get the money back after the screw you than it is to bail on a changed deal.
- kevincox 3y ago
  I completely agree. The cost of credit cards should be passed to the consumer. Right now everything I buy is effectively 3-5% more expensive to cover the credit card fees. (Ok, maybe only 1-3% because handing cash costs money too, but that doesn't change the big picture.) However if I want to oppose this I need to stop using my credit card, but my credit card gives me 2% back. So if I chose not to participate I lose money.
- paxys 3y ago
  So if their problem is with credit cards can I pay them cash instead? Or mail a check? Enter a prepaid debit card? Do a wire transfer? Do they accept Venmo/Zelle/Cashapp/Paypal? Bitcoin? Nope, they want to charge the same fee for using literally any of these methods. What they really want is to get your bank account number so they can charge you whatever they want and you have no way to dispute it.
flerchin 3y ago
Cell and cable companies are notorious for screwing up the bill (whoops sorry). Autopay in any form, but especially linked directly to your bank account, is just asking to be robbed.
- 23B1 3y ago
  Underrated comment. I'll never pay direct from my accounts because these companies will 'accidentally' drain an account and put people in an awful position, whereas a credit card company will happily tell a company like Verizon to eff off. It's all good, these rent-seeking griftcos are making it easier and easier to fire them by the day.
- rattlesnakedave 3y ago
  At least with credit cards you have some form of recourse. ACH/Debit cards you're totally hosed.
  - orev 3y ago
    And that insurance is paid for by higher credit card fees to the merchant, which is why they want to move people away from credit cards.
CalChris 3y ago
Wireless carriers are price differentiating between credit cards which cost them more to process and debit cards or ACH transactions which cost them less. This is a good thing. It will take you all of five minutes to change your autopay from your credit card to your debit card.
- rattlesnakedave 3y ago
  They shouldn't be able to set arbitrary fees on different payment methods. They should also not be allowed to advertise an "autopay discount" if they price discriminate different payment methods. It should be a "give us your bank account information discount" or something.
latchkey 3y ago
Switched from Verizon prepaid to Visible recently. Given that it is the same company, it feels like it is Verizon 2.0 and this is their migration path away from the legacy systems. The onboarding process was really smooth. One monthly price, including taxes. You can also find a $10/mo discount on their top tier plan online. I haven't noticed any difference in service quality at all, nor would I expect much.
- lprd 3y ago
  What about at peak times? Any noticeable dips? I tried Visible in the past and wasn’t too thrilled with Verizon’s coverage in my city. Might need to revisit since I’m really tired of paying $85+ for a plan. My biggest priority is data coverage.
  - latchkey 3y ago
    Yea, of course any plan is coverage dependent. My area is pretty well covered and I haven't noticed any issues in that regard. I was already on Verizon and Visible is the same network, so nothing should change there. But, I'm sure that I'll somewhere at some point and not have great coverage. Par for the course. The only thing I can suggest is multiple providers if that is your case. As for peak times, I haven't noticed anything bad there either. My guess is that while Visible is a MVNO, it is the main MVNO for Verizon. As I mentioned, I get the strong feeling they are Verizon v2, it wouldn't be in their best interest to provide too bad of service.
- wildrhythms 3y ago
  Visible is still run by Verizon, so what's the catch?

78 points by mfiguiere 3y ago

helf 3y ago

[dead]

orev 3y ago

I suspect this is due (at least partially) to the relatively recent rise in credit card rewards. Many more cards than in the past are giving rewards, and that requires increasing the fees charged during the transaction. MC and Visa recently announced a fee increase, which tracks with this trend. In response, vendors are saying enough is enough and pushing customers away from credit cards.

singleshot_ 3y ago

> Like credit cards, ACH has fraud protections and payment-dispute procedures. “Similar to the Space Shuttle, my office has chairs.”

tristor 3y ago
Yeah, there’s effectively no protection on ACH if a giant corporation decides to screw you or makes a mistake.

