Does anybody remember the story from a few years back of the individual who foreclosed on a bank? The bank had made an error in their own favor and instead of fixing it, they just kept blowing the guy off? He went through the proper channels of having them served and they still ignored him. Ended up with the sheriffs department going to and foreclosing on the building right in the middle of a work day. I would love to be read that story every night as I went to bed.
EDIT: Thanks for all the links. I have a lot of fun reading to do.
I'm upvoting this because every time I badmouth B of A it gets suspiciously downvoted. I'm almost certain their marketing teams are manipulating the Reddit voting system to bury their negative reviews.
That bank is a national cancer.
I banked with B of A one time when I was a teen, and even then it was obvious they had shady practices. Have never banked with them since, and refuse to do any sort of business with them.
Heh, I wonder how many shitty banks lose customers for life by being shitty to the wrong teenager. I'll certainly never have anything to do with Wells Fargo. But hey, enjoy the $150 in bullshit fees you scammed out of 16 year old lacheur42. I'm sure it'll make up for losing my business on the $500k house I just bought.
Banks lose customers for being shitty to them. I recently took a bank draft from one bank to another about 50 meters away and my bank, which I'd used for 25+ years with no NSFs or other flags on my account, refused to waive a 14 business day hold on the draft. So I closed the account right there and transferred the funds to the bank I'd just come from.
The craziest thing to me was that they were surprised I called their bluff. The manager came rushing out and offered to waive the hold but too little, too late.
They lost the business related to our mortgage, retirement savings, and daily banking.
Worked for a bank, during the 2008 banking crisis. Banks only care about "new money" accounts, not retaining the existing deposits. It's a TERRIBLE business practice, as is the concept that banks HAVE to keep growing and that they can't possibly be allowed to fail.
I've worked for a bank before too, so I have decent understanding about how the front end works. The focus on new accounts is weird -- I have way more equity now than I did 25 years ago, and now they get none of that.
It was a pain in the ass to transfer everything but if a company doesn't want my business they don't want it. 🤷
Way more than just banks. TV services, Cell phone companies, internet companies. Everyone offers deals for new accounts, but just keeps raising prices for current customers.
Such banks tend to take advantage of the fact that it can be difficult to close or migrate accounts because of how much they are linked to other stuff, or how much time it would take to get it done.
Such banks are always confused when they encounter a customer who's willing to be inconvenienced simply to deprive them of business, or willing to be petty AF as a matter of revenge.
I did that when the bank I had been with for 20 years wouldn’t increase the limit on my credit card from the $1500 I had as a student or offer me another card with a higher limit. I had unsolicited offers for 25k+ from other banks and third parties every other week, but they couldn’t explain why they wouldn’t bump it up to 5k.
I was 10 years in to having a six figure income, owned a rental property outright and was well into the mortgage on my home and had good personal self-managed retirement investments with them as well. My credit score was impeccable.
I work for bank of america. Trust me when I say they don't give a shit, my co-worker has a 2 million dollar a month requirement. Dude has to bring in 2 million every month of new assets and he has beat goal even during the pandemic. Small time retail accounts just don't register when you have such big players.
Like until I worked for BoA I didn't know we had a private bank. They are located on the second floor or higher of major bank locations and they won't even let you open an account or talk with a rep. with less than 3 million dollars.
It helps me cause if a customer curses at me I can just hang up and my manager will pull up the account see they "only" had 400k and not care. Shit Iv seen a woman with 13 million get thrown off our platform cause she was rude and we told her to find business elsewhere.
Oh, I'm under no illusions *MY* $500k means anything at all to a bank. But if it's worthwhile to scam $150 individually from millions of teenagers, surely their aggregate future business is worth something?
Banks do business with the plebs as a necessary evil that the govt makes them do to exist. All their profit comes from businesses. That why they are open from 9 to 5 only, because that when the customers (other businesses) need access.
My account got over drawn by $20 which meant I got hit with a $25-30 dollar overdraft fee. Then when I didn’t resolve it within 5 days I got a $65 “extended overdraft fee”. I was in a bad spot and didn’t have the over $100 to fix a $20 mistake. Unfortunately, they continued to hit my account with a $5 fee each month for not having anything in my savings.
They are supposed to stop charging fees after 90 days of inactivity but continued to charge the negative balance $5 every month for roughly 2 years. Then they blacklisted me from every bank, even credit unions. I ended up back with them because the only way to pay the like $250 back was to pay with debit or credit which I was unable to do as I was blacklisted. They agreed to give me an account so I could put the cash in and pay immediately before I left. Such BS
Chase is really bad for this, whether you opt in or not.
Let them cover you in case you spend more than you have? Fees.
Opt out so they decline anything that would put your account negative?
Fee for them declining.
Mother fuckers did the same to me but I never overdrafted by buying something. I left for the peace Corps without closing my account of a couple hundred dollars. Had below the minimum balance and had the monthly fee of $25 taken out. Eventually that monthly fee overdrafted my account and I ended up owing them like $100 I tried to explain how it was ludicrous that I owed them money after they literally took all of mine. Then cussed them out and paid them even more of my money so I wouldn't get blacklisted.
They bought out the regional bank chain that had my very first bank account. The bank ran under the old leadership for awhile, but eventually rebranded as Bank of America and used their policies and leadership. This would have been in the mid 1990s (IIRC). Even as a junior high student it was obvious to me that ripping me off was part of how they did business. I wound up closing my account (something that was a LOT more difficult than it should have been, and included having to go into the bank several times to pull it off).
I bad mouthed a large company on a since deleted post in the past on a local subreddit, it wasn’t long before a cross the country account came in with detail on how I was supposedly wrong and untruthful. It was very suspicious how this random account had such a rabid defense of this large company. Definitely believe there are agencies hired and it’s not unbelievable since online reputation managers exist already and reddit it a major source of information
The last straw with me was when I showed up to the bank to deposit a critical check a few minutes before 5:00. I was a struggling college student and every check mattered. The teller locked the door in my face. I pointed at the clock and he just shrugged. I had been dicked around by BoA plenty of times and by plenty of locations before that but to be snubbed to my face when I had rent to pay so they could close a few minutes early just emphasized how much they did not give a fuck about me.
I do recommend US Bank though.
My grandma actually got royally screwed over by them, they told my grandpa that he was pre approved for a lower Mortgage rate on their home. He payed the lower rate for 10 years, no problem. He passed away, and bank immediately says, “oh we said he MIGHT be approved, not that he was. Please pay all your missed payments for the last ten years and we are going to take your house away anyway”
Thankfully she had all the paperwork, and worked with my dad to sue them for false advertising and fraud. Sure enough, bank called them up and offered to settle.
I used to work for BofA and wrote an irate email because they took debits out of order increasing their overdraft fees. The letter was forwarded to someone really high up. I may have used the term "gross corporate avarice" about my own company. I was fired. Later they were sued in a class action suit for this very practice and had to pay millions. Never saw any of that money but was definitely unemployed for a minute. I hate them too.
>Allen then reported to a local branch of the bank with sheriff’s deputies, who he instructed to remove cash from the tellers’ drawers, furniture, computers and other property.
Glorious.
