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Chase Bank May Drop Support of Chrome, Opera
mwandaw writes "Banking giant JPMorgan Chase may drop support of some popular browsers because they do not 'all offer the minimum levels of security that we require while others may not perform well with our site.' After July 18 you may not be able to access the website with a browser that they do not support. The list of browsers they currently support seems outdated: Internet Explorer 6.0 and higher, Firefox 2.0 and higher, and Safari 3.0 and higher (for Macs only). With usage of IE6 plummeting and concerns about its security well known, the inclusion of that browser seems suspect. On the other extreme, rising star Chrome appears to be left out, too. What does Google think of that?"
"Traditional" businesses don't understand technology at all, especially "consumer" technology trends. Usually software backed up by a large businesses is considered to be a bonus for the "traditional" business drone, however, as any tech-literate person will tell you, those programs usually are outdated, slow and bloated.
Its quite silly how they don't understand it. In their mind IE = Microsoft = stable. In everyone elses mind IE = Microsoft = Slow/Bloated/Insecure. In their mind Chrome = New = Unstable, in everyone elses mind Chrome = New = Fast.
Businesses need to realize people don't, and shouldn't, choose software like they choose a car.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
... does the same thing. I got this message (today) trying to order service using the latest version of Chrome.
That sucking sound you hear is my bandwidth.
not all offer the minimum levels of security that we require while others may not perform well with our site
- but they'll still be supporting IE6. Where the hell are they getting their security information from? I can see still supporting it purely because of the sheer numbers of nutbars still using it, but to mention security when talking about any other browser?
User Agent Switcher.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59/
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Why are some browsers not supported? There are two primary reasons--security and popularity. There are dozens of browsers in use today, but not all offer the minimum levels of security that we require while others may not perform well with our site. The security of your accounts and private information is one of our highest priorities and some browsers, especially older versions, are simply higher security risks to use with our site. As for popularity, we continually monitor the types of browsers that customers use to access our site. Based on that information, we know that supported browsers are used by more than 95% of our customers. If a new browser begins to grow in popularity, we will assess and test its security and performance with our site to determine whether or not we should support its use.
Right... Because its sooooo hard to use standards and make a secure site? Lets face it, if you code things right you can support every single browser except for perhaps IE (though they have gotten better). It is pure stupidity not to support various other browsers because they "aren't secure" when you can't give a reason other than they aren't used as much.
The vast majority of security for banking comes from 3 main places. Encryption (controlled by the site owners), Physical/Software security of the servers (controlled by the sites owners) and elimination of flaws in the browser (judging by their inclusion of IE 6... they aren't worried about this).
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Maybe you're too young to have noticed this, but you typically only get to choose a bank (checking account, credit card, mortgage, car loan) for the first couple years. Then there's a merger or your loan gets flipped, and you start getting statements from some other company with different terms and policies (not that you understood the first one's). Then a couple years down the road, there's another merger or your loan gets flipped again.
So, it could be that no-one opts to bank at Chase, but... Chase (Citi, BofA, PNC etc) happens.
A few years ago, before Firefox and Safari had any market share I used to find from time to time websites requiring me to use IE. Since it was not possible at the time (IE had not been updated for Apple in a few years) you know what happened? I did not use their service and I did not miss it, I just used a competitor who allowed me to use my browser. Didn't matter if it was a back of a brokerage account, or a Japanese tee shirt shop (whatever). Now I never encounter that kind of message anymore. Is this a positive example of free market? I am not sure, but it might be!
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
I can understand the "popularity" argument, though it certainly does tend to coddle poor design practices, the fewer browsers they have to check for correct rendering on the cheaper their web development will be.
