|
|
|
|
|
|
by tluyben2
1666 days ago
|
|
|
Because my accounts are so old and I have so many of them, I get a message regularly saying that my account for service xyz has been suspended. When I contact them there a) never is a good reason for why it was done (hint; it is usually because they started using or recently updated some AI fraud detection service) b) small companies easily restore your account; with big ones it is usually game over. Ebay (and Paypal) are rather notorious for this: PayPal has actually gotten more robust but now I actually cannot close my account. They don't know why but computer says no; it is an ancient account, so, as a software engineer, I can take a few guesses. The most annoying is the level of support: even if the support is polite and responsive and human to begin with, which is not often at big companies (note I do not live in the US so I get routed to my country support for that bigcorp; I do not know if support is better over there), they often have no clue what they are talking about and only have canned responses. You used to be able to escalate to another level but that seems to have been removed (too expensive of course). So when I can I stick with small companies; when they get funded or taken over, I find an alternative. I manage small SaaS products myself and I definitely will never leave anyone hanging, not even for a few hours; many small companies have the same feeling. Of course, often you cannot do anything else but take the large ones. Luckily with banking this changed over the past years, but plenty things are still utterly broken support (and because you need support, also software wise probably) wise. |
|
|
The NPR Planet Money episode "Escheat Show" follows the story of a man who bought some Amazon stock long ago, and purposely never logged in to his online account, letting the stock multiply into a presumed small fortune. Years later he found that due to his inactivity the account had been deemed by his state (Connecticut?) as lost property years prior, liquidated, and entered into the state's escheat program, where one can claim lost property. The stock had been liquidated at a much lower price than its present worth. He wanted to sue since his intention was to leave the stock untouched for years but found there were some complications. He's currently waiting for the stock to hit a valuation where a great lawyer will be tempted to take it on contingency while still leaving himself a fortune.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2020/01/24/799345159/episode-967-escheat...