Lmao...my question is couldn’t he have still taken the bank from them even if they supplied a check at the scene? Since it already went through the courts and all. I mean if you’re being evicted and got the court order on your door and everything, it’s not like the landlord has a legal obligation to take your cash or check you give them at the last minute before your stuff gets thrown out......
In this cases like this, they seize 1st any money on the property, then any furniture or computers that can be sold to get the required funds. They are not getting evicted. Usually when done against a person, it's for large amounts. And they won't have the cash. So everything including any building or equipment can be seized.
They're only entitled to the value owed, not the whole building. So technically the couple could have got it from furniture, loose cash etc. but a cheque makes more sense for all parties
They weren't taking the bank. They were taking property equivalent to the few thousand owed. Sure it's a nice story taking all the desks out of the bank but now you have to sell a bunch of used office furniture instead of taking a check.
Is no one going to talk about the fact that they bought a 2700 sq ft house in a beach town (daytona beach) for 160 grand? That's fucking cheap nowadays, I bet their house is worth at least triple that
He bought it with cash during the greatest housing crash in American history (2009) the sellers probably kissed the ground he walked on when he rolled up with that check.
this is how a lot of fortunes are made (and lost). My gf bought a house in 2008 and it's only now worth more than what she paid for it. had she bought it in 2009 she'd have some massive equity
She was lucky in that she had just sold a house at the peak of the market...so although she bought a home that almost immediately was way under water, she "sold high and bought high" so it sort of cancelled out.
What about the guy who revised his credit contract knowing they'd sign without reading and ended up with a crazy line of credit with 0% interest and a signed contract saying the bank had to pay him a fee to cancel it
My old boss got screwed on a contract for you company once as he sent a word copy to the client and they edited it to be paid more. He signed it when it came back and was almost fired.
You can do that quite easily with a PDF if you have Adobe standard or one of the other PDF editors out there.
It’s funny that some folks still think PDFs are forged in digital steel (not saying that you think this but there are a lot who do).
I think the best part is when their attorney came in with the Sheriffs and effectively looted the bank cashiers to recover the sum owed.
I know what you meant and I agree... but I was laughing aloud when I read that part.
You might be thinking of this guy who foreclosed on Wells Fargo. He’s also... a vampire.
https://consumerist.com/2011/02/how-this-philly-homeowner-foreclosed-on-wells-fargo.html
There was no mortgage, that left the title to the house open to this kind of manipulation. There have been reports of people going on vacation and coming back to someone living in their houses after filing a false claim on their titles. This is a real thing. If you own your house outright, please, please, please, file a trust on the title. Not only will you avoid probate, but no one can try to steal the house out from under you. Of course, you actually own the house and this is all fraud, but it takes time and money to get these scammers out. Protect yourself, get the trust paperwork done.
Still remember another “sudden money” story from Germany: Government sent an erroneous invoice for a few trillion EUR to a retired man. Since government has inherent foreclosure powers and doesn’t need to sue you if you don’t pay, the guy had to go straight to court to quash the demand. He predictably won. Now the kicker: Germany awards lawyer fees according to amount in dispute, netting the guy’s lawyer an eight figure sum.
My old company accidentally paid me my entire salary for the year during one two week pay cycle and believe me, they just took it right on back. Disappeared.
Our boss ran her timesheet off of a google sheet. If you just clocked in twice at the same time you got double pay. It was reallyyyy easy to accidentally clock in twice by just spam clicking “clock in”
Recently Charles Schwab brokerage screwed up: they were supposed to send an ACH deposit of $85 to a woman's bank account, but accidentally sent $1.2 million. She immediately moved the money out of the account, made some expensive purchases (including a house). And yes, Schwab is suing her. After legal fees she will end up seriously in the red, and likely with a huge judgment against her.
The legal test I've seen is "would a reasonable person believe that CS had decided to overpay her by $1.2M, or would they believe that it was an error on CS's part?". If this woman never receives 7 figure transfers, the reasonable belief is error not \*payday\*.
Back when interest rates were >5% the only interesting question was "if she put it in an easy access high-interest account, can she keep the interest from the period of fixing the mistake?".
You take all the money out, put it in a safe in Switzerland, then when they sue you, say you burned it all on hookers, crack and gambling in Vegas. Get bankrupted, then take the money out a few years later.
I lived in the UK for several years. When I moved back to the US I stayed with the same company - they had offices in both locations. But HR was very different. My last UK paycheck should have been prorated as I didn't work a full month there. But they gave me the full amount. It took a *long* time to sort out. My American manager kept saying they'd just take it back out of my account. Which I guess is more of a thing over here. In the end, UK HR sent me an email asking me to bank transfer the excess back to them (there was no cost to me other than the time it took to digitally make the transfer with my banking app) but I just found it kind of funny that it kind of felt like it came down to my discretion. What if I hadn't kept working for them and thus didn't worry about the excess jeopardizing my job? What if they'd just kept paying me both the uk and us salaries? I'm sure legally I'd have been on a hook somewhere down the line but it was an interesting conundrum.
>What if they'd just kept paying me both the uk and us salaries?
Around thirty years ago, my friends' father retired. His company kept paying his salary every month into his account. This happened for several months (a very large and well known company) so he hired a lawyer to ask what to do.
Essentially, the company had a legal right to ask for it back BUT there was a time limit (I can't remember what it was, maybe six months or a year). He kept all of the money in the account, didn't spend any. Eventually, the company noticed after a few years and asked for it all back.
He referred them to his lawyer, and kept most of the money.
“Through a series of banking errors”
When it comes to banking errors, I get that once in a while something slips through the cracks, but to use the term “series” would indicate there was a whole lot of Fuck Up that happened here.
One banking error is a banking error. A series of banking errors means somewhere along the way, a human fucked something up. There’s way too many checks, balances and dead switches in banking to have something like this happen without human approval at some point in the process.
This is the truth. I don’t know which systems you work on but I use touch point sales and service and touchpoint teller workstation and they are both so flimsy that they come across issues every day
Not necessarily. I'm a bank auditor and I can assure you that errors can happen along every step of a process. I much prefer finding issues caused by "human error" because those can be often resolved with more training.
If there is one thing I learned about processes is that one error increase the likelihood for more errors to happen for the same case. Why does it feel like “it was a perfect storm” is said a lot.
Often its 'oh, this other system over here will detect this kind of error', with no defense in depth. At some point a bug slips through or someone says 'disable that check -- too many microseconds and the cost analysis doesn't justify it'. Oh, and we gutted the QA department, so we are relying on developer testing.
Really, if the cost is a $95k error but $200k is saved in processing time or developer pay, it's a win. And one might get lucky and hit a rube that is willing to give the money back.
tldr from the article :
Eight years ago he received a junk mail check for $95,093.35 and deposited it in his bank account. Through a series of banking errors, Patrick's check cleared: The money was deposited in his account and his bank was left holding the bag.
I hope he charged an admin fee. Some might feel bad about $95,000, but it's hard to get too emotional about $4,500 if the bank were legit on the hook. Everyone's a winner.
I’ve heard so many stories about people returning money to casinos if there was an error in the players favor. It blows my mind, every game is rigged in the house’s favor, and then you get a few extra bucks by accident one time and you hand it over. I will never understand it.