kylehotchkiss 3y ago

AT&T charges me a different amount every month as it is. I can’t figure out why, the bill is too stupid complicated, but the amount varies between 10-20 month to month. Why would I ever trust those people to ACH my account an undefined amount each month? If the bill amount was actually fixed and predictable, sure. But that’ll never be the case. I really hope banks charge the carriers for bounced checks. That’s not something a consumer should have to do if their account is $3 too low because they funded the account for whatever the bill was last month.

fred_is_fred 3y ago

I checked my T-Mo today. I have autopay and it's still a CC and T-mo says still eligible for the discount, yet this article says it was rolled out in June/July. I wonder if I'm on an older plan that isn't affected by this?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

r00fus 3y ago

I use direct debit authorizations on all sorts of monthly payments to credit cards, telecom, etc and it's all good. Just because they have a debit authorization doesn't mean you can't contest or reverse the charge. That they aren't up-front on pricing is unfortunate (and somewhat unethical) but it seems the hidden lede here is how usurious the CC networks charges are. It's really time we had a modern payment network in the US (like Europe, India, Brazil, etc etc) so we didn't have to pay the CC tax.

tristor 3y ago

Meanwhile, I’ve learned the hard way to NEVER do ACH direct payment for recurring charges because it’s nearly impossible to successfully resolve a dispute and you give up all control of access to your funds to unaccountable corporate giants. I kept my credit card autopay and paid the extra, because the credit card provides some semblance of actual consumer protection.

dickersnoodle 3y ago

No.

modus__ponens 3y ago

https://archive.is/dAO6o https://archive.is/dAO6o

FrameworkFred 3y ago
ha, you got me...never-ending captcha
- willcipriano 3y ago
  “Like others in the industry, we are making this change in response to credit-card fees,”
  - Arrath 3y ago
    What is driving the increases in fees from the credit card companies? Greed? Using the fees to fund ever more enticing rewards programs to attract customers?
    - jondwillis 3y ago
      Probably a combination of Greed, cost disease, and risk-free rates rising?
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      What are you going to do, NOT accept card payments? The sky high rates in the US is because fuck you, deal with it. It's pretty explicitly wealth transfer from poor people to credit card companies, with a small kickback to well off credit card users to make it popular and hard to regulate.
      - tracker1 3y ago
        You don't have to be well off to not buy more than you can afford. That said, I'd be perfectly fine if CCs disappeared altogether, and limited people to only debit accounts.

Zandikar 3y ago

This is one thing that privacy.com is great for. If it weren't for these companies no-credit card requirement, you could also use something like Capital Ones virtual credit card, and those aren't the only two offering such services. Privacy's is especially good imo as you can set spending limits and easily (un)pause cards and create new ones pretty easily. Even outside of trying to take advantage of auto-pay discounts, it's just a nice piece of mind to be able to be a hard check on an accounting "Oopsie", mine or theres. That said, not a fan of this overreach and general disregard for people's money. Yes, most people are terrible at managing their money, but hidden fees, auto pay not auto happening on the scheduled date, and general corporate greed, disrespect and distrust certainly doesn't help either.

byteknight 3y ago
I love the native integration with 1Pass
proamdev123 3y ago
I’m interested in using privacy.com, but I’m concerned that providing THEM access access to my accounts creates even more vulnerability. Fo they have any security protections that prevent them from draining my accounts (either accidentally or via hacker)?
- fourg 3y ago
  You could create a new checking account with your same bank that you give privacy.com access to and keep a low balance on. Still involves making sure it has enough to cover your privacy.com virtual card expenses.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
DrBenCarson 3y ago
Privacy cards don't qualify for the debit card discount with T-Mobile. I suspect it's the same for all the ISPs.

morninglight 3y ago

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/why-your-wireless-carrier-wants-to-access-your-bank-account/ar-AA1fZCBN https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/why-your-wir...

everybodyknows 3y ago
> Wireless carriers want to give you a monthly discount. You just have to pay them with your bank account. Not quite. The notice I got from T-mobile was that my bill would go up by $5 unless I handed over my bank account info for the direct charge.

