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Funny to see this pop up again (I'm the author). The year is now 2025 and I still use Chase as a personal bank and I'm now discovering new funny banking behavio

Funny to see this pop up again (I'm the author). The year is now 2025 and I still use Chase as a personal bank and I'm now discovering new funny banking behaviors. I'll use this as a chance to share. :) My company had an exit, I did well financially. This is not a secret. I'm extremely privileged and thankful for it. But as a result of this, I've used a private bank (or mix) for a number of years to store the vast majority of my financial assets (over 99.99% of all assets, I just did the math). An unfortunate property of private banks is they make it hard to do retail-like banking behaviors: depositing a quick check, pulling cash from an ATM, but ironically most importantly Zelle. As such, I've kept my Chase personal accounts and use them as my retail bank: there are Chase branches everywhere, its easy to get to an ATM, and they give me easy access to Zelle! I didn't choose Chase specifically, I've just always used Chase for personal banking since I was in high school so I just kept using them for this. Anyways, I tend to use my Chase account to pay a bunch of bills, just because it's more convenient (Zelle!). I have 3 active home construction projects, plus pay my CC, plus pretty much all other typical expenses (utilities, car payments, insurance, etc.). But I float the money in/out of the account as necessary to cover these. We do accounting of all these expenses at the private bank side, so its all tracked, but it settles within the last 24-48 hours via Chase. Otherwise, I keep my Chase balance no more than a few thousand dollars. This really wigs out automated systems at Chase. I get phone calls all the time (like, literally multiple times per week) saying "we noticed a large transfer into your account, we can help!" And I cheekily respond "refresh, it's back to zero!" And they're just confused. To be fair, I've explained the situation in detail to multiple people multiple times but it isn't clicking, so they keep calling me. I now ignore the phone calls. Hope I don't regret that later lol.