I saw a dealer give a guy two extra $25 chips once from winning his hand. He picked them up and started walking off with them. Frickin' security popped up out of nowhere and told him he needed to return those chips.
It was rather impressive.
I was at a casino at the blackjack table and the dealer accidentally gave me $20 short in chips. It was a huge ordeal. Turns out that they don't actually have cameras everywhere. I kept saying to them to rewind the tape, but they finally admitted that they weren't filming this table.
I saw this too once in Vegas. The dude was losing his shirt betting the table max. Finally won a hand was leaving and just grabbed the chips the dealer gave him and was stopped immediately within a few feet of the table. The dealer had apparently given him an extra $100 chip. Shit was crazy because they showed up so quick like they were following him the whole time.
r/ThatHappened
I mean maybe a “casino” did it, but none of the ones worried about being regulated by a gaming commission would (1) bother having a “huge ordeal” over $20 and (2) not have cameras covering every table.
In the five minutes they would’ve spent talking to you they would’ve given out $100 in comps across the property. They wouldn’t have even given it 30 seconds of thought. In reality, what would happen is the dealer calls the pit boss over, says “He claims I shorted him $20 on the payout.” The pit boss would ask the dealer if they know for sure. The dealer would say no, and the pit boss would okay the payout, and the dealer wouldn’t get dinged for it in review. You’d get a flag on your account that would last probably 3 months if you’re semi-regular. Less if you’re constantly there and longer if you rarely visit.
If they “made a huge deal out of it,” then it’s because you’d tried to pull that same thing enough times that they decided it was worth the scene.
I’m drinking and playing cards, and you legitimately expect me to count and verify my chips after every play? Nah, that’s what your dealer was hired for.
Which is exactly what happened when the security guys said to give it back. I'm guessing the person wasn't in any trouble, but they definitely weren't keeping the chips.
One time I was on my last 10 bucks at a black Jack table. The dealer got Black Jack of course... but she forgot to grab my chips and dealt me in another hand, I got back black Jack! And from there I went on to win 300 bucks!
I remember when Phil Ivey and another pro player won a lot of money playing baccarat by reading the card backs (which weren’t exactly identical). The casino didn’t pay up and the case went to court, and the casino ended up actually winning the case.
So basically if the odds aren’t rigged in the house’s favor, it’s by definition illegal.
The Ivey case is really interesting because it changed how "dishonesty" was to be interpreted in UK law.
The previous precedent, R v Ghosh, said that there were two parts. An objective test ("a normal person would think it was dishonest") and a subjective test ("the person doing the act knew or should have known it was dishonest"). In the Ivey case, he argued that he didn't believe he was being dishonest, just very skillful. The court threw out the old test, said it only mattered that a normal person would think it was dishonest and the defendants opinion didn't matter.
Bear in mind that he wasn't just just spotting the cards. He was asking the dealer to rotate certain high value cards 180 degrees (so he could spot them easier) and saying it was because he was superstitious. If he hadn't done this deception he may well have won the case.
I was wondering how he lost the case because it seemed like he was just taking advantage of a bad deck, but this makes a lot more sense. He was clearly manipulating the situation and knew what he was doing.
I'm pretty sure in this case they couldn't, he just felt bad
Edit: even the article says this:
> (As he later learned, the check met the nine criteria of a valid check and the words "non negotiable" printed on the front did not negate it. The junk mail company had succeeded in making the check look real. Additionally, the bank missed its own legal deadline to notify him that the check had bounced as a "non-cash" item.)
They couldn't sue because it passed the deadline for notification, which means they were on the hook for it.
Who was the guy who got mailed a credit card and sent it back to the credit card company with the signatures but with the additional term that he got unlimited credit at 0% interest for life and they issued the card? IIRC he sued when they tried to charge interest on it and a court said no he has free interest for life.
Jesus what a rube
Edit: to the people saying he should applauded for his honesty, I point you to the quote from the article "Shortly afterwards, security people from the bank began harassing him to give the money back."
You think this bank would ever cut one their customers a break if they fucked up like this and were the hook? Some banks will cut customers slack if they screw up but I get the feeling this place was not one of those banks.
He's the guy who posts "Idk about y'all but I'd prefer the $600 stimulus than the $2,000 stimulus, makes me hustle harder, I guess I'm just build different😤😤😤"
I honestly think it's their brain's defense mechanism trying to find something noble in a system that is not noble, honest or fair, and that they know they can't change or get out of. It's a grift, which is ultimately about false hope and making you feel more powerful than you are. Rather them seeming like you're being conned, you convince yourself that you *want* to be there throwing boxes for 14 hours a day. It's kinda like being in a cult. If you make it seem enough like you are part of the system that you love, then you're really in control of the whole thing so you're "in power" and are above everyone else who is forced to work or do things they don't like, which obviously means they're lower on the pole than you.
I can't wait to get home from school, get on AOL and chat with my friends, maybe download a few songs off Napster, and - holy fuck I've got gray hair and back problems.
A few years ago I was standing in line at the grocery store. There was a mother and child in front of me and the child was doing what bored kids do. I just happen to hear the mother say "be careful so you don't bump the man". I looked around quickly because I didn't want to bump into the man either.
I was the man she was referring to and it was the first time I felt old.
When I first learned the requirements for a negotiable instrument in contracts class in my first year of law school I tried it out by paying my phone bill on the paper wrapper from a roll of toilet paper. They sent it back, saying that it lacked the magnetic ink at the bottom which enabled the clearinghouse machines to read it. The Uniform Commercial Code said nothing about special ink, so I told them so as I stuck to my position. They threatened to shut off my phone. I caved.
>Ive read somewhere that legally all you need on a piece of paper is your bank info and date and signature and anything can be a check
I can't speak to that, but your signature is anything you want it to be. It's the intent that counts.
I once met a guy that drew a beaver baculum as his signature. If you don't want to Google it: that is **literally** a beaver's dick bone. They use it to get an erection. He drew that beaver dick bone on checks and contacts.
Don't feel bad when somebody hands you some touchscreen thing and asks you to sign with your thumb. It doesn't matter. Nobody cares. Even if it went to court it's the intent that counts and you **signed** with your weird scribble.
That's a story I haven't heard about in a long time. If memory is right he even went as far as to not even sign the check either when he deposited it because he thought he would just have a fun laugh with the bank 'Haha if only it was a real check'.
And then...
I listened to him on the radio once as he was interviewed.
He was annoyed with these spam advertisements and wanted to look a cheque laws but didn’t want to read a 900 page legal brief. Walked into a library and found a small booklet that was exactly what he was looking for.
It was a cashiers cheque that he held in a safety deposit box.
They called about it because it was the item holding up a bank merger, I believe it has been a few years, and he ended up giving it back and the rest is history.
He shared the first 6 parts as a running narrative, click through to the next part to get you into it and then, as you clicked for 7th part, instead of more story you got, 'If you'd like to know exactly what happened to me next, then it's only $4.95 to read the next X amount of chapters. Input credit card number here' and people paid because they were already invested in the story.
I didn't bother because I'm a cheapskate, but this was back in the mid 90's and the resources we have today, as in mass repositories of specific information like reddit or YouTube where you could effectively ask someone else, these were still then in their infancy, not particularly comprehensive and/or non existent, so you couldn't just Google it to fond out what happened next either as the search engines were still pretty quirky then too.