I find the "security" one much harder to understand(unless, as is quite likely, it is just being used cynically to make a purely cost-based decision sound more urgent). From a security perspective, things like IE6 and FF2.0 are seriously retro; but supported, which makes it seem quite unlikely that they are making the "security" decision based on the presence/absence of some specific feature(e.g. specific SSL/TLS ciphers, "anti-phishing filters", XSS countermeasures, etc.). Further, the "Safari 3.0 or higher (Mac Only)" thing seems downright inscrutable from a security perspective, and not much clearer from a web-design perspective. Is Safari version X on Windows really that drastically different? And is Chrome all that different, in terms of the rendering features that you would need to present a bunch of numbers, some fine print about fees, and clip-art of smiling families?
... I can say it's pretty short sighted of them. What do they plan to tell the people who buy Chrome OS Netbooks in the near future? Sorry, you can't use our bank? I'm sure both Google and various hardware vendors who offer such devices will have a few words to say to Chase Bank.
'...not all offer the minimum levels of security that we require while others may not perform well with our site.'
Yeah, if you've made a site and it doesn't look in both Chrome and Opera, there must be a problem with those browsers. I'm sure they paid a lot of money to get their site developed, so there can't be anything wrong with that.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
"We paid Vice President McNepotista's retarded cousin Benny six hojillion greenbacks to lash up a flaky site in Front Page, and if we had to acknowledge that our crappy site doesn't render in most standards compliant browsers, we might not feel like such virile corporate stallions tonight while we're snorting coke out of a hooker's ass crack."
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Nothing in the linked page says that they're going to lock out "unsupported" browsers.
If you are using a browser that we don't support, you may not be able to access our site or you may not have the same level of performance as if you were using a supported browser.
Essentially they're saying that the site may not perform per specification in browsers that they do not test with because they're only used by less than 5% of their users. This is nothing other than a "we didn't test, so don't expect it to work" disclaimer. Nobody is getting locked out and nobody is discriminated against. The site's developers are simply cutting some corners to save costs. Business as usual.
Y'all are posting in a troll thread.
My first credit card was from Chase. It was on one of those flyer boxes posted on a board in one of the dorms. Not the best interest rate at the time but not too bad. They steadily lowered my rate over the years. I'd call them up and ask for a lower rate and they'd see I'd been a customer for awhile and had a good record and would knock a few points off. it finally settled at 9.9 fixed for several years. I used it frequently, but I almost always paid my entire balance. I did buy my first laptop computer on it though, and that took several months to pay off.
Now a lot of people just throw away those "change in terms of service" notices they get from their credit card companies, but *I* read them. And one day I got a notice saying they were going to jack up my interest rate for no apparent reason. So I called them to cancel the card. She transferred me to someone else that said forget about that, we won't raise your rate. (I suppose I was transferred to a "stop this customer from closing their account" rep)
So last year I got another one. This time they were jacking the rate up to something outrageous like 17%. (from 9.9) Called them again and expected to be put through the same transfer, but this rep was having none of that. I explained what had happened last time and she says no, this one is not negotiable. She explained that "due to changing economic circumstances" they had to raise their rate. I asked her to transfer me to an account specialist, but to my surprise, I got exactly the same answer. So I explained to her one more "changing economic circumstance" they were now going to experience.
It's too bad too. They provided me with good service, and even had some really cutting-edge features for the time. Back in 1992 they had an offer for me to email (yes really) a scan (yes, REALLY) of my picture and my signature, and they sent me a new card, with my picture and my signature on the front of the card. (I had to use a serial port quickcam to make the pics) REALLY nice feature, and nice to have a second photo ID and the signature really big on the front of the card. To this day I don't know of any bank that offers that, though there are a few that let you upload a picture and can have that as the entire face of your card. I need to do that with my current main credit card, an AT&T mastercard. (9.9%)
I've heard though that they classify customers like me as "dead beats" because we don't carry a balance for them to charge interest on. I suppose it's possible that's why I got sacked. It's just a shame to have to cancel your first credit card, that helped you establish credit, that you've had for almost 20 years.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
The reason that IE6 is included is because it's currently installed as the only browser on 140,000 Chase employee workstations, laptops, etc. If IE6 was blocked then Chase employees would be unable to bank with Chase from the office.