JoshTriplett 1y ago
> I've used a private bank (or mix) for a number of years to store the vast majority of my financial assets Which one(s)?
bigstrat2003 1y ago
I read the whole story and I'm still struggling to understand what you did wrong here. You indicated many times "I know, that was a mistake" (or similar phrases), but each time I was baffled because I saw no mistakes. It was your business, and you had every right to move around the funds within your account. What gives anyone at Chase the right to say diddly squat about how you manage your business' finances?
- gspencley 1y ago
  I don't think he was trying to imply that he did anything wrong. He was admitting the ignorance regarding how banks and banking work... plus acknowledging that a lot of readers will have had experiences that would make them think "Oh you young fool." In 2022 I lost my business banking and had to shut down a business that I owned for 20 years because it was related to the adult entertainment industry and, despite being completely legal and aboveboard, a single wire transfer that got a little bit of scrutiny resulted in them asking questions about what we did and, knowing that I was doing absolutely nothing wrong, I answered all of their questions truthfully and completely. A few months later I was told that we "fell outside of their risk appetite", our accounts were being closed... and for two months we searched for any bank or credit union in Canada but none would take us. A lot of industry insiders had that exact reaction: "Are you stupid? Did you not know?! You NEVER admit that you're in this industry you moron!" etc. We even had a very sympathetic branch manager suggest that we re-incorporate, re-brand and hide what we do (a front, in other words). I couldn't do that. And I mean, we had no issues for 20 years. 10 of which were banking as a corporation (was personal accounts before that since we ran it as a proprietorship) and I thought that being in Canada we were pretty progressive. No one I told on a personal or professional level had ever cared. So why would the banks? We were lawful so why should they care?
  - sneak 1y ago
    Chargebacks. Tons of people buy porn on a card then later deny it when their SO finds the bill. The industry is rife with this kind of fraud, and chargebacks represent tangible risk of financial loss, so banks just blanket ban working with certain industries. People who sell precious metal jewelry for credit card payments are another.
    - edm0nd 1y ago
      That's why adult industry merchants are a thing, like CCBill. They have been around for decades and its kind of a non-issue. Can still accept Visa, MC, AMEX, etc. source: used to run porn websites back in the early 00s.
chao- 1y ago
The fraud story is interesting, but something I had hoped would be addressed by the end of the post, wasn't. You wrote: >Someone out there is probably mentally screaming at me "you fool!" at this point. With hindsight, I agree... I was hoping the piece would end with what you would do now (or what should you have done) when Alex called you. Did I fail to understand something in the piece, and simply staying on the phone with Alex would have somehow avoided the fraud situation down the line? It doesn't seem so? If I were to get such a call, today, my instincts would be to engage in the same "I'm fine" get-off-the-phone-fast actions. What is the alternative?
- trillic 1y ago
  I would imagine this phone call's primary goal is trying to sell you higher margin financial products/services.
  - chao- 1y ago
    The way you phrase that, it sounds like these services are more advantageous to the bank, but possibly not to the account holder? If so, that goes against the tone of the article, where Mitchell implies (I think?) that he would have benefited more from speaking to Alex than the other way around.
    - aetherson 1y ago
      Not really, these are probably mutually beneficial. Having $35 million sitting in a cash account is, as Mitchell recalls in the article, pretty bad -- you're forgoing a lot of benefit for yourself. What the bank is probably mainly trying to do is not "extract a higher margin" from you, but rather to "maintain your business." While Alex might not have recognized that a startup that took in a bunch of financing and plopped it into a cash account and then didn't do much with it is a customer who might disappear at any time, on some institutional level the bank is aware of it. They want you to regard them not as an interchangeable place that money sits, but as a valued partner who helps you do things with your money, and as a result you feel like it would both be a risk and a bother to extract all your money and go to some other bank.
buckle8017 1y ago
I'm curious what value you get from the private banking side?
hankthecat 1y ago
This is somewhat funny to read because if you were a JPM(chase) Private Bank client you wouldn't have any of these issues (zelle works, you can deposit checks, pull from any/all ATMs).
- gnerd00 1y ago
  yeah agree -- it seems like a mistake to use retail banking for real business amounts of money and transactions. I suspect that young adults focused on a fast-moving tech world really did not live the hard lessons of the past with business restrictions. On the one hand, it is a new world now (no one would have come up with the kind of money referenced here, with Mom and Pop business pace); on the other hand, maybe you really are trying to load a trucking worth of transactions onto the top of your used Honda Accord, so to speak.
- CamperBob2 1y ago
  Or just plain Schwab One. Don't know about Zelle but ATMs and checks work just fine. (Better than fine, in fact, in that they refund your ATM fees.)
  - astrange 1y ago
    If you're a private bank client how much do you care about ATM fees?
    - hankthecat 1y ago
      Much more than you would think