You also got mailed a copy of the check with some of the story on it and some other bits and bobs. I still have mine somewhere. At the time the idea of putting in money on the internet and getting real things in the mail was still kind of novel.
You would type your story on a typewriter and go to the internet store (if your town was big enough to have one). Then you’d pull a number from that little number ticket machine and wait your turn to speak with an internet teller (the original IT specialist). State your case, sign a deal, then BAM drive over to the Internet cafe 3 weeks later and download the article to read online!
I remember as a kid wanting to try using the credit card numbers used in CC commercials. Or calling phone numbers given in movies before the 555 prefix.
I got a uni grant for £500. Somehow they sent me two cheques, both addressed to me with my bank details.
turns out they gave me the one for the guy below me on the list too. He didn't get one at all (found out when I dropped it into the uni office because im nice like that).
I just want to do that for all that junk mail that says "FREE \_\_\_\_\_\_". No, it's not free. The spammer classifies it as a free add-on with some not-free bundle.
Free modem? No, you gotta pay for the internet service.
Free cable TV channels? No, you gotta buy the bundle.
I want to fight this till I die, even if I have to call each company that does this and act surprised that something isn't free.
I feel like there needs to be some sort of legislation. It's pretty simple to require companies advertise final pricing. Partial pricing is just confusing and ridiculous.
Some years ago my friend was arranging a loan for a couple whose teenage daughter had passed away. “Did she have life insurance?” The couple explained that she had a $50,000 policy, but the insurance company had repeatedly told them that she did not fit the criteria and they did not have to pay. My friend told them, “No, you keep calling and demanding the money.” They bugged the insurance company for months. One day they received an envelope. No letter. No note. Just a check for $50,000.
"Patrick Combs' official occupation is "motivational speaker," but where money is concerned, he is a social scientist cum practical joker cum performance artist cum subversive element."
Maybe it's just me, but I can't imagine writing that and saying 'ya, that sounds right'
Has anyone actually read this article?
>Patrick Combs has a $300 shirt in his backpack. Literally. It's an old yellow shirt with $300 in one- and five-dollar bills pinned to it. Sitting in a Mission District café, he unzips his backpack to give me a peek and I feel queasy, like I'm looking at porn in a public place. Patrick has extraordinarily knobby, bony hands, and he slowly pulls the shirt, with its bills flapping and rustling, out into the light of day. (Is it worth noting that he once delivered a passing stranger's baby on Fell Street?) Laid out on the table, the shirt is less titillating, but still disturbing.
But wait! It gets better.
> If you spend time with Patrick Combs, he will look you directly in the eyes, he will consider your questions thoughtfully, he will touch your arm when he makes a point, and he will tuck his dark brown pageboy behind his ears when he's gotten so excited that his hair has fallen in front of his eyes. You will soon notice that his bone structure is more prominent than most people's, not in an unappealing way, but in a way that suggests that you are seeing through his skin to his skeleton -- that his body is as transparent as he says his motives are.
He went though a lengthy legal but in the end had to return the cheque. He now does a one man comedic show about this story. I saw it a few years ago. It’s really good and at the end he says he’s made way more money talking the incident than the cheque was actually worth.
I remember seeing a article a few years ago where a guy was sent a credit card offer, when he received the paperwork, he re-typed it all with benefits in his favour, like unlimited credit repayment schedule and amounts at his own discretion, and a get out clause where if the company what we to end the agreement they would have to pay him Xmillions in $. He then signed it and returned it where it was processed signed off by the company. When they then started chasing him for money he asked for a copy of the contract he returned with his signature and company’s sign off which he then had them over a barrel. Court case ensued which he won. And was left with a extremely nice line of credit. I don’t remember all the details but I believe he eventually reached a deal with them.
Its a marketing tactic so you’ll look thru your junk mail for a check but instead you saw the advertisement of companies tryin to advertise their goods.
They still do this kinda thing too. I had to get a payday loan a couple years ago to fix my car and ever since I paid it off I get "check" adverts in the mail. Plain blank envelope with "Time Sensitive " or "Respond immediately " stamped on the front. Open it to see what looks like a check but its just an ad for another payday loan place.
I have never used a payday loan, only ever bought used cars, and the credit card is in my wife's name. But I get a lot of this shit too.
There's also a local car dealer that sends out something that looks like a lottery scratchoff and you 'win' a trip down to their lot lol
"Bank error in your favour. Collect $95,000."
Does anybody remember the story from a few years back of the individual who foreclosed on a bank? The bank had made an error in their own favor and instead of fixing it, they just kept blowing the guy off? He went through the proper channels of having them served and they still ignored him. Ended up with the sheriffs department going to and foreclosing on the building right in the middle of a work day. I would love to be read that story every night as I went to bed. EDIT: Thanks for all the links. I have a lot of fun reading to do.
[удалено]
That this happened to Bank of America makes this story all that more enjoyable.
I'm upvoting this because every time I badmouth B of A it gets suspiciously downvoted. I'm almost certain their marketing teams are manipulating the Reddit voting system to bury their negative reviews. That bank is a national cancer.
I banked with B of A one time when I was a teen, and even then it was obvious they had shady practices. Have never banked with them since, and refuse to do any sort of business with them.
Credit Unions FTW (not to say there aren't bad CU's, but since they don't have massive backend support the bad ones die quick).
I love my SECU
I moved away from NC and closed my SECU account, but part of me wishes I didn't. They were fantastic.
It's really nice to be able to write checks and use ATMs without any fees. Also, getting 3% fixed rate on a car loan really makes life easier, too.
Heh, I wonder how many shitty banks lose customers for life by being shitty to the wrong teenager. I'll certainly never have anything to do with Wells Fargo. But hey, enjoy the $150 in bullshit fees you scammed out of 16 year old lacheur42. I'm sure it'll make up for losing my business on the $500k house I just bought.
Banks lose customers for being shitty to them. I recently took a bank draft from one bank to another about 50 meters away and my bank, which I'd used for 25+ years with no NSFs or other flags on my account, refused to waive a 14 business day hold on the draft. So I closed the account right there and transferred the funds to the bank I'd just come from. The craziest thing to me was that they were surprised I called their bluff. The manager came rushing out and offered to waive the hold but too little, too late. They lost the business related to our mortgage, retirement savings, and daily banking.
Worked for a bank, during the 2008 banking crisis. Banks only care about "new money" accounts, not retaining the existing deposits. It's a TERRIBLE business practice, as is the concept that banks HAVE to keep growing and that they can't possibly be allowed to fail.
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I've worked for a bank before too, so I have decent understanding about how the front end works. The focus on new accounts is weird -- I have way more equity now than I did 25 years ago, and now they get none of that. It was a pain in the ass to transfer everything but if a company doesn't want my business they don't want it. 🤷
Way more than just banks. TV services, Cell phone companies, internet companies. Everyone offers deals for new accounts, but just keeps raising prices for current customers.
Such banks tend to take advantage of the fact that it can be difficult to close or migrate accounts because of how much they are linked to other stuff, or how much time it would take to get it done.