The scripting engine in Chrome is at least twice as fast as the one in IE, and it's stable. The first thing I noticed was that Facebook didn't work well in IE. I got sick of Facebook, and stopped using Chrome for a while. Then I noticed that a couple sites I use a lot both work reliably in Chrome. I had been blaming those sites for having bad scripts. Nope. It's IE.
Now, perhaps this is because I went through my IE settings and turned off anything that I thought might make me vulnerable. I don't run AV, so I tend to go through all the security tweaks for IE.
Maybe, just maybe, if I set IE back to defaults it would work OK with the aforementioned sites. I won't do that. So many MS problems are due to insecure default settings, almost as much as the software itself.
So. There's Chrome, it works on these sites, so I use it. Many people sitting behind PCs won't try alternative browsers. They'll just think the site is slow or unreliable.
I don't know what MS is doing with IE. Maybe they're too distracted with smartphones and Bing. Maybe Google's brain power, revenue, and "momentum" is just crushing MS in the browser space. Whatever it is, the failure of IE is now painfully obvious, not just from a security standpoint; but useability. To reiterate, I suspect the scripting engine, since the sites where I've observed problems tend seem to be fairly script intensive. Anything that processes AJAX requests is twice as fast, or faster in Chrome. IE sometimes "forgets" drop-down settings or refuses to take input. Chrome just works.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
People spend more time figuring out what kind of a vacuum cleaner they are going to buy than thinking about the bank they will put their money into.
There is no competition and the reasons are that government now plans/runs the economy. Chase will have their customers, nobody will be leaving because Chase is going to drop support for a browser. Nobody will be leaving if Chase continues gambling with deposits. Nobody will be leaving even if Chase continues trading any kinds of derivatives.
The reason for this is FDIC, the Fed insuring the deposits, which creates a set of problems:
1. The banks don't have a reason to care about earning customers' trust, they can start gambling with your deposits.
2. The people don't care and don't pay attention where their money is.
3. Competitiveness between banks is no longer that important, this is a problem, small banks start losing out to bigger ones just based on this alone.
4. Large banks do gamble with your money, as they also receive Free Money from the Fed they become bigger and bigger, until they are... "Too Big To Fail" *(a government creation, in reality they are too big to exist at that point.)
FDIC, just like Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac etc., create a moral hazard for everybody - the creditors and the debtors.
Government shouldn't be in insurance business at all, it is terrible at assessing risks, for reference see Ben Bernanke sitting the middle of a huge credit bubble he helped to create and not seeing it at all even while staring right into its face (I am talking about the housing bubble and that guys saying: we don't have a bubble in 2007!
INTERVIEWER: Tell me, what is the worst-case scenario? We have so many economists coming on our air saying 'Oh, this is a bubble, and it's going to burst, and this is going to be a real issue for the economy.' Some say it could even cause a recession at some point. What is the worst-case scenario if in fact we were to see prices come down substantially across the country?
BERNANKE: Well, I guess I don't buy your premise. It's a pretty unlikely possibility. We've never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis. So, what I think what is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize, might slow consumption spending a bit. I don't think it's gonna drive the economy too far from its full employment path, though. - these are the people who will now, under new Obama's financial reform will be watching for the signs of bad things about to happen? Seriously? Really? You must be kidding me?
Banks must NOT be Federally insured, any insurance must be private and insurers must provide information on the conditions of insurance, the payments etc., so that risk can be evaluated by the banks' customers.
Many will say: but how do you expect an average person to look and understand.... well I guess that's what arithmetic is for.
People NEED competition in banks just like in anything else, otherwise soon enough all banks will be one same too big to fail, only IE is allowed mega-bank, and the problems will not be limited to just what kind of browser the banks allows you to use on their site, that will be the smallest of the problems.