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - ycombobreaker 1y ago
    Chase Private Client refunds ATM fees too. It's especially nice if you live in a location where a substantial fraction of Chase ATMs and branches are shuttered!
lotsofpulp 1y ago
I move $10k+ in and out of BoA/Merrill every week and I’ve never received an alert or phone call. I would have stopped using Chase a long time ago if they were that annoying. I basically never want to talk to anyone at any bank, like any other utility.
meistertigran 1y ago
What I took from this is that you have a really engaging writing style. Was interesting to read from start to finish.
welder 1y ago
You should start a business for your construction projects, then use a business bank like Mercury instead of Chase and get all the nice business features.
- mkl 1y ago
  What are the nice business features you're referring to?
  - welder 1y ago
    Paying vendors
dpkirchner 1y ago
At what point does it make sense to sign up for private banking? I've been happy with our credit union for day to day stuff but we don't keep a ton of cash around (most of our money is in a brokerage account (ETFs)). Is private banking just for folks that want to have a lot of cash around but not have it in an easy to use account?
- 0x3f 1y ago
  When you need the specialized services they offer, e.g. Lombard loans, unique mortgage products.
- sneak 1y ago
  When you are managing a $500k-1M+ liquid net worth. I think Chase starts “Private Client” at $250 or $300k. (Don’t use Chase, however.) It might in some cases be more trouble than it is worth, if you are right around the threshold. A “normal” retail checking account and a brokerage account at another institution with the ability to transfer between them is probably sufficient for most. If you need loans or mortgages or other stuff, it might be worth the hassle (and phone calls).
  - mitchellh 1y ago
    Private client isn’t private bank. They name is like that so you think it is though. :) private banking services start around $10 to $15M with higher tiers as you go. (Not trying to diminish private client services. But they’re night and day different services.)
    - sho 1y ago
      > start around $10 to $15M That sounds high to me. Maybe American banks? The smaller Swiss banks will start taking your calls at about $2m.
      - mitchellh 1y ago
        Maybe. All the retail banks I know don’t start true private banking until there. For example, here is an article about JPM requiring 10 back in 2016 (it’s higher now): https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-j-p-morgan-9-million-in-assets-isnt-rich-enough-1458340690 https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-j-p-morgan-9-million-in-asse... The non retail banks that have a good reputation are even higher. They don’t outwardly advertise their minimums because “it depends.” For example if you’re an up and comer in your field where it seems like you’re LIKELY to one day hit the mins, they’ll start the relationship early.
attentive 1y ago
What's the point of a private bank or do you mean investement/brokerage?
- fastball 1y ago
  https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/privatebanking.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/privatebanking.asp
papa-ja 1y ago
[dead]
Aloha 1y ago
Chase has a decent private banking operation, which you might consider (so does BofA, and most large banks) which can give you the best of both worlds.
thrown-0825 1y ago
why does zelle even exist? every time i have to interact financially with americans its always focused around these random transfer apps like zelle, cash, venmo etc.
- jcattle 1y ago
  The US tends not to regulate what kind of services a bank has to offer to its customers. A bank doesn't need to offer any kind of transfer services to be a bank. As far as I know you can legally be a bank and only offer cash deposit and withdrawal. The EU has PSD (Payment Services Directive) and PSD2 which stipulate what kind of transfers have to be possible to customers. Because of that the US just has a bunch of startups which offer services that unify the payment landscape. The alternatives at a bunch of banks is still that you need to write checks.
GJim 1y ago
> private banks is they make it hard to do retail-like banking behaviors > depositing a quick check.....Zelle. Good lord American banking really is in the stone age. I don't think I've seen a cheque in 20 years. As for private banks, in Blighty they all (?) offer 'retail' services that out perform high street offerings. Incidentally, all high street banking is free in the UK. Only private banks tend to charge for their services.
- asib 1y ago
  Yes, it's honestly a joke. Zelle limits the amount you can send per day, starting at $500, so you can't even necessarily pay your rent in one go the first month. With Chase, I don't have the ability to do ACH transfers to accounts I don't own (I hear other banks allow free ACH transfers), so if Zelle limit is too low, my only option would be a paid wire...
mprivat 1y ago
That was an interesting and entertaining read. Well written. Thanks for sharing. It reminds me I do have a bank with physical branches, the digital world made me forget all about that.
insane_dreamer 1y ago
Couldn't find the RSS feed for your writing. Available?
randomsofr 1y ago
Congrats on the success! I’ve had a similar experience since I started moving more money around. My local branch started calling me too. I live in a busy area where lines at the bank can take hours, but now they told me I can just message someone whenever I go and they’ll move me to the front. The other day I was just poking around the investment section of the app to see what kind of rates they offered, and almost immediately I got a call from my personal banker, haha. I actually ended up trying the investment since the returns looked good.