JEDI-HACKER 3y ago

[dead]

jondwillis 3y ago

Currently I am using prepaid debit cards (I’m sure it will only be a short time until this is prevented) to pay my T-mobile bill.

kccqzy 3y ago

A lot of credit cards offer something like "lost phone protection" whereby you get reimbursed if you lost your phone, but only when you pay the phone bill using that credit card. Such insurance must be expensive and I suppose that's why fees are increasing.

retrocryptid 3y ago

Because that's where the money is.

tomtai 3y ago

This title feels misleading somehow. I was expecting some sort of access that let them see your transactions like an open banking affordability check or to get spending habit data...but it's just a direct debit? News came out today that MasterCard and Visa are upping their CC fees so the reasoning from the carriers makes sense. If anything it's good they're passing the saving on?

alarsama 3y ago

It is not clear in the article who will keep debit cards as accepted forms of payment. At least for mobile providers who will still offer debit for payment in the future, you do not have to provide your bank account number. Though you do lose out on credit card benefits like points/rewards and the ease of disputing charges. For those whose mobile providers will switch to only using bank account numbers for payments and want the ability to be able to block access to the account if that account number is somehow compromised, I would recommend looking into Qube Money [1]. Among many other awesome functions (like being a great budgeting tool), it allows you to create different “Qubes” (pronounced “cubes”, think digital cash envelope) that you place money in and allocate towards different bills. It’s similar to Privacy and Capital One’s virtual credit cards in that each Qube is assigned a unique debit card number. More importantly, each Qube gets its own bank account number. Closing a Qube and opening a new Qube with a new bank account number is easy. There are more great features, but I figure this was most relevant to the topic. [1] https://qubemoney.com/ https://qubemoney.com/

ryaneager 3y ago
I second the Qube recommendation. After Simple died I was looking for a good replacement, Qube more then fits the bill and even has features I wish Simple did.

atomicfiredoll 3y ago

With the number of breaches T-Mobile has had (as mentioned in the article,) there's no reason to trust a company like that any more personal information than strictly necessary. If they were to to and corner people in to giving more, it sounds like a good reason to stop doing business with them.

isykt 3y ago

> About 85% of American consumers with bank accounts are comfortable making recurring payments using those accounts, said John Anderson. He is head of product at Plaid, a fintech company that links vendors with customers’ bank accounts. Plaid, who got sued for abusing their access to people’s bank info. Fuck that guy.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
I, frankly, do not understand why Plaid doesn't work more like Privacy.com. If a company must have the ridiculous stance that they need to access my bank account, and Plaid is linking them together, why can't Plaid have a popup saying, "Company X will access your Bank account. Company X may not withdraw, at any time, more than $25 or <fill in the blank amount here> without your consent on a monthly basis. You may need to fill this form again if you ever purchase or subscribe to anything requiring greater amounts of money transferred. < OK > < Cancel >" Someone might say, "that would make Plaid require a money transmitter license" or something similar. I would argue, why should Plaid not need a money transmitter license for literally handling bank account login information?
- joecot 3y ago
  Privacy.com works like it does, giving consumer protections, because the consumer with the bank account is the customer. Plaid works like it does, letting companies take your money with no restrictions, because the company is the customer, and the consumer with the bank account is the product. If a company offers you a service and that service is free, you are not the customer, you are the product.

dtansek 3y ago

What the hell good is a 2%-3% cash back on a credit card when they're fucking you for 26% of your balance every month? When I was in 10th grade in 1968, our Social Studies teacher told us that any interest rate over 8% was a violation of the usury laws, to protect the public from loansharking. So when did loansharking become legal with these credit cards?

bubblematrix 3y ago

It has nothing to do with credit card processing fees, or data-mining. Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile want you to connect a bank account to further tie an identity to a phone number / account. This comes at request of the government. They do not want anonymous cellular users.

