I got a random call from Wells Fargo fraud department
and I refused to give them my information.
Escalated and the supervisor also pretended to not understand my concern.
In fact, they placed a stupid hold.
I went to a bank and the bank manager has to call them back and basically beg these people to remove my holds.
These people in the fraud department don't even deserve to get found in a river.
It should be standard for all banks that if they have a fraud issue, they call you and tell you to call the number on the back of your card, and press 6 or something.
The fraud departments we have are so indistinguishable from actual phishing it’s amazing. They even send you a two factor code and have you read it to them! The text says they’ll never ask for it via phone! Embarrassing.
Worse,
as a customer,
it is almost impossible to reach a specific person at a bank over the phone.
The branch manager who called had to authenticate himself
over the phone (at least he was the one who placed the call)
and waited on hold for over twenty minutes
and even then he didn't talk to a specific person iirc.
The strange thing is the supervisor was clearly on a power trip.
They made me waste hours of my life chasing this nonsense.
I'm surprised we haven't heard more lawsuits about this in notoriously litigious America. I find it hard to believe that "we can ruin you at any time" is a sustainably fair contract term.
I've had surprisingly decent luck with bankruptcy attorneys being willing to do small favors like unfucking these types of disputes (or at least telling you the right incantation and process to do it yourself) for free.
(Maybe it has to do with being used to dealing with clients that literally have no money.)
That only covers the incentive for the lawyer for one isolated case. But since such a lawyer will probably take many such cases (and often against the same banks), we must examine the incentives of such a lawyer more closely. The incentive of such a lawyer is to keep taking such cases, which means it is actually in the lawyer’s interest to deliberately lose some amount of such cases, in order to keep it profitable for the bank to keep debanking customers, thereby ensuring that the lawyer has enough business.
That implies the lawyers act in cahoots to try to influence this much greater body of people/power, over and against their immediate interests. It also implies they're fully crooked. It seems like an extraordinary claim (well, the former).
Lawyers aren't limited to isolated cases. Class actions exist for this exact reason and regularly lead to hundred million dollar+ payouts from banks and other large defendants for harm done to large groups of people.
They will say you agreed to the terms they can close the account for whatever reason, and that receiving the balance within a week is quick enough. I doubt the courts would say otherwise. Lawyers probably won't take this case.
This is a situation where the Invisible Hand of libertarianism was supposed to manifest and gently nudge people to banks with more favorable terms in such numbers that no bank is able to do this and stay profitable.
OTOH I do hope a bank is allowed to go full stop on the brakes if needed. I had my CC blocked 4 times because of fraud detection. All done by the CC company and it never cost me anything but inconvenience.
If the bank would be liable, we all suffer. How much will banks charge if we would be both secured from fraud risks and indemnified from account closure damages? I would think 1% of your cashflow would not be unreasonable.
Also as a merchant I like a pro-active attitude of the bank to deal with fraud. But, more on-topic, bank accounts are definitely more stable than CCs. But they are not immune for seizures and fraud detection.
These people in the fraud department don't even deserve to get found in a river.