Safe Deposit Boxes Aren't Safe
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
If the bank is not competent enough to assign unique numbers to each box in the first place, of course they aren't going to be competent enough to only ever empty the correct one of several boxes numbered #105, or to handle to contents safely.
It's difficult to comprehend how the bank thought having non-unique numbers would be workable. If non-unique deposit box numbers seems ok, why not non-unique bank account numbers? Or why even go up to #105, just number them all #1?
I'm always fascinated when people find a way to undermine a simple, workable system and end up with something worse than no system, or the state of affairs before the system existed.
Apparently check numbers are for my convenience not for any sort of auditing on their part.
There doesn't need to be special laws for everything.
Such a document has the same sort of purpose as a certificate of authenticity you'd get from an appraiser; but you use a notary in cases where the thing doesn't need authentication to be valuable, instead being a liquid asset with a clear market value. The notary doesn't write down such a value, or even know it; they just sign off on a description of the item, knowing that the value can later be readily determined from the description by any interested party.
Of course, to make this work, you need the notary to sign off on the contents of the collection right before you secure the collection into storage. Otherwise, you could just make arbitrary alterations to the contents yourself. For this reason—and because notaries don't usually like getting dragged all around town to vouch for things—usually a bank will retain the services of notary of their own, and offer it to safe-deposit-box users as an option. If a notary is used to vouch for the contents on first deposit, then a notary must be used on all further deposits/withdrawals to "retain the chain of custody." This turns the safe deposit box into a managed safe-deposit service.
A notary can acknowledge the depositor's claim and identity, but can't be held liable for the depositor's claims.
A notary can verify that a man with John Doe's legal ID claims to be depositing one (1) Shroud of Turin and twelve (12) Pieces of Eight from a Spanish Galleon with certificate of authenticity from the Franklin Mint, but the notary is not verifying the truth about or value of the actual contents.
I have never heard that such a thing as private notary exists.
Not sure what regulation will really accomplish other than giving them an excuse to exit the business faster.
Something like a safe deposit box should be a single page document with something like this:
- cost is $X/month and prices are revaluated every Y months and can increase by a maximum of $Z/month - may access the box X times/month without any additional fees - bank's liability is max $X or Y months of rent, whichever is higher/lower - if rent is not paid, X happens, and after Y months of non-payment, Z happens - policy/fee for lost keys
I haven't actually opened one, but I wouldn't be surprised if the contract was 10 pages long and the maximum liability was somewhere in the middle in fairly small print.
I think all contracts should be written like this. If any clause of the legal code contradicts the summary for layman, then the summary for layman should take precedence during its interpretation in the court.
This practice is not unusual. Books often start with a preface or foreword. Very dense technical or research papers start with an abstract and introduction. But for some reason contracts do not follow this practice.
https://www.chase.com/content/dam/chase-ux/documents/persona...
Imagine if it were legal for companies to pass something off as a "bank account" when they weren't actually a bank. And it explains it all in the fine print, but as we all know nobody reads the fine print, especially when the offered product is so seemingly familiar. We'd have fly-by-night operations losing people's money left and right, and then legally washing their hands of it.
Robinhood’s attempt at checking accounts come to mind...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkauflin/2018/12/14/sipc-hea...
Attorney here! (Not legal advice -- consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction).
In order to prevail in a negligence case, you have to establish duty of care in your complaint. You can't simply declare it exists and expect a court to accept it without question.
That said, I generally agree with the rest of your comment. You can always tell how much entities are really looking out for your interest by reading their limitations-of-liability clauses. Wise consumers should purchase insurance to cover the gap.
As a consumer, I have no idea what the risks of a safe deposit box are, and so have no idea what I need in the way of insurance to cover those risks.
The bank, on the other hand, has real data about the safety of their safe deposit boxes, and the value of loses when those boxes are compromised.
No, because the value stored in the boxes differs by orders of magnitude and the bank doesn't even know the value.
$200/yr is just not a reasonable amount of payment to take on a 10s of millions of dollars liability, and most box customers wouldn't pay whatever price would make that liability reasonable.