JoshTriplett 1y ago

> I've used a private bank (or mix) for a number of years to store the vast majority of my financial assets Which one(s)?

bigstrat2003 1y ago

I read the whole story and I'm still struggling to understand what you did wrong here. You indicated many times "I know, that was a mistake" (or similar phrases), but each time I was baffled because I saw no mistakes. It was your business, and you had every right to move around the funds within your account. What gives anyone at Chase the right to say diddly squat about how you manage your business' finances?

gspencley 1y ago
I don't think he was trying to imply that he did anything wrong. He was admitting the ignorance regarding how banks and banking work... plus acknowledging that a lot of readers will have had experiences that would make them think "Oh you young fool." In 2022 I lost my business banking and had to shut down a business that I owned for 20 years because it was related to the adult entertainment industry and, despite being completely legal and aboveboard, a single wire transfer that got a little bit of scrutiny resulted in them asking questions about what we did and, knowing that I was doing absolutely nothing wrong, I answered all of their questions truthfully and completely. A few months later I was told that we "fell outside of their risk appetite", our accounts were being closed... and for two months we searched for any bank or credit union in Canada but none would take us. A lot of industry insiders had that exact reaction: "Are you stupid? Did you not know?! You NEVER admit that you're in this industry you moron!" etc. We even had a very sympathetic branch manager suggest that we re-incorporate, re-brand and hide what we do (a front, in other words). I couldn't do that. And I mean, we had no issues for 20 years. 10 of which were banking as a corporation (was personal accounts before that since we ran it as a proprietorship) and I thought that being in Canada we were pretty progressive. No one I told on a personal or professional level had ever cared. So why would the banks? We were lawful so why should they care?
- sneak 1y ago
  Chargebacks. Tons of people buy porn on a card then later deny it when their SO finds the bill. The industry is rife with this kind of fraud, and chargebacks represent tangible risk of financial loss, so banks just blanket ban working with certain industries. People who sell precious metal jewelry for credit card payments are another.
  - edm0nd 1y ago
    That's why adult industry merchants are a thing, like CCBill. They have been around for decades and its kind of a non-issue. Can still accept Visa, MC, AMEX, etc. source: used to run porn websites back in the early 00s.

chao- 1y ago

The fraud story is interesting, but something I had hoped would be addressed by the end of the post, wasn't. You wrote: >Someone out there is probably mentally screaming at me "you fool!" at this point. With hindsight, I agree... I was hoping the piece would end with what you would do now (or what should you have done) when Alex called you. Did I fail to understand something in the piece, and simply staying on the phone with Alex would have somehow avoided the fraud situation down the line? It doesn't seem so? If I were to get such a call, today, my instincts would be to engage in the same "I'm fine" get-off-the-phone-fast actions. What is the alternative?

trillic 1y ago
I would imagine this phone call's primary goal is trying to sell you higher margin financial products/services.
- chao- 1y ago
  The way you phrase that, it sounds like these services are more advantageous to the bank, but possibly not to the account holder? If so, that goes against the tone of the article, where Mitchell implies (I think?) that he would have benefited more from speaking to Alex than the other way around.
  - aetherson 1y ago
    Not really, these are probably mutually beneficial. Having $35 million sitting in a cash account is, as Mitchell recalls in the article, pretty bad -- you're forgoing a lot of benefit for yourself. What the bank is probably mainly trying to do is not "extract a higher margin" from you, but rather to "maintain your business." While Alex might not have recognized that a startup that took in a bunch of financing and plopped it into a cash account and then didn't do much with it is a customer who might disappear at any time, on some institutional level the bank is aware of it. They want you to regard them not as an interchangeable place that money sits, but as a valued partner who helps you do things with your money, and as a result you feel like it would both be a risk and a bother to extract all your money and go to some other bank.

buckle8017 1y ago

I'm curious what value you get from the private banking side?

hankthecat 1y ago

This is somewhat funny to read because if you were a JPM(chase) Private Bank client you wouldn't have any of these issues (zelle works, you can deposit checks, pull from any/all ATMs).

gnerd00 1y ago
yeah agree -- it seems like a mistake to use retail banking for real business amounts of money and transactions. I suspect that young adults focused on a fast-moving tech world really did not live the hard lessons of the past with business restrictions. On the one hand, it is a new world now (no one would have come up with the kind of money referenced here, with Mom and Pop business pace); on the other hand, maybe you really are trying to load a trucking worth of transactions onto the top of your used Honda Accord, so to speak.
CamperBob2 1y ago
Or just plain Schwab One. Don't know about Zelle but ATMs and checks work just fine. (Better than fine, in fact, in that they refund your ATM fees.)
- astrange 1y ago
  If you're a private bank client how much do you care about ATM fees?
  - hankthecat 1y ago
    Much more than you would think
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- ycombobreaker 1y ago
  Chase Private Client refunds ATM fees too. It's especially nice if you live in a location where a substantial fraction of Chase ATMs and branches are shuttered!

lotsofpulp 1y ago

I move $10k+ in and out of BoA/Merrill every week and I’ve never received an alert or phone call. I would have stopped using Chase a long time ago if they were that annoying. I basically never want to talk to anyone at any bank, like any other utility.

meistertigran 1y ago

What I took from this is that you have a really engaging writing style. Was interesting to read from start to finish.

welder 1y ago

You should start a business for your construction projects, then use a business bank like Mercury instead of Chase and get all the nice business features.

mkl 1y ago
What are the nice business features you're referring to?
- welder 1y ago
  Paying vendors

dpkirchner 1y ago

At what point does it make sense to sign up for private banking? I've been happy with our credit union for day to day stuff but we don't keep a ton of cash around (most of our money is in a brokerage account (ETFs)). Is private banking just for folks that want to have a lot of cash around but not have it in an easy to use account?

