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This seems to be a common issue with banks. Over the years, they have built system after system that stores things like your address. So you end up with addresses stored in multiple systems. When you request an update to the address, it depends how well designed the update flow is whether they update all the instances of your address. Often they miss a few instances or the accounts aren't linked so a subset get updated. in other cases, some department pulls a customer dump and uses it for 10 years without ever getting updates.

been there. done that. have the t-shirt. :/

I recently got an SBA loan. After I got the loan the bank was bought or rebranded or who knows what and they moved my account to a new website. I was still able to log into the old website and, until I tried to update my email on the account, which can only be done over the phone, I didn't notice that they had actually cloned the database, and locked their customer service representatives out of the old one. I can still log into the old system, and update my password from there, thankfully. But I've been unable to change the email address on it because the customer service representatives insist that the old system "has been deleted" and refused to connect me with any engineers or escalate the issue to someone with the ability to solve it. Ironically the old system is still responsible for email notifications, so those are locked to my old email address. I'm pretty sure this is a data leak waiting to happen, but what can I do about it?

> I live in the Netherlands, a country that primarily uses debit cards

I noticed that on my very first visit to the Netherlands. Many shops just don't accept credit card and that was very strange to me on my first visit. My only use case for debit card was to get cash out of ATM until then. So, I was really surprised to see that everybody uses debit card everywhere. And I was told that credit card is mainly used for online booking and traveling.

It is very strange... I have some assumptions that it would be better for the general public to not have a credit card culture. Very rarely have I "required" the use of one, but when I was moving for my first real job out of school it was somewhat essential as a sort of buffer until the first paycheck kicked in. Not a comfortable place, but one I bet a lot of people could resonate with, and IMO a responsible use of credit.

I can confirm the strong deterrent towards having a credit card, any personal loans really, in the Netherlands.

My bank, and I believe most banks in the Netherlands, requires proof of stable income well above minimum wage before even considering an application for a credit card. This puts credit cards out of reach of a sizable part of the population.

Also, credit checks and reporting new lines of credit to the authorities by lenders are mandatory for all personal loans, be it for getting a mortgage, issuing a credit card, paying monthly installments for a smartphone bundled with a contract, or buying on credit from Dutch online stores or mail order catalogues.

To me (Dutch) the idea of using a personal credit card is very strange for anything other than because a website/shop doesn't accept any other form of payment. If you're a company, credit makes sense. You invest on a risk of getter a greater return in the future. But paying for your groceries or rent in advance should not be considered 'investing' in your personal life imho. You should just make due with what you have.

From what I understand about the US, it is mainly to get better credit rating. This is apparently the most important social score in American society...

Note to Americans: In European countries this tends not to be a thing afaik. Privacy is taken more seriously, so there is no central & privatized system to query for credit. However, to rent an apartment, get a loan or get a new job here in Switzerland it's often required to provide something like a credit register extract from the local government office. That register will get notified when someone isn't paying bills, usually after the third notification ~2 months after a bill was issued (notifying the register is costing fees, so businesses try to avoid it as much as possible). After a couple of years, entries get deleted. This way there is an attempt of balancing privacy, social mobility and the interest of businesses to collect their revenue.

Not just the US, the UK has credit scoring too, there I think 3 credit scoring agencies. When I moved here from Europe the entire notion of credit card and credit scoring was new to me. I still use my debit card whenever possible though, just spending enough on the credit card to avoid getting it cancelled due to not using it.

Similar to what we have here. Only I don't think it common they check your credit score for a job application. Only when you want a new loan (mortgage, credit card, buy on credit, etc). You can also query the information yourself and see who requested access to it in the past months.

where is here, the US you mean? but the way I understand it, those credit score agencies are private, and their info is much more granular. e.g. it would never matter in CH and pretty much all of Europe, how much you already spent and payed off on credit in the past.

Lots of credit cards come with incentives. For example, I get reimbursed a flat 2% rate on all transactions ("cashback"). As long as I keep the card on auto-pay for the full balance, it's a win-win situation: credit building + free money.

Where does that "free" money come from? From the payment network fees, of course. Mastercard takes a 4%-ish cut, the bank keeps 3% of that, and 2% of that goes back in my pocket. Banks have to offer such benefits because they will get cannibalized by the other players if their card can't compete.

Structurally, it's actually quite stupid that there's an invisible tax which you can only recover by playing ball with the creditors... but on an individual level you would have to be foolish to not take advantage.

Same here in Germany. A normal credit card is a charge card, so billed every 30 days in full from the giro account. Credit cards that are rolling are rarer but slowly breaking their way through.

I mainly use an Amex charge card that functions like this, don't spend money I don't have, and only don't use a debit card for things because our financial system is very insecure and don't want to give the number out because getting my money back is a lot harder than just calling Amex and reporting the fraud.

It's just a normal way of paying with money you actually HAVE, not money you "borrow" from a credit card company...

It's the same in Poland. I've never had a credit card in my life and honestly I don't feel any need for it. My debit cards work pretty much everywhere around the world, including internet payments (occasionally one card may have a hiccup so I always carry two cards from different banks)

€18 a year for just having a credit card? My bank can go f itself.

Same in the UK. Both credit and debit cards tend to be MasterCard or Visa cards, so they can generally be used interchangeably.

Personally, I only tend to use credit cards for larger purchases (flights, hotels, etc) because you get some better protections if things go wrong.

Data: https://www.finder.com/uk/credit-card-statistics

It costs the merchant more to process a credit card transaction, so they don't bother unless they're likely to get a lot of tourists. These days, more and more places are going cashless too, though those places generally always accept credit cards, otherwise it'd be really hard for overseas visitors to pay.

I have a credit card here and only use it for international transactions[0], it has a fairly low limit to the point where if I'm, say, booking long-haul flights I need to pre-load it with money which fortunately only takes moments. This is partly by choice - as it's automatically paid off each month, I want to ensure I can never put more on it than will be in my bank account - but also that was the default limit when I got it.

[0] local online transactions pretty much always use a system (iDeal) that goes via your bank website.

I once had that on a bigger scale, also with a Dutch bank...

Shortly after I relocated from the Netherlands to Australia, my house was broken into and my Dutch debit card stolen. The bank would only send my new card to my local branch, which was 20,000km away. And none of my friends could pick it up because they insisted on verifying my id.

Very frustrating...

Wow that’s crazy. How did you solve it?

Sending a new password though snail mail might be the dumbest thing I’ve heard all week!

it's a thing. my bank has even special paper that obfuscates the password so you can't see it through the envelope.

Totally happens in Sweden

It's not completely dumb. Address verification can be part of an identity verification measure. It shouldn't be the only one, and an override should be possible, but it's completely valid and effective at thwarting remote attacks.

Sure, the logic lines up. I think it’s dumb just because how un-useful it is. Waiting for a week for a password reset to arrive in the mailbox is pretty painful.

Pretty secure I suppose, except in the OP’s case, where it was sent to an old address. And they wouldn’t update it over the phone? So they essentially gave some strangers access to his bank account.

Does Netherlands has mail forwarding? USPS in the states does mail forwarding if you change your address, it is very convenient.

Up to a year, but it's quite pricey (75-ish euro's for the full year).

Yeah I had that but this was just a bit more than a year later I think

I would think that you should be able to just walk to a bank branch and get the address updated on the spot.

That must have been so frustrating. We have advance technology but still not very good