You can't handle the truth.
... for a Fortune 50 company that received flack for something similar, I can assure it's not a safety thing so much as it is a laziness thing. The internal standard is IE6, therefore most developers have it on their machine and develop/test against it. To officially add support for other browsers would require QA to have all of the browser/machine combo's and likewise for development.
Use standards and you won't have that problem? Wrong, because MS doesn't follow the standards. Which means that we end up writing two versions (minimum) - one for standards compliant and one for IE.
Use a javascript package to make IE compliant? Can't. Corporate architecture doesn't allow us to use open source or third party libraries.
End of the day... it's laziness, not security.
As I once wrote to my bank: "I'll switch banks before I switch browsers".
you typically only get to choose a bank (checking account, credit card, mortgage, car loan) for the first couple years.
I had this happen with my first bank. Smallish savings and loan, a local bank. At one point they said they were going to start charging for the checking account. I went down and talked with them and they cut me a deal. If I started using electronic statements they'd keep the checking free. There was also a "service charge" on my savings account if I didn't maintain a minimum balance, which went away also. Things stayed that way for some years.
Then the bank merged with a larger bank, and suddenly I started seeing money disappearing out of my savings. Now I'd never really actually used it, and only had $50 or so in it, but they were eating about $2/month off it in a service charge. So I called them and they said they'd changed their policies after the merger, and that's how things were going to be now. So picked up all my money and moved it to a local credit union. They take really good care of me.
You'd think things like this would be so destructive to your customer base that they'd have to think twice about it, yet they just do it without batting an eyelash. And so we walk. And they don't seem to care?
Funny, I forgot to take the money out of savings. I stopped checking my electronic statements when I closed my checking account. Anyway, got a notice some time later saying my savings account now had a negative balance. So I gave them a call to laugh at them and tell them they could close the account. I was almost expecting them to tell me to come pay the $1.50 or whatever negative on the account, but they didn't have THAT much nerve. Idiots.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Some people do change banks, just not enough. I was very unhappy with BofA's funds availability policy in TX after moving from Cal. I found a bank in TX that had an acceptable policy and I switched. OTOH a friend of mine complains incessantly about wells fargo, but everytime I suggest switching, he says it is too much trouble, which I think is your point:) I keep trying to get him to switch but to no avail.
In case of Ben I prefer to keep to the KISS principle and use the Occam's Razor. Just a few days ago the guy said he doesn't understand why gold is rallying. Really, he doesn't, that's what he said.
Maybe he is lying, but I think he is just useless, he is the perfect case that supports Peter Principle, he is stuck within his level of incompetence.
You can't handle the truth.
and where to find them.
Basically, when there's a fairly significant liability there, years of experience and large corporate backing do matter. They maybe shouldn't, but they do.
Sure, but if they can't provide concrete data for choosing one browser over another, then how can you be sure they are making the right choice. I understand their argument, but I have no evidence that they proved these browsers to be unreliable.
What we need is a security acid test, akin to the CSS3 acid test, that is recognized by security and financial institutions, that can be run by browser developers to see whether they meet the mark. If there is one already, was it used and where are the results? If there isn't one, then how can we be sure browsers are being audited in an equal manner? For me the test should be something that any capable security expert could feel comfortable with and include minimum requirements for passing and also "nice to have features" that can give the browser bonus marks.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Considering Chase was one of the few that played recklessly with our money, I guess I wouldn't have to worry about their insecure system anyway because I wouldn't give them my money if they were the last bank in America. Instead it will be the First National Bank of My Mattress.
If I was a bank I would just completely avoid recommending any particular browser. Once you do that you are complicit / partially liable when a user is compromised by following your advice. As a case in point, as far as I know, FireFox 2.0 is no longer receiving security updates and there are known vulnerabilities in the last released version. Chase recommending this browser could easily be taken as an argument in a court case if a user is compromised while using their web site.