(Based on the 500x annual cap mentioned in the article you could imagine that the bank would want $20k/yr for a $10m liability)
For the longest time I used to believe that it is because Sweden is first to embrace new "technology". I have now come to understand now that it is something completely different and it will come back to bite this country in the ass in the not too distant future. I would be surprised if our economy even survives another decade without some serious restructuring.
I can imagine how harder it is than in the USA. From the article: "The combination of lax regulations and customers not paying attention to the fine print of their box-leasing agreements allows many banks to deflect responsibility when valuables are damaged or go missing."
Consumer protection is usually is a hassle for business. But, it is needed if you expect companies to behave even close to what is the public expectation. I understand that for business the lax regulation in the USA and the complete lack of rights of consumers make easier to get profits, even if it's at the cost of your own customers.
> I have now come to understand now that it is something completely different ... I would be surprised if our economy even survives another decade without some serious restructuring.
These are very strong statements at the same time that quite vague. Did I miss something? Can you explain what do you mean?
I imagine that the self-storage business in the USA is a very low regulation business, much less than opening a restaurant for example. How is the regulation for a (non-bank) "safety deposit box" business in Sweden any different than a self-storage business?
According to Wikipedia[1], the USA has ~52,000 self-storage businesses whereas Sweden has only 112. So the USA has wildly more self-storage than Sweden on a per capita basis: one storage place for 6000 people vs 92000 in Sweden. Are regulations worse in Sweden because self-storage is not a thing?
Not saying that there aren't valid use cases, but I personally don't know a single person who is using one.
1. There is a gap in housing between when someone moves out of their old place and when they can move into their new one. So they need to store all their stuff for a while.
2. Someone has a nice hardwood tree taken down in their yard and they want to keep the wood, but they don't want their garage /workshop to be full of drying wood.
3. Bulky outdoor sports equipment. Storing your kayak, etc. in your urban apartment may not be an efficient use of space.
4. If you are in business for yourself, you may need a small amount of warehouse space. The easiest way to get that in the US? Self storage.
6. Someone is going to be traveling/in the military/in the hospital/in jail/homeless for a while and can't or doesn't want to keep paying full rent just to store their stuff.
7. An older couple have houseful of truly nice furniture and/or tools but are moving to retirement home. Their kids/grandkids want the family heirlooms but don't have room for them - yet.
Do you have some additional thoughts on what this "something completely different" is? I'm a Norwegian and follow the political developments in Sweden with great interest, and sometimes a degree of morbid fascination.
I get the impression that, among other things, there is a push towards greater surveillance and tracking of everybody's spending behaviors, coupled with a political correctness craze that seems to divert the attention from more central issues. Would be curious if you had any thoughts on the powers that drive these developments, or whether there is anything related that's not too obvious.
Negative interest rates: https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonconstable/2019/01/31/the-u...
This has really just begun, things are going to become more and more nonsensical like people getting paid interest to take out a mortgage and paying the bank interest on their deposits. Both are already happening to a limited extent in Denmark:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-23/bankers-s...
In the days when banks needed branch networks and physical money the barriers to entry were high. We're now getting to the point where new entrants can, and increasingly are entering the marketplace.
I suppose you could argue that these new entrants are going to enter the online only marketplace anyway, but then how are the established banks going to differentiate themselves? What advantages do they have? Apart from a legacy Cobol codebase.
I also used to have a safe in my previous apartment (with less valuable papers), had a break-in and they didn't bother opening it there, they took the whole thing weighing 40-ish kg.
So where am I supposed to store such kind of valuables now?
F*ing stupid government.
Aren't these kinds of documents just representations of the fact in Norway? That is, the document itself isn't important and you can just request a new one when needed?
Check out the UK's Windrush scandal for example (named for the Empire Windrush, a boat that brought the first of thousands of Carribean immigrants to Britain in the late 1940s). A government department destroyed the records of who it invited to come here, and then a subsequent government insisted that if people didn't have proof it had no way to be sure they weren't illegal immigrants and so they should be deported under what it called the "Hostile environment policy"! In some cases there are old people, grand parents and great-grandparents, worked in the UK all their lives and then declared "illegal" and sent "home" to a country they'd left as kids because the government deliberately destroyed its own records. Outrageous.