CatWChainsaw 3y ago
This should be further up. It's painfully obvious.

lelandfe 3y ago

Any clue if this affects prepaid customers as well? I really have to stay on my toes with these carriers, my bill always creeps up over the years.

jabroni_salad 3y ago
I can't speak for at&t but tmobile prepaid does not get an autopay discount at all so they are technically not affected.
leesalminen 3y ago
We switched to US Mobile prepaid data pools a few months ago. $9/line + $2/GB per month. I found some code online [0] that runs every hour and purchases an additional GB if my remaining amount falls below a threshold. It’s been working great for us. We dropped our bill for 2 lines from ~$100/mo to $21/mo. [0] https://github.com/dbrand666/usmobile-lifeguard/tree/main https://github.com/dbrand666/usmobile-lifeguard/tree/main
- judge2020 3y ago
  Although your service might be slowed down for people paying more via first-party. This is an informative post about the QCI: https://fixverizon.com/2023/01/12/qci-prioritization-for-carriers-and-their-mvnos/ https://fixverizon.com/2023/01/12/qci-prioritization-for-car... if you don't feel like your service is slow during the times you use your wireless, then there's no harm in using MVNOs.
  - leesalminen 3y ago
    Yes, of course there can be QCI stuff happening. We don't go to big events where you'd typically run into de-prioritization, but of course, YMMV.
- dylan604 3y ago
  ($9 x 2) => $21 - $18 = $3. You can pay $2/GB per month, and they let you buy .5GB? That's crazy they don't force whole increments. Also, you're only using 3GB per month of data? That's crazy too!

pgm8705 3y ago

Seems like ATT may have screwed this up even worse. They seemingly dropped my autopay discount to $5 from $10 claiming that I am using a credit card, when I'm using my checking account as I always have for the past 10 years.

Bilal_io 3y ago
Xfinity did the same. I had to switch from credit card to bank account to keep my $10 discount. If I recall correctly the deadline was July 31st
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  In these United States, it's rather perilous to use your direct ACH bank account. The protections around this method are so minimal, hope you'll never have a dispute with a creditor. Which is exactly why ACH is the cheapest/most discounted method.
  - camhenlin 3y ago
    Yep, not worth the additional discount for me. I'm not giving AT&T my bank account information or any authorizations around it
  - delfinom 3y ago
    Which is why I love credit unions. I roll with multiple checking accounts at no cost. It makes giving out ACH details less iffy ;)
    - 7thzero 3y ago
      Same here. I think of this approach as a form of "financial firewalling"
    - salad-tycoon 3y ago
      I’m pretty terrible at this stuff but just got into a couple of CU and capital one, I’m branching out. Help me understand, you have one checking account for one recurrent bill and then manually make sure that checking account has enough balance to cover that one recurring bill every month? That way nobody can drain your main funds, right? But what if there’s a big charge then you would be overdrafted? I also saw qube recommended here on another thread as a simple way to make and close accounts easily (I think that’s the idea). Unrelated, I like the extra protection credit cards give and the extra warranty and theft clauses. Hope visa and MC can get their act together.

paxys 3y ago

The plan is $75 in big bold letters on the website and every other bit of marketing material, but I have to pay $85 if I want to use a credit card, or a prepaid debit card, or Apple/Google pay, or mail a check, or go to the store and pay cash. Why is this not a clear case of false advertising?

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> Why is this not a clear case of false advertising? Because it's actually available for $75. Suppose they ran the same ad and didn't accept any of those other payment methods at all.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y ago
  The unusual requirements to actually pay 75 are not explicitly defined anywhere that I’ve found and I’ve read almost all the fine print if not all of it. This is plainly false advertising. If I go to a grocery store and everything is labeled one price but I get charged 10% more because I’m paying with a card and the only notice is a little sign hanging near the bathrooms down a disgusting hallway no guest goes down, then the bad faith checkbox notice posting is prima facie evidence of intent to defraud. This could be successfully prosecuted under federal wire fraud statutes, considering the litany of more tenuous precedent thanks to our war on drugs, if anyone with real power in this country had a spine or belief in justice.
Damogran6 3y ago
Because politically, there's been zero interest in actually enforcing the law where large companies making money are concerned.
- downrightmike 3y ago
  In fact we printed 20% of all money ever printed because they couldn't go two weeks without normal cash inflow. Edit: This was just in 2020, and is true, doesn't matter if you don't like it. We'll all be paying higher taxes now forever for it. And the value of the currency will devalue to the point where it is easier to payback, because that's what inflation does.