It would be far more sensible for the bank to impose no limitations and simply recommend that all users acquire a secure and standards compliant browser for using their web site.
I really don't know what my APR is. I pay my bill in full each month.
That is why now that my oldest is prepping for college I have been giving him the money talks and told him to stay away from the big banks. I have found the small community banks and credit unions to give much superior service without gouging you on fees. With my little community bank I can even use my debit card online with no worries, because they cover all but $20 in the case of fraud and the card costs me a grand total of $1 a month.
You really can't beat the personal service at those little banks either. I had to pick up some off lease office PCs for an insurance company job and I found that one of the suppliers doubled dipped and charged me twice. I walked into the bank and told a teller what my problem was, she had me in front of the girl in charge of debit cards in under two minutes. The girl in charge of debit handed me her personal card and said "It'll be back in your account by the end of the day" and then called me an hour later to say it was all taken care of.
So I'd say you have to be nuts to go with the big banks. Not only is the community and credit unions less risky and less likely to gamble, but they value their customers and go that extra mile to keep your business. When the credit crisis first hit and the big banks were looking to mommy government to cover them, my little community bank was telling folks to come on in, because they hadn't gambled and had plenty of money for business and home loans.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Now I'd never really actually used it, and only had $50 or so in it
So you were providing them basically no money whatsoever to invest. Do you know how a bank works? They take in deposits and then invest the money deposited. In return they provide you security and safe access to your money and perhaps a bit of interest. The amount of interest that can be earned on $50.00 is less than the cost to send you your statements. Your $50 costs them money. Not a lot and probably not $2.00 but more than zero. Why would the bank want to do business with a customer that costs them money each month? They institute the fee specifically to drive away unprofitable customers.
You'd think things like this would be so destructive to your customer base that they'd have to think twice about it, yet they just do it without batting an eyelash
I'm sure you're a nice guy but think about it for a minute. You were a small fry customer with little capital who cost more to serve than the bank could make off your investments. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but that's what happened. You did the right thing by going to a credit union that wanted your business. But expecting a large bank to care greatly about an unprofitable small customer is naive.
Funny, I forgot to take the money out of savings.
"Funny"? That's not funny, that's dumb. You basically gave the bank $50 and got nothing in return.
Nowhere in the notice does it say that you MUST use one of the supported browsers. It says, "If you are using a browser that we don't support, you may not be able to access our site or you may not have the same level of performance as if you were using a supported browser." I'd be willing to bet that the site will work fine in Chrome. Why don't they list Chrome? Because they don't test with Chrome ("Supported browsers are browsers that we consistently use and test with our site"). Why don't they test with Chrome? Because every additional browser that must be tested with adds time to development and QA. You could argue that Chrome has enough users for them to invest the time to test with it, but if they are testing with Safari, they are probably fine with Chrome anyway. It's a simple matter of resources and I, frankly, don't see much wrong with it. I'm speaking both as a web developer and a Chase customer.
I just did.
Seeing as mwandaw wants to feed the outrage machine by spinning and taking things out of context, let's take a look at the actual facts.
From the Chase FAQ:
Now, lets look at the spun summary:
Because many people do not upgrade to the latest and greatest.
Which is why they mention older browsers being a security risk. Oh, and as the summary says, usage of IE6 is plummeting, but as support is existing and use is still high, it is best to support it.
Who the fuck cares what Google thinks? Chrome is not the do-all, end-all of the internet. Chrome is not even that popular.
Would you want to bet that Chase checked their server logs to figure out what their customers use?
And the effects not using a supported browser?
And, about those older browsers?
Ok, now that the truth is out there, are you going to stop being an asshole, mwandaw?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Some people do change banks, just not enough.
If you do change banks because they don't support your favorite browser, make sure you keep it a secret if you want to keep your friends. That said, I won't trust any bank that tells me IE6 is a secure browser, and Opera is not.