Anyway, I wouldn't even know what documents to store as I simply don't have too many of them -- even birth certificates aren't a thing here.
And then, administrative f*ups are not without precedent as exemplified here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Erased
IIRC the cover letter I got with "statsborgerbrevet", it is non-reissuable. It is handed out only to you in person, you can't even send your lawyer.
In the unlikely case I'd need a new birth certificate, I'd, I'd have to travel to my country of birth. Hassle.
Call me old-fashioned, but paper is still the best archival/backup medium for stuff of real importance.
Lesson learned.
If all the banks are dropping this service, there's probably other companies that will start doing it.
Could you drive to Sweden and store them there if you don't need them that often?
Someone mention Sweden isn't much better:
Do you think they would have taken it had they known what was in it?
I have some papers, and some data discs, that would be of no use to a burglar but that I would rather not lose. I keep them in a small safe (14 kg, 10 liter). I keep it out in the open and unlocked. The hope is that if it draws a burglar's attention, they will see that the contents are useless and either ignore it, or if they decide they like the safe itself dump the content and just take the safe.
If it were locked they might imagine all kinds of valuable, untraceable things I could be keeping.
So why even have a safe if I don't lock it? Because it is rated to keep papers and CD/DVD discs safe for one hour in a 1700℉ (930℃) fire.
No, they wouldn't. Like in your case, it contained some grade transcripts, PhD diploma (of sentimental value; no the university doesn't reissue them), and a valid passport from my previous country (which I revoked immediately... and PI in that passport had no relation to my PI in Norway.) and a backup disk with uncritical stuff.
> So why even have a safe if I don't lock it? Because it is rated to keep papers and CD/DVD discs safe for one hour in a 1700℉ (930℃) fire.
Again, fire-resistance was my motivation as well. But the door was sitting loose (i.e., it sat fast only when locked) and I was in doubt of how much fire protection it would offer if left unlocked.
Wow. The incompetence is truly amazing.
There's a local bank near my workplace provides such a service, and I use them as a last resort of crypto id recovery. The downside is that they have a fingerprint system, but they do have a human agent to verify your identity.
It did talk about the sentimental value of a lifetime of collecting one-of-a-kind timepieces. That can't be replaced by an insurance payout.
Work from a basis of "mistakes happen, how can I minimize the impact?"
Also I consider a loss and insurance payout to be worse than no loss and no payout. Because it's a hassle to do the paperwork and rebuy items. And there might be sentimental items that a payout doesn't fully replace. So it's best to have a system that reduces the chance of a loss.
You want the risk (bank malfeasance) and risk manager (insurance company) widely separated (agency risk, moral & morale hazard, conflicts of interest, etc.).
The insurer should demand and receive rights to collect damages from the bank.
The bank itself can insure that risk independently.
If that's possible then yes, that's great. But it sounds like banks refuse to do that. Some banks cap their liability at $500, or $25,000, or 10x annual rent, or 500x annual rent.
Remember all those stero install places in the 80s-90s that also installed alarms? What other job were the installers trained for if they quit?
That being said, it should be obvious to the customer that insurance is needed. Actually reading the lease agreement should provide enough information on determining your insurance requirements. If Wells Fargo only caps their liability at $500, then you should have a policy to cover the rest. The laughable $500 liability really goes to show you they don’t care and don’t stand behind their product.
So here, I suspect the victim would have been compensated fairly -- and reasonably satisfied to receive payment -- in cash, as opposed to replacement of the lost items.
[1] https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2018/07/30/a-timeline-of-wells-...
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-22/don-t-...
Well, you're still in luck.
You can search how to bury your stuff, ie:
http://www.howtoburyyourstuff.com/
Really.
The whole site appears to be really bad advice-- instructing you to bury large metal containers of your valuable stuff on land that isn't yours. It is the stuff of detectorists fantasies.
You have that the other way around...
> ..if I could find.. ..would be full.. ..fantasies.