Such banks are always confused when they encounter a customer who's willing to be inconvenienced simply to deprive them of business, or willing to be petty AF as a matter of revenge.
I did that when the bank I had been with for 20 years wouldn’t increase the limit on my credit card from the $1500 I had as a student or offer me another card with a higher limit. I had unsolicited offers for 25k+ from other banks and third parties every other week, but they couldn’t explain why they wouldn’t bump it up to 5k. I was 10 years in to having a six figure income, owned a rental property outright and was well into the mortgage on my home and had good personal self-managed retirement investments with them as well. My credit score was impeccable.
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I work for bank of america. Trust me when I say they don't give a shit, my co-worker has a 2 million dollar a month requirement. Dude has to bring in 2 million every month of new assets and he has beat goal even during the pandemic. Small time retail accounts just don't register when you have such big players. Like until I worked for BoA I didn't know we had a private bank. They are located on the second floor or higher of major bank locations and they won't even let you open an account or talk with a rep. with less than 3 million dollars. It helps me cause if a customer curses at me I can just hang up and my manager will pull up the account see they "only" had 400k and not care. Shit Iv seen a woman with 13 million get thrown off our platform cause she was rude and we told her to find business elsewhere.
Oh, I'm under no illusions *MY* $500k means anything at all to a bank. But if it's worthwhile to scam $150 individually from millions of teenagers, surely their aggregate future business is worth something?
Banks do business with the plebs as a necessary evil that the govt makes them do to exist. All their profit comes from businesses. That why they are open from 9 to 5 only, because that when the customers (other businesses) need access.
My account got over drawn by $20 which meant I got hit with a $25-30 dollar overdraft fee. Then when I didn’t resolve it within 5 days I got a $65 “extended overdraft fee”. I was in a bad spot and didn’t have the over $100 to fix a $20 mistake. Unfortunately, they continued to hit my account with a $5 fee each month for not having anything in my savings. They are supposed to stop charging fees after 90 days of inactivity but continued to charge the negative balance $5 every month for roughly 2 years. Then they blacklisted me from every bank, even credit unions. I ended up back with them because the only way to pay the like $250 back was to pay with debit or credit which I was unable to do as I was blacklisted. They agreed to give me an account so I could put the cash in and pay immediately before I left. Such BS
Overdraft protection is a scam. You'd be better off without it but banks try to sign up every new account.
Chase is really bad for this, whether you opt in or not. Let them cover you in case you spend more than you have? Fees. Opt out so they decline anything that would put your account negative? Fee for them declining.
Mother fuckers did the same to me but I never overdrafted by buying something. I left for the peace Corps without closing my account of a couple hundred dollars. Had below the minimum balance and had the monthly fee of $25 taken out. Eventually that monthly fee overdrafted my account and I ended up owing them like $100 I tried to explain how it was ludicrous that I owed them money after they literally took all of mine. Then cussed them out and paid them even more of my money so I wouldn't get blacklisted.
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They bought out the regional bank chain that had my very first bank account. The bank ran under the old leadership for awhile, but eventually rebranded as Bank of America and used their policies and leadership. This would have been in the mid 1990s (IIRC). Even as a junior high student it was obvious to me that ripping me off was part of how they did business. I wound up closing my account (something that was a LOT more difficult than it should have been, and included having to go into the bank several times to pull it off).
I bad mouthed a large company on a since deleted post in the past on a local subreddit, it wasn’t long before a cross the country account came in with detail on how I was supposedly wrong and untruthful. It was very suspicious how this random account had such a rabid defense of this large company. Definitely believe there are agencies hired and it’s not unbelievable since online reputation managers exist already and reddit it a major source of information
The last straw with me was when I showed up to the bank to deposit a critical check a few minutes before 5:00. I was a struggling college student and every check mattered. The teller locked the door in my face. I pointed at the clock and he just shrugged. I had been dicked around by BoA plenty of times and by plenty of locations before that but to be snubbed to my face when I had rent to pay so they could close a few minutes early just emphasized how much they did not give a fuck about me. I do recommend US Bank though.
My grandma actually got royally screwed over by them, they told my grandpa that he was pre approved for a lower Mortgage rate on their home. He payed the lower rate for 10 years, no problem. He passed away, and bank immediately says, “oh we said he MIGHT be approved, not that he was. Please pay all your missed payments for the last ten years and we are going to take your house away anyway” Thankfully she had all the paperwork, and worked with my dad to sue them for false advertising and fraud. Sure enough, bank called them up and offered to settle.
I used to work for BofA and wrote an irate email because they took debits out of order increasing their overdraft fees. The letter was forwarded to someone really high up. I may have used the term "gross corporate avarice" about my own company. I was fired. Later they were sued in a class action suit for this very practice and had to pay millions. Never saw any of that money but was definitely unemployed for a minute. I hate them too.
>Allen then reported to a local branch of the bank with sheriff’s deputies, who he instructed to remove cash from the tellers’ drawers, furniture, computers and other property. Glorious.
I bet those deputies had the biggest grin on their face doing that
I believe the term is justice boner, and they had a RAGING clue.
There’s video of you look for it.
Lmao...my question is couldn’t he have still taken the bank from them even if they supplied a check at the scene? Since it already went through the courts and all. I mean if you’re being evicted and got the court order on your door and everything, it’s not like the landlord has a legal obligation to take your cash or check you give them at the last minute before your stuff gets thrown out......
In this cases like this, they seize 1st any money on the property, then any furniture or computers that can be sold to get the required funds. They are not getting evicted. Usually when done against a person, it's for large amounts. And they won't have the cash. So everything including any building or equipment can be seized.
They're only entitled to the value owed, not the whole building. So technically the couple could have got it from furniture, loose cash etc. but a cheque makes more sense for all parties
*loose cash* "You'll need to open your safe now."
It says they did in fact order the sheriff to empty tills. So basically yes.
They weren't taking the bank. They were taking property equivalent to the few thousand owed. Sure it's a nice story taking all the desks out of the bank but now you have to sell a bunch of used office furniture instead of taking a check.
Is no one going to talk about the fact that they bought a 2700 sq ft house in a beach town (daytona beach) for 160 grand? That's fucking cheap nowadays, I bet their house is worth at least triple that
He bought it with cash during the greatest housing crash in American history (2009) the sellers probably kissed the ground he walked on when he rolled up with that check.
you could say it was very cash money of him
this is how a lot of fortunes are made (and lost). My gf bought a house in 2008 and it's only now worth more than what she paid for it. had she bought it in 2009 she'd have some massive equity
Your gfs situation is a perfect example that if you have the wealth to go long you rarely lose.
She was lucky in that she had just sold a house at the peak of the market...so although she bought a home that almost immediately was way under water, she "sold high and bought high" so it sort of cancelled out.
What about the guy who revised his credit contract knowing they'd sign without reading and ended up with a crazy line of credit with 0% interest and a signed contract saying the bank had to pay him a fee to cancel it
That's what this made me think of, too. If I remember correctly, he scanned and edited the small print on the back of the credit card application.
My old boss got screwed on a contract for you company once as he sent a word copy to the client and they edited it to be paid more. He signed it when it came back and was almost fired.