lvspiff 3y ago

I had the notice from t-mobile however every time i went to change my autopay settings from a CC i was presented a page saying "not available at this time". I then get to a screen where i updated debit and bank and marked it as "default" but come to find i didnt find the hidden box to migrate over to autopay. I still dont know where that it. i got stuck with the $5 hit this month.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago

I have been extremely satisfied with the service from my MVNO. I am subscribed to the bottom-tier plan, with 500MiB/mo of data. I currently pay the bill monthly through electronic BillPay. If I ever go over my data cap in a month, I will be automatically upgraded to the next tier plan. Here's the catch: my current plan is grandfathered, and no longer available to switch back. Once I "accidentally" upgrade, I'll be stuck there. No big deal, right? It's another $5/mo. Well, guess how much the AutoPay discount is?

paxys 3y ago
What MVNO gives you 500 GiB/mo of data?
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  Er, sorry, MiB.
  - paxys 3y ago
    Yeah, thought so. I'd personally go through that in an hour. MVNOs are great but only if you barely use the service and don't care about getting throttled at peak times.
    - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
      My usage patterns are quite miserly. I rarely go out, perhaps once a week. When I do, if I feel like I need constant connectivity, then I activate Battery Saver and Data Saver first, then Mobile Data. Basically I only use text-based web pages while I'm out and about. No streaming audio or video or downloads. I suppose there's not a lot going on in the background polling, either. Of course I hop back on WiFi wherever possible, my ISP makes that easy. I've been doing this routine for at least a year, and I have warnings set when I'm up around 480MiB. I've never gotten a cap warning, although I've had a few warnings that "Chrome has used more data than usual!"

maerF0x0 3y ago

Mint mobile has been 100% good to me over the years, save for the rare surprising lack of network (I found a spot in the middle of a city that I get 0 coverage shockingly). I'd recommend them to everyone, but they've been sold to T-Mobile and I'm skeptical it won't be broken soon enough. But for $180 a year I was getting 5GB data, unlimited voice+text. I also spent about $20 a year on roaming extras when I'd go to Canada for a couple weeks. GoogleFi was probably my best experience when on android, but they didn't support iOS and their fee was notably higher than mint too. ($65 a month iirc?). GoogleFi was unlimited, better coverage, unlimited usage in Canada (my main roaming on home sim card) , and includes a bunch of extras like storage, youtube etc.

dahfizz 3y ago
I am also a happy long-term mint customer. I hope T-Mobile treats us well
malfist 3y ago
You've made multiple comments on this post about how great mint mobile is. Why?
- prepend 3y ago
  Perhaps they like mint and it’s relevant because mint doesn’t do any extra fees to use the most common form of payment.
- neogodless 3y ago
  The person you're replying to made 2 comments on this post, and only one of them mentioned Mint Mobile. Try Ctrl+F to search for their username.
- maerF0x0 3y ago
  Edit you're correct, I fixed the posts :)
judge2020 3y ago
Google FI is a bit more expensive since their QCI level is the same as T-Mobile's first-party premium plans, so theoretically you won't be slowed down if the T-Mobile tower handling your data is overloaded, while T-Mobile "Essentials" and other MVNOs using T-Mobile will be slowed down. https://fixverizon.com/2023/01/12/qci-prioritization-for-carriers-and-their-mvnos/ https://fixverizon.com/2023/01/12/qci-prioritization-for-car...