Would you want to bet on how these guesses will pan out and see how this approach looks after sincere efforts to analyze it (for wealth preservation or other uses)?
> that site
There'rrr others worth looking at; probably others that contradict a good portion of it, or just have another point of view.
(And if you actually need to worry about things like that, then you've got (or should have) people who think of things like that for you)
Frankly your main threat is probably a fire or flood. Not a Russian agent breaking into your house.
If you can't do the monitoring, and you face very advanced attackers like this, it's probably best to only use a laptop that you physically keep with you at all times, and then you can keep your Yubikey with you at all times too.
If you just want to protect against an attacker sophisticated enough to steal a Yubikey but not enough to install malware, then maybe instead of a second Yubikey in the safe deposit box, you could have an encrypted recovery code in the safe deposit box, and either memorize the password, or store the password on your computer.
I've never heard of attackers stealing a Yubikey though. More likely is the attacker will social engineer the website's support into giving over your account.
A couple of years ago, I had my wallet fall out of my pocket while I was on a boat.
My phone was back at the dock safe and dry so I had my primary authenticator. And I probably had printed copies somewhere at home.
I've been much more diligent since then about making sure there are copies and that they're accessible.
You should align your storage choice to your contingency plan. For a lost root your contingency plan should involve distrusting and replacing the hierarchy underneath the root. To the extent that you wish to avoid executing the plan, buy a better safe so you are less likely to need the plan.
It is OK for your contingency plan to include "Go bankrupt and cease to exist" if you are any sort of corporate entity.
"Installing safes onsite and self monitoring" was literally the example given by the person asking for other suggestions.
In any case, the issue of securing something that you only want to use in extremely rare cases is still an issue—"nowhere" isn't a solution to that problem, although I can see the argument that hardware keys aren't the best choice of storage medium (although as an efficiency measure it could be useful to have one in there as well so you can go quickly if it works).
It is also sometimes in your interest to get things in the custody of an individual, ideally your attorney. If the owner of a deposit box becomes aware of your death, they will seal it until a court order is obtained.
My aunt was a hoarder. At that point, I was actually relieved that the box was empty and I wouldn't have to go through the process of claiming the contents.
My aunt was also somebody who bought gold and silver, something that was promoted heavily to people in conservative Orange County California when Obama became president and end times were near. Chase made it very clear that I was basically storing things at my own risk. I could deposit US coins from the 1880s at face value of $20 and get FDIC insurance. Instead, since they were about $1200 each at the time, I put them in the safe deposit box.
Before that, in Oregon, my dad died but I was on the list of people allowed to use the box so I had access. That might be an option if there's somebody you really trust.
The banks do charge about $100 to drill the lock if you lose the keys. It's possible that you could have somebody authorized to use the box but not give them a key.
It creates problems when folks store their wills in the box!
But honestly... it strikes me as a bit odd that you'd put objects worth many millions in a box that costs a $246 fee per year and then expect high safety standards.
Or rent a safe box and get separate insurance?
On display in your home or a museum. A painting that can’t be seen is just a stained piece of canvas.
Lobby and interest groups are strong enough that laws that actually look after the customer rather than the corporation are few and far between.
You are not loaning the valuables in a safe deposit box to the bank, they're just storing them, which is why it costs money. Maybe it should cost more money.
Otherwise you will never assume the conditions can change without prior notice (none that they can prove anyway, signature on receipt is too cumbersome for the bank it seems), that the risk you're taking comes from the bank, that the bank can drill the safe and take everything inside, or that the bank can take your stuff "by mistake", no notice, and get to keep it. It's common sense. The courts disagree. They see all this as perfectly legal because it is. That's what lobbies buy you.
> Banks typically argue - and courts have in many cases agreed - that customers are bound by the bank’s most-current terms, even if they leased their box years or even decades earlier.
> And the scant protections offered by state laws are often simply ignored
If you want to see how ridiculous it sounds when applied to another industry with slightly shallower pockets imagine this: after paying all your premiums for insurance the insurance company changes the conditions to say "covers 0% of the damage" then steals your car and keeps it.