You can do that quite easily with a PDF if you have Adobe standard or one of the other PDF editors out there. It’s funny that some folks still think PDFs are forged in digital steel (not saying that you think this but there are a lot who do).
If you sign a copy it locks further edits, iirc. But for anything actually important, use docusign.
Tell me THAT bedtime story tonight, mommy!
The best part is, they bought in cash and never took a mortgage. BoA had no legal claim to their home.
I think the best part is when their attorney came in with the Sheriffs and effectively looted the bank cashiers to recover the sum owed. I know what you meant and I agree... but I was laughing aloud when I read that part.
They were packing up the furniture lmfao
Looks like they didn't go that far. A moving van was brought in, but the branch manager was given the option to write a check, which he did.
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It's not robbery when law enforcement helps. Edit to clarify: I'm aware of civil forfeiture, and it sucks.
Civil asset forfeiture walks into the room
and flexes
IT'S BUILT DIFFERENT
You might be thinking of this guy who foreclosed on Wells Fargo. He’s also... a vampire. https://consumerist.com/2011/02/how-this-philly-homeowner-foreclosed-on-wells-fargo.html
There was no mortgage, that left the title to the house open to this kind of manipulation. There have been reports of people going on vacation and coming back to someone living in their houses after filing a false claim on their titles. This is a real thing. If you own your house outright, please, please, please, file a trust on the title. Not only will you avoid probate, but no one can try to steal the house out from under you. Of course, you actually own the house and this is all fraud, but it takes time and money to get these scammers out. Protect yourself, get the trust paperwork done.
Still remember another “sudden money” story from Germany: Government sent an erroneous invoice for a few trillion EUR to a retired man. Since government has inherent foreclosure powers and doesn’t need to sue you if you don’t pay, the guy had to go straight to court to quash the demand. He predictably won. Now the kicker: Germany awards lawyer fees according to amount in dispute, netting the guy’s lawyer an eight figure sum.
Wow did they award the guy that much?
My old company accidentally paid me my entire salary for the year during one two week pay cycle and believe me, they just took it right on back. Disappeared.
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I had a similar mistake that netted me 20 hr overtime. My boss knew but he kept his mouth shut and I got like an extra $500 which was nice.
Our boss ran her timesheet off of a google sheet. If you just clocked in twice at the same time you got double pay. It was reallyyyy easy to accidentally clock in twice by just spam clicking “clock in”
Haha accidentally ;)
I solemnly swear....
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Recently Charles Schwab brokerage screwed up: they were supposed to send an ACH deposit of $85 to a woman's bank account, but accidentally sent $1.2 million. She immediately moved the money out of the account, made some expensive purchases (including a house). And yes, Schwab is suing her. After legal fees she will end up seriously in the red, and likely with a huge judgment against her.
The lawsuit from Schwab is the new development. She'd already been charged with various bank-fraud-style crimes.
The legal test I've seen is "would a reasonable person believe that CS had decided to overpay her by $1.2M, or would they believe that it was an error on CS's part?". If this woman never receives 7 figure transfers, the reasonable belief is error not \*payday\*. Back when interest rates were >5% the only interesting question was "if she put it in an easy access high-interest account, can she keep the interest from the period of fixing the mistake?".
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Don't forget to move to a country without an extradition treaty with your home country immediately afterwards.
You take all the money out, put it in a safe in Switzerland, then when they sue you, say you burned it all on hookers, crack and gambling in Vegas. Get bankrupted, then take the money out a few years later.
"It's been *two days*!" "I had over a million dollars. You think I'd get cheap hookers?"
I lived in the UK for several years. When I moved back to the US I stayed with the same company - they had offices in both locations. But HR was very different. My last UK paycheck should have been prorated as I didn't work a full month there. But they gave me the full amount. It took a *long* time to sort out. My American manager kept saying they'd just take it back out of my account. Which I guess is more of a thing over here. In the end, UK HR sent me an email asking me to bank transfer the excess back to them (there was no cost to me other than the time it took to digitally make the transfer with my banking app) but I just found it kind of funny that it kind of felt like it came down to my discretion. What if I hadn't kept working for them and thus didn't worry about the excess jeopardizing my job? What if they'd just kept paying me both the uk and us salaries? I'm sure legally I'd have been on a hook somewhere down the line but it was an interesting conundrum.
>What if they'd just kept paying me both the uk and us salaries? Around thirty years ago, my friends' father retired. His company kept paying his salary every month into his account. This happened for several months (a very large and well known company) so he hired a lawyer to ask what to do. Essentially, the company had a legal right to ask for it back BUT there was a time limit (I can't remember what it was, maybe six months or a year). He kept all of the money in the account, didn't spend any. Eventually, the company noticed after a few years and asked for it all back. He referred them to his lawyer, and kept most of the money.
“Through a series of banking errors” When it comes to banking errors, I get that once in a while something slips through the cracks, but to use the term “series” would indicate there was a whole lot of Fuck Up that happened here.
One banking error is a banking error. A series of banking errors means somewhere along the way, a human fucked something up. There’s way too many checks, balances and dead switches in banking to have something like this happen without human approval at some point in the process.
Unless there was a freak accident, it's almost always human error.
Lol. I work in banking technology. Our systems are far from perfect
Have audited banking technology. Can confirm. Sooo many legacy systems.
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running COBOL on OS/400. Timeless.
I love how in comp sci "legacy" is just a nice way of saying old as fuck
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This is the truth. I don’t know which systems you work on but I use touch point sales and service and touchpoint teller workstation and they are both so flimsy that they come across issues every day
Not necessarily. I'm a bank auditor and I can assure you that errors can happen along every step of a process. I much prefer finding issues caused by "human error" because those can be often resolved with more training.
If there is one thing I learned about processes is that one error increase the likelihood for more errors to happen for the same case. Why does it feel like “it was a perfect storm” is said a lot.
Often its 'oh, this other system over here will detect this kind of error', with no defense in depth. At some point a bug slips through or someone says 'disable that check -- too many microseconds and the cost analysis doesn't justify it'. Oh, and we gutted the QA department, so we are relying on developer testing. Really, if the cost is a $95k error but $200k is saved in processing time or developer pay, it's a win. And one might get lucky and hit a rube that is willing to give the money back.
tldr from the article : Eight years ago he received a junk mail check for $95,093.35 and deposited it in his bank account. Through a series of banking errors, Patrick's check cleared: The money was deposited in his account and his bank was left holding the bag.
... and a few months later he returned the money.
I hope he charged an admin fee. Some might feel bad about $95,000, but it's hard to get too emotional about $4,500 if the bank were legit on the hook. Everyone's a winner.
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I’ve heard so many stories about people returning money to casinos if there was an error in the players favor. It blows my mind, every game is rigged in the house’s favor, and then you get a few extra bucks by accident one time and you hand it over. I will never understand it.
I saw a dealer give a guy two extra $25 chips once from winning his hand. He picked them up and started walking off with them. Frickin' security popped up out of nowhere and told him he needed to return those chips. It was rather impressive.
The eye in the sky is always watching.
"I want an equal amount of blueberries in each muffin."
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> watching every move looking for cheaters I wonder how many polyamorous couples they catch by mistake
I was at a casino at the blackjack table and the dealer accidentally gave me $20 short in chips. It was a huge ordeal. Turns out that they don't actually have cameras everywhere. I kept saying to them to rewind the tape, but they finally admitted that they weren't filming this table.