As for the real problem: a browser is not a banking platform, never was, and never will be good enough. How many potential security problems are there in a typical browser that would be completely eliminated with a simple native application?
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Where do you get your information? Some libertarian kook blog?
FDIC is not the Fed.
FDIC doesn't guarantee banks.
FDIC guarantees individuals' deposits. Your checking account. Your savings account.
When a bank can't cover its deposits, FDIC swoops and seizes the bank.
The bank is shut down. Management is fired. Stockholders lose everything.
Absolutely the opposite of what you imagine to be the case.
Now I've only ever had a Chase credit card and a Citi credit card. The Chase card got eaten by a paper shredder many years ago. My personal bank has been PNC for a long time. I know they are a larger bank (maybe not as large as Chase or Citi) but they have always treated me well and have given good offers for services that appeal to the middle and lower economic classes.
I do agree, though, that many banks would fall all over themselves for the 500k+ accounts. And they probably offer protections and/or other services that those account holders don't mind paying a $20/month service charge. Having never earned that much, I've never looked into what those benefits might be.
They changed policies months ago so that charge interest based off average daily balance. (Some have even tried using rolling highest balance for the month)
I canceled my card when in 3 months they changed my rate from 7 to 17 to 21 then to 30% interest. Initially I did not care since I pay the balance off each month electronically. But at around then they also started charging interest using a rolling average of the (highest?) daily balance for the last couple months. I went on a business trip, payed off the entire balance, and the next month had hundreds of dollars in interest from my increased "daily balance" despite no charges all due to the previous months trip. The last dirty trick was they started changing the due date. One month it was the 26th the next it was the 16th. (That caught my one-week-early auto-payment by surprise which resulted in a default rate which took me from 30-36. I canceled my card immediately.
Honestly as far as I can tell Case, Citibank, and Bank of America all took the credit reform legislation and inspected the bill saying, "holy shit you mean we can do these things legally currently?" They then implemented every skanky policy they could before the cutoff date as to be grandfathered on all accounts when the legislation passed and thus have their policy survive the implementation of the new legislation. My credit record was basically spotless.
My family all had our rates go up around 23%. Most didn't notice that paying off the balance no longer prevented interest from being charged until I called them and told them to check out their statements. This is happening to people with credit scores over 800!!!
Lets count the way that credit cards profit here. 1) they charge the merchant the first dollar or two of a transaction. 2) They charge the merchant a percentage of the transaction. 3) They charge you interest on the transaction. 4) They game the system to charge you as much as they can.
I am disgusted at this behavior but at the same time there are a few features I love that only these companies seem to offer. (Virtual credit card numbers for online transactions) It drives me nuts that I haven't been able to ditch them all but am just working with another business entity in the same corporate giant.
Surely switching is easy. You turn up and say "Give me all of my money, I'm closing my account." and they give you all of your money. You then go to a competing bank with a couple of forms of ID and say "I'd like to open an account, here's all of my money."
Oh, you mean people are too lazy to switch? Well, that's different...
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
You should really think about this for a bit longer than it took you to write that diatribe. Ben Bernanke continues the inflationary policy of printing money, both long and short term money - cash and bonds, and he says he does not understand why commodities are valued higher and higher in terms of dollars?
If he does not understand it, it means he completely does not belong in his position. You don't understand any of it, so why are you commenting?
You can't handle the truth.
The amount of interest that can be earned on $50.00 is less than the cost to send you your statements.
That's not the customer's fault.
True but irrelevant. A bank is a business and it exists to make a profit. If you expect them to conduct business in a way that is unprofitable to them you are being naive.
You speak as though the savings account was this guys only account with the bank. It wasn't.
Doesn't necessarily matter. THAT account was unprofitable for the bank. Furthermore he wasn't using it. If he had large accounts elsewhere he might have been in their private banking service but it sounds like he wasn't and so the bank didn't much care if he left.