0x3f 1y ago
When you need the specialized services they offer, e.g. Lombard loans, unique mortgage products.
sneak 1y ago
When you are managing a $500k-1M+ liquid net worth. I think Chase starts “Private Client” at $250 or $300k. (Don’t use Chase, however.) It might in some cases be more trouble than it is worth, if you are right around the threshold. A “normal” retail checking account and a brokerage account at another institution with the ability to transfer between them is probably sufficient for most. If you need loans or mortgages or other stuff, it might be worth the hassle (and phone calls).
- mitchellh 1y ago
  Private client isn’t private bank. They name is like that so you think it is though. :) private banking services start around $10 to $15M with higher tiers as you go. (Not trying to diminish private client services. But they’re night and day different services.)
  - sho 1y ago
    > start around $10 to $15M That sounds high to me. Maybe American banks? The smaller Swiss banks will start taking your calls at about $2m.
    - mitchellh 1y ago
      Maybe. All the retail banks I know don’t start true private banking until there. For example, here is an article about JPM requiring 10 back in 2016 (it’s higher now): https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-j-p-morgan-9-million-in-assets-isnt-rich-enough-1458340690 https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-j-p-morgan-9-million-in-asse... The non retail banks that have a good reputation are even higher. They don’t outwardly advertise their minimums because “it depends.” For example if you’re an up and comer in your field where it seems like you’re LIKELY to one day hit the mins, they’ll start the relationship early.

attentive 1y ago

What's the point of a private bank or do you mean investement/brokerage?

fastball 1y ago
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/privatebanking.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/privatebanking.asp

papa-ja 1y ago

[dead]

Aloha 1y ago

Chase has a decent private banking operation, which you might consider (so does BofA, and most large banks) which can give you the best of both worlds.

thrown-0825 1y ago

why does zelle even exist? every time i have to interact financially with americans its always focused around these random transfer apps like zelle, cash, venmo etc.

jcattle 1y ago
The US tends not to regulate what kind of services a bank has to offer to its customers. A bank doesn't need to offer any kind of transfer services to be a bank. As far as I know you can legally be a bank and only offer cash deposit and withdrawal. The EU has PSD (Payment Services Directive) and PSD2 which stipulate what kind of transfers have to be possible to customers. Because of that the US just has a bunch of startups which offer services that unify the payment landscape. The alternatives at a bunch of banks is still that you need to write checks.

GJim 1y ago

> private banks is they make it hard to do retail-like banking behaviors > depositing a quick check.....Zelle. Good lord American banking really is in the stone age. I don't think I've seen a cheque in 20 years. As for private banks, in Blighty they all (?) offer 'retail' services that out perform high street offerings. Incidentally, all high street banking is free in the UK. Only private banks tend to charge for their services.

asib 1y ago
Yes, it's honestly a joke. Zelle limits the amount you can send per day, starting at $500, so you can't even necessarily pay your rent in one go the first month. With Chase, I don't have the ability to do ACH transfers to accounts I don't own (I hear other banks allow free ACH transfers), so if Zelle limit is too low, my only option would be a paid wire...

mprivat 1y ago

That was an interesting and entertaining read. Well written. Thanks for sharing. It reminds me I do have a bank with physical branches, the digital world made me forget all about that.

insane_dreamer 1y ago

Couldn't find the RSS feed for your writing. Available?

randomsofr 1y ago

Congrats on the success! I’ve had a similar experience since I started moving more money around. My local branch started calling me too. I live in a busy area where lines at the bank can take hours, but now they told me I can just message someone whenever I go and they’ll move me to the front. The other day I was just poking around the investment section of the app to see what kind of rates they offered, and almost immediately I got a call from my personal banker, haha. I actually ended up trying the investment since the returns looked good.