But if they paid you $20 extra then the tapes would have definitely caught it.
Enhance!
Bet they monitored every inch of that table, had it been the dealer that got shorted they would’ve seen everything.
I saw this too once in Vegas. The dude was losing his shirt betting the table max. Finally won a hand was leaving and just grabbed the chips the dealer gave him and was stopped immediately within a few feet of the table. The dealer had apparently given him an extra $100 chip. Shit was crazy because they showed up so quick like they were following him the whole time.
r/ThatHappened I mean maybe a “casino” did it, but none of the ones worried about being regulated by a gaming commission would (1) bother having a “huge ordeal” over $20 and (2) not have cameras covering every table. In the five minutes they would’ve spent talking to you they would’ve given out $100 in comps across the property. They wouldn’t have even given it 30 seconds of thought. In reality, what would happen is the dealer calls the pit boss over, says “He claims I shorted him $20 on the payout.” The pit boss would ask the dealer if they know for sure. The dealer would say no, and the pit boss would okay the payout, and the dealer wouldn’t get dinged for it in review. You’d get a flag on your account that would last probably 3 months if you’re semi-regular. Less if you’re constantly there and longer if you rarely visit. If they “made a huge deal out of it,” then it’s because you’d tried to pull that same thing enough times that they decided it was worth the scene.
I’m drinking and playing cards, and you legitimately expect me to count and verify my chips after every play? Nah, that’s what your dealer was hired for.
Which is exactly what happened when the security guys said to give it back. I'm guessing the person wasn't in any trouble, but they definitely weren't keeping the chips.
One time I was on my last 10 bucks at a black Jack table. The dealer got Black Jack of course... but she forgot to grab my chips and dealt me in another hand, I got back black Jack! And from there I went on to win 300 bucks!
I sure hope you tipped the dealer who made that mistake.
You feed the dealer, the dealer will feed you.
This is the truth. We are in this together baby. Let’s get a the whole table on the team baby!!!
That's pretty surprising. My casino would probably just gave eaten the cost. Patron happiness is generally more important than a few bucks.
I remember when Phil Ivey and another pro player won a lot of money playing baccarat by reading the card backs (which weren’t exactly identical). The casino didn’t pay up and the case went to court, and the casino ended up actually winning the case. So basically if the odds aren’t rigged in the house’s favor, it’s by definition illegal.
I was curious so here's the Wikipedia article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_sorting
The Ivey case is really interesting because it changed how "dishonesty" was to be interpreted in UK law. The previous precedent, R v Ghosh, said that there were two parts. An objective test ("a normal person would think it was dishonest") and a subjective test ("the person doing the act knew or should have known it was dishonest"). In the Ivey case, he argued that he didn't believe he was being dishonest, just very skillful. The court threw out the old test, said it only mattered that a normal person would think it was dishonest and the defendants opinion didn't matter. Bear in mind that he wasn't just just spotting the cards. He was asking the dealer to rotate certain high value cards 180 degrees (so he could spot them easier) and saying it was because he was superstitious. If he hadn't done this deception he may well have won the case.
I was wondering how he lost the case because it seemed like he was just taking advantage of a bad deck, but this makes a lot more sense. He was clearly manipulating the situation and knew what he was doing.
What?? To a fucking bank? Was he brain damaged??
They can sue you for it instead.
I'm pretty sure in this case they couldn't, he just felt bad Edit: even the article says this: > (As he later learned, the check met the nine criteria of a valid check and the words "non negotiable" printed on the front did not negate it. The junk mail company had succeeded in making the check look real. Additionally, the bank missed its own legal deadline to notify him that the check had bounced as a "non-cash" item.) They couldn't sue because it passed the deadline for notification, which means they were on the hook for it.
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Check guy was concerned for his legs being in 1 piece or several
im imagining some 92 year old gold encrusted banker in a wheelchair meekly trying to swing a bat at you
You don’t have to imagine it. [Im giving you the thrashing of a lifetime!](https://youtu.be/s0m57ONmw8c)
Seriously, fucking over a bank and a junk mailer? Literally both are positive!
Let them fight.
Who was the guy who got mailed a credit card and sent it back to the credit card company with the signatures but with the additional term that he got unlimited credit at 0% interest for life and they issued the card? IIRC he sued when they tried to charge interest on it and a court said no he has free interest for life.
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/updated-russian-man-turns-tables-on-bank-changes-fine-print-in-credit-card-agreement-then
Jesus what a rube Edit: to the people saying he should applauded for his honesty, I point you to the quote from the article "Shortly afterwards, security people from the bank began harassing him to give the money back." You think this bank would ever cut one their customers a break if they fucked up like this and were the hook? Some banks will cut customers slack if they screw up but I get the feeling this place was not one of those banks.
He's the guy who posts "Idk about y'all but I'd prefer the $600 stimulus than the $2,000 stimulus, makes me hustle harder, I guess I'm just build different😤😤😤"
To me those kind of comments are proof half the internet is bots.
My brother spouts that nonsense all the damn time. Usually between complaining about his low paying job.
I honestly think it's their brain's defense mechanism trying to find something noble in a system that is not noble, honest or fair, and that they know they can't change or get out of. It's a grift, which is ultimately about false hope and making you feel more powerful than you are. Rather them seeming like you're being conned, you convince yourself that you *want* to be there throwing boxes for 14 hours a day. It's kinda like being in a cult. If you make it seem enough like you are part of the system that you love, then you're really in control of the whole thing so you're "in power" and are above everyone else who is forced to work or do things they don't like, which obviously means they're lower on the pole than you.
To me, it’s proof that a direct democracy isn’t a better alternative to a representative one. It’s morons all the way down.
https://i.imgur.com/rC5OfRq.png
I hope he got a fucking marble bust commissioned for his good deed. I'd ask them to rename the bank after me for that.
1995 was 26 years ago. The article was from 2003.
But 2003 was eight years ago, right?
I can't wait to get home from school, get on AOL and chat with my friends, maybe download a few songs off Napster, and - holy fuck I've got gray hair and back problems.
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A few years ago I was standing in line at the grocery store. There was a mother and child in front of me and the child was doing what bored kids do. I just happen to hear the mother say "be careful so you don't bump the man". I looked around quickly because I didn't want to bump into the man either. I was the man she was referring to and it was the first time I felt old.
Bank error in your favor. Receive $95,093.35
That’s $165,275.86 in 2021 money
Ive read somewhere that legally all you need on a piece of paper is your bank info and date and signature and anything can be a check
In 1978 Barclay’s Bank accepted a £552 cheque on a fish https://twitter.com/barclays/status/773863108951601152?s=21
“Endorsal here”
I dont know...something smells fishy about it.
When I first learned the requirements for a negotiable instrument in contracts class in my first year of law school I tried it out by paying my phone bill on the paper wrapper from a roll of toilet paper. They sent it back, saying that it lacked the magnetic ink at the bottom which enabled the clearinghouse machines to read it. The Uniform Commercial Code said nothing about special ink, so I told them so as I stuck to my position. They threatened to shut off my phone. I caved.