You also need to consider future potential. Maybe this guy was small-fry, but tomorrow he might want a big loan to start a business or buy a house.
When that happens I'm sure the bank will be happy to consider working with him. In the meantime the bank has no evidence that this will ever be the case.
Because they nickel-and-dimed him on the savings account he closed his checking account with an undisclosed amount in it.
Do you have any idea how expensive it is for a large bank to have policies that are inconsistent? It's unbelievably complicated and expensive. If a large bank is going to change the rules for you they'll need some sort of reason to believe you are worth the hassle and extra cost.
No doubt he'll show this bank the same amount of loyalty that they've shown him.
No doubt. Look, I've worked very closely with bankers for years. It is a relationship business. After all, the banker is selling an undifferentiated product - one money market fund is pretty much the same as any other money market fund. However folks with a $50 savings account don't normally have a personal relationship with an actual banker. They simply don't. As a result the bank has to institute policies that make sense for the sort of business the bank desires. A large bank is not going to spend a lot of effort trying to woo the business of an account holder with a tiny, unprofitable, inactive account. Expecting otherwise is naive.
If my bank tried to take $2 a month from me on my $100 savings account they'd lose all my business - including the mortgage that earns them tens of thousands of dollars a year.
Your mortgage doesn't earn them "tens of thousands of dollars a year" unless you have an absolutely gigantic mortgage. The interest they receive is 5-7% annually. For a typical mortgage of $200K (close to the average in the US) that works out to $7000-15000 in revenue which steadily decreases over time. You also are not considering the cost side of the equation. Chances are good those future interest payments have been securitized and sold already anyway so the bank may already be effectively out of your mortgage anyway.
Sure, most people are too lazy to change but it still generates a lot of ill will and for what? $50 a year in fees?
Yep. Banks are too important to the financial system to be especially concerned about the ill will and they know it. So yes, they can shape the sort of business they want by instituting fees. Don't like it? Take your business elsewhere and you'll both be happier.
Banks get away with this shit because they're about the most profitable industry there is.
Not really. You're confusing investment banking with retail banking. The two have little similarity. Retail banking is actually a pretty low margin business where economies of scale matter hugely. Don't confuse what investment banks Goldman Sachs does with what retail banks like Wells Fargo do. They are incredibly different businesses.
If your bank is adjusting your balance downward without explanation, there are several places you can report it and get action. The local police are not one of them.
It could be a case of someone inside the bank committing fraud, in which case the management of the bank would LOVE to know about it and have the chance to act (I know... I work for a bank). It is even possible (although unlikely) that the bank officers are in on it and are attempting to defraud consumers. In the first case, reporting it to management will resolve the problem, and probably VERY quickly and politely. Search your bank's website or other documents for the name of the bank's COO or CEO and send a letter to that person. If you truly believe that the bank's management is "in on it" then you can report them to the banking regulators (http://www.sec.gov/answers/bankreg.htm gives contact info in the USA). They will certainly follow up (and afterward I can assure you that your bank will hate you... but they'll also treat you fairly since they know the regulators are watching).
Of course, it is also possible that the bank was right and your own records were wrong. Be prepared to discover that you were wrong and apologize if that turned out to be the case. Don't let fear of this prevent you from following up if you feel cheated, just keep an open mind.
I agree with most of what you've written, but this is dubious:
Actually, all else being equal small banks have a stability disadvantage. A concentrated customer base means you're less diversified, more exposed to local economic shocks, and more vulnerable to any economic shock because you have less of a capital buffer.
FDIC unfairly advantages small banks by removing stability from the set of criteria customers care about. There are significant stability advantages to being a big organization, but no bank customer will care about those if all of their deposits are insured anyway.
> On the other extreme, rising star Chrome appears to be left out, too. What does Google think of that?"
Who are JPMorgan Chase? I did a Google search for them and I didn't find anything?
return 0; }