Undefined "Suspicious activity" closure of bank accounts

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

A banking practice mandated by law seemingly leads to innocent people getting their accounts shut down and money made unavailable for as long as weeks. And bankers cannot explain to the customer why accounts have been closed. There is some looseness in how banks determine suspicious activity, so one might shut down your account while another might not.

This is originally published in the New York Times, but password protected. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/b...-suddenly.html

Yahoo has republished it, password free https://news.yahoo.com/why-banks-sud...l&uh_test=0_00

[kork13]

Yeah, this is an extremely annoying issue that I've run into a few times. Most recently, right after I moved to Japan. They locked me out, froze my cards, disabled my online access, and said "please call us" ... When I did, they insisted that I verify my identity in like ... 3 different ways. Problem was, one of those was impossible for me, because they wanted me to call them from a different phone number than any that were listed in my account profile. Well jeepers, mister, I have 2 phone numbers to my name, both of which your company encouraged me to put into my account profile "for security & ease of use" ... Now how am I supposed to call you from a different phone?? Convince a random stranger to let me borrow their phone to make a 30min international call? I also didn't have access to my office phone, which may or may not even be allowed to call internationally .... I fought with those blockheads for hours, across multiple days, and they eventually found another "suitable method" to verify my identity. Simply idiotic. Lucky for me, some friends had already stocked my fridge before I arrived, so I was at least able to eat.

[Like2Plan]

Kork,
So sorry this happened to you. I was wondering if your banking is one stop shopping or if you do business with several?

As DH and I age I have been trying to simplify out financial life by reducing the number accounts we have, but I go back and forth as to how many should we reduce it to. (And, how much redundancy is needed).

In your case, what would have helped? Would having different branded credit cards made a difference or were you shut down across several different financial platforms?

[disneysteve]

When I did, they insisted that I verify my identity in like ... 3 different ways. Problem was, one of those was impossible for me, because they wanted me to call them from a different phone number than any that were listed in my account profile.

What sense does that make? Isn't the whole point of registering your phone number with them so that they know it's you when you call from that number?

That's pretty scary, especially with you being out of the country at the time.

At least we carry 3 credit cards from 2 different banks (Chase and Discover), plus our debit card from a 3rd bank BOA). If one bank shut us out for some reason, hopefully the others would still work.

[kork13]

It was my primary bank, which also has our 2 primary credit cards. I did still have access to my Discover & Amex cards, which helped ... but here in Japan, a large proportion of stores are cash only, so not having access to cash was problematic. It was seriously incredibly frustrating. I assume they locked everything because suddenly I was using everything here in Japan. It used to be that I could give them 'travel notifications' to warn them of travel to prevent just this issue, but they stopped doing that a year or two, because "new technology allows them to detect legitimate & illegitimate account usage" ....

[disneysteve]

It was my primary bank, which also has our 2 primary credit cards. I did still have access to my Discover & Amex cards, which helped ... but here in Japan, a large proportion of stores are cash only, so not having access to cash was problematic.

Could you have gotten a cash advance from Discover or Amex?

Interesting that a lot of places there are cash only. It seems I’m always seeing stories about how tech advanced Japan is compared to the US. I’m surprised they aren’t all using mobile pay like ApplePay.

[kork13]

Could you have gotten a cash advance from Discover or Amex?

Interesting that a lot of places there are cash only. It seems I’m always seeing stories about how tech advanced Japan is compared to the US. I’m surprised they aren’t all using mobile pay like ApplePay.

I probably could have gotten a cash advance from a credit card, but have absolutely zero interest in paying that interest ().

It's definitely surprising to see how much Japan still resists technology that is commonplace in most modern countries... And strongly embraces others that are uncommon. Especially being the tech center that it is! And yet, outside of the big cities, probably at least half of all shops/markets/etc. will be cash only. And websites here are comically simple & never updated -- they remind me of (poorly) designing basic html websites in high school. But they also have the best bullet trains in the world, and likely the most well-proliferated fiber internet in the world as well.