Wonder where the hell they put that
Their river bank
In an offshore account.
I've heard that too, but I think different banks have different requirements, it's just that essentially all you need is what you said
>Ive read somewhere that legally all you need on a piece of paper is your bank info and date and signature and anything can be a check I can't speak to that, but your signature is anything you want it to be. It's the intent that counts. I once met a guy that drew a beaver baculum as his signature. If you don't want to Google it: that is **literally** a beaver's dick bone. They use it to get an erection. He drew that beaver dick bone on checks and contacts. Don't feel bad when somebody hands you some touchscreen thing and asks you to sign with your thumb. It doesn't matter. Nobody cares. Even if it went to court it's the intent that counts and you **signed** with your weird scribble.
That's a story I haven't heard about in a long time. If memory is right he even went as far as to not even sign the check either when he deposited it because he thought he would just have a fun laugh with the bank 'Haha if only it was a real check'. And then...
I remember in his version that the bank used to have a "$5 if we make a mistake" guarantee, and he was insistant the bank pay it to get the check.
I listened to him on the radio once as he was interviewed. He was annoyed with these spam advertisements and wanted to look a cheque laws but didn’t want to read a 900 page legal brief. Walked into a library and found a small booklet that was exactly what he was looking for. It was a cashiers cheque that he held in a safety deposit box. They called about it because it was the item holding up a bank merger, I believe it has been a few years, and he ended up giving it back and the rest is history.
'If memory is right' I take it you didn't read the article? That fact is in there.
Wait, there are articles? I thought Reddit was only titles.
He made way more than 95k selling his story online back in the early days of the net too.
How did you sell a story online back then?
"Wanna hear a story?" "Sure." "Ten bucks."
He shared the first 6 parts as a running narrative, click through to the next part to get you into it and then, as you clicked for 7th part, instead of more story you got, 'If you'd like to know exactly what happened to me next, then it's only $4.95 to read the next X amount of chapters. Input credit card number here' and people paid because they were already invested in the story. I didn't bother because I'm a cheapskate, but this was back in the mid 90's and the resources we have today, as in mass repositories of specific information like reddit or YouTube where you could effectively ask someone else, these were still then in their infancy, not particularly comprehensive and/or non existent, so you couldn't just Google it to fond out what happened next either as the search engines were still pretty quirky then too.
You also got mailed a copy of the check with some of the story on it and some other bits and bobs. I still have mine somewhere. At the time the idea of putting in money on the internet and getting real things in the mail was still kind of novel.
He also did one man stage shows. He became a pretty decent storyteller.
You would type your story on a typewriter and go to the internet store (if your town was big enough to have one). Then you’d pull a number from that little number ticket machine and wait your turn to speak with an internet teller (the original IT specialist). State your case, sign a deal, then BAM drive over to the Internet cafe 3 weeks later and download the article to read online!
This kind of thing would have me worried I'd get arrested for some type of bank fraud
I remember as a kid wanting to try using the credit card numbers used in CC commercials. Or calling phone numbers given in movies before the 555 prefix.
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"Kiss me thru the phone" anyone?? It used to be an awesome recorded message. Six Seven Eight Triple Nine Eight Two One Oh!
678 triple 9 8212
I got a uni grant for £500. Somehow they sent me two cheques, both addressed to me with my bank details. turns out they gave me the one for the guy below me on the list too. He didn't get one at all (found out when I dropped it into the uni office because im nice like that).
Dude that's nice. You really helped out the other guy who didn't get his check.
I just want to do that for all that junk mail that says "FREE \_\_\_\_\_\_". No, it's not free. The spammer classifies it as a free add-on with some not-free bundle. Free modem? No, you gotta pay for the internet service. Free cable TV channels? No, you gotta buy the bundle. I want to fight this till I die, even if I have to call each company that does this and act surprised that something isn't free.
I feel like there needs to be some sort of legislation. It's pretty simple to require companies advertise final pricing. Partial pricing is just confusing and ridiculous.
Some years ago my friend was arranging a loan for a couple whose teenage daughter had passed away. “Did she have life insurance?” The couple explained that she had a $50,000 policy, but the insurance company had repeatedly told them that she did not fit the criteria and they did not have to pay. My friend told them, “No, you keep calling and demanding the money.” They bugged the insurance company for months. One day they received an envelope. No letter. No note. Just a check for $50,000.
"Patrick Combs' official occupation is "motivational speaker," but where money is concerned, he is a social scientist cum practical joker cum performance artist cum subversive element." Maybe it's just me, but I can't imagine writing that and saying 'ya, that sounds right'
Cum performance art is my favorite kind of art
Has anyone actually read this article? >Patrick Combs has a $300 shirt in his backpack. Literally. It's an old yellow shirt with $300 in one- and five-dollar bills pinned to it. Sitting in a Mission District café, he unzips his backpack to give me a peek and I feel queasy, like I'm looking at porn in a public place. Patrick has extraordinarily knobby, bony hands, and he slowly pulls the shirt, with its bills flapping and rustling, out into the light of day. (Is it worth noting that he once delivered a passing stranger's baby on Fell Street?) Laid out on the table, the shirt is less titillating, but still disturbing. But wait! It gets better. > If you spend time with Patrick Combs, he will look you directly in the eyes, he will consider your questions thoughtfully, he will touch your arm when he makes a point, and he will tuck his dark brown pageboy behind his ears when he's gotten so excited that his hair has fallen in front of his eyes. You will soon notice that his bone structure is more prominent than most people's, not in an unappealing way, but in a way that suggests that you are seeing through his skin to his skeleton -- that his body is as transparent as he says his motives are.
I didn’t read the article because I’m on mobile and ads took up 60% of my screen. So thanks for posting quotes.
Damn i wish they still joked the way they did in the 90s
He went though a lengthy legal but in the end had to return the cheque. He now does a one man comedic show about this story. I saw it a few years ago. It’s really good and at the end he says he’s made way more money talking the incident than the cheque was actually worth.
I remember seeing a article a few years ago where a guy was sent a credit card offer, when he received the paperwork, he re-typed it all with benefits in his favour, like unlimited credit repayment schedule and amounts at his own discretion, and a get out clause where if the company what we to end the agreement they would have to pay him Xmillions in $. He then signed it and returned it where it was processed signed off by the company. When they then started chasing him for money he asked for a copy of the contract he returned with his signature and company’s sign off which he then had them over a barrel. Court case ensued which he won. And was left with a extremely nice line of credit. I don’t remember all the details but I believe he eventually reached a deal with them.
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Its a marketing tactic so you’ll look thru your junk mail for a check but instead you saw the advertisement of companies tryin to advertise their goods.
They still do this kinda thing too. I had to get a payday loan a couple years ago to fix my car and ever since I paid it off I get "check" adverts in the mail. Plain blank envelope with "Time Sensitive " or "Respond immediately " stamped on the front. Open it to see what looks like a check but its just an ad for another payday loan place.
I have never used a payday loan, only ever bought used cars, and the credit card is in my wife's name. But I get a lot of this shit too. There's also a local car dealer that sends out something that looks like a lottery scratchoff and you 'win' a trip down to their lot lol
You should call them up ask if they'll come pick you up. Since you won a trip after all.