maerF0x0 3y ago

I actually agree with this change, creditcards in the 2020s is just racketeering. Why? Because afaik almost all transactions are digital now, and they charge an absurd rake for every transaction they process. A 3% transaction fee seems like little until you realize the profit margin is only 6% ... why should they get 50% of the spoils? Companies like Amzn, costco, HEB, and now cell carriers are all moving towards their own cards which allows them to greatly reduce the fees incurred. CC fees and corruption is one argument in favor of CBDC. (granted there are plenty of reasons against)

gumby 3y ago
The credit card gives me protection from overcharging and other shenanigans that a bank draft does not.
- yomlica8 3y ago
  Yeah, I don't like any 'pull' bill payment at all. I know exactly why they do it. It is a lot harder to get the money back after the screw you than it is to bail on a changed deal.
kevincox 3y ago
I completely agree. The cost of credit cards should be passed to the consumer. Right now everything I buy is effectively 3-5% more expensive to cover the credit card fees. (Ok, maybe only 1-3% because handing cash costs money too, but that doesn't change the big picture.) However if I want to oppose this I need to stop using my credit card, but my credit card gives me 2% back. So if I chose not to participate I lose money.
paxys 3y ago
So if their problem is with credit cards can I pay them cash instead? Or mail a check? Enter a prepaid debit card? Do a wire transfer? Do they accept Venmo/Zelle/Cashapp/Paypal? Bitcoin? Nope, they want to charge the same fee for using literally any of these methods. What they really want is to get your bank account number so they can charge you whatever they want and you have no way to dispute it.

flerchin 3y ago

Cell and cable companies are notorious for screwing up the bill (whoops sorry). Autopay in any form, but especially linked directly to your bank account, is just asking to be robbed.

23B1 3y ago
Underrated comment. I'll never pay direct from my accounts because these companies will 'accidentally' drain an account and put people in an awful position, whereas a credit card company will happily tell a company like Verizon to eff off. It's all good, these rent-seeking griftcos are making it easier and easier to fire them by the day.
rattlesnakedave 3y ago
At least with credit cards you have some form of recourse. ACH/Debit cards you're totally hosed.
- orev 3y ago
  And that insurance is paid for by higher credit card fees to the merchant, which is why they want to move people away from credit cards.

CalChris 3y ago

Wireless carriers are price differentiating between credit cards which cost them more to process and debit cards or ACH transactions which cost them less. This is a good thing. It will take you all of five minutes to change your autopay from your credit card to your debit card.

rattlesnakedave 3y ago
They shouldn't be able to set arbitrary fees on different payment methods. They should also not be allowed to advertise an "autopay discount" if they price discriminate different payment methods. It should be a "give us your bank account information discount" or something.

latchkey 3y ago

Switched from Verizon prepaid to Visible recently. Given that it is the same company, it feels like it is Verizon 2.0 and this is their migration path away from the legacy systems. The onboarding process was really smooth. One monthly price, including taxes. You can also find a $10/mo discount on their top tier plan online. I haven't noticed any difference in service quality at all, nor would I expect much.

lprd 3y ago
What about at peak times? Any noticeable dips? I tried Visible in the past and wasn’t too thrilled with Verizon’s coverage in my city. Might need to revisit since I’m really tired of paying $85+ for a plan. My biggest priority is data coverage.
- latchkey 3y ago
  Yea, of course any plan is coverage dependent. My area is pretty well covered and I haven't noticed any issues in that regard. I was already on Verizon and Visible is the same network, so nothing should change there. But, I'm sure that I'll somewhere at some point and not have great coverage. Par for the course. The only thing I can suggest is multiple providers if that is your case. As for peak times, I haven't noticed anything bad there either. My guess is that while Visible is a MVNO, it is the main MVNO for Verizon. As I mentioned, I get the strong feeling they are Verizon v2, it wouldn't be in their best interest to provide too bad of service.
wildrhythms 3y ago
Visible is still run by Verizon, so what's the catch?