Comment by rcurry | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rcurry | Hacker News Reader

It gets even weirder when your bank acts like a scammer. A few weeks ago I was trying to help my wife add her USBank credit card to Apple Pay and Apple Pay said I needed to call this number to finish setting up the card. So I call the number and the guy is very friendly and asks me for a bunch of identity verification details, which I provide to him, but then he asks us to send a code back that will be coming over text messaging - yes, I initiated the phone call, but I suddenly realize that the number Apple directed me to was not the same number on my USBank card. Being a bit paranoid I tell the guy “Look, nothing personal but I get nervous when people ask for a verification code to be read back to them, I’m just going to call the regular number and go from there, okay?” Instead of being friendly, this guy suddenly gets in my face and is like “Oh, you’ll give me all this other info but won’t read that code back to me? I’m Fraud Prevention dude, good luck getting this done calling the main number. Oh, and just for this I’m putting a block on your card.” I hung up immediately and called US Bank’s main number and asked to talk to a supervisor - sure as hell, it turns out the guy I had talked to did work in their fraud prevention department and actually had retaliated against me by locking my credit card. It was the most incredibly ugly thing I’ve ever seen from a customer service department.

I had a problem with US Bank just trying to open an account with them. They sent me these instructions on how to upload a copy of my ss card through some “secure” Cisco system. The email I get has a different subject line than what the instructions said it would, it has this HTML attachment that doesn’t render right, and it was missing the button they said it would to create some kind of account. I was like wtf and their security department said if I didn’t like it then I had to go into a branch to handle everything.

Went with a local credit union instead

Something I learned (almost the hard way) was to always make sure I have a Bank/Credit Card's own app installed (and logged in) before trying to add to Apple Pay. Apple Pay can and will redirect you to verification steps in the app if the app is installed. More often than not, if you initiate "Add to Wallet" from the app itself there's no additional verification step.

The setup flow is hit or miss.

With some banks, it was seamless to setup. With another bank, it wasn't clear how to finish setting up Apple Pay. I don't recall if I called them or went through their app to actually set it up. It was definitely confusing, and the Apple Pay onboarding screens didn't provide useful instructions.

I do not envy the Apply Pay team's challenge to have onboarding systems that span the vast disarray of bank systems (because I know some of my banks and how technically behind they can sometimes be, and I know mine aren't the worst offenders). It is probably a small miracle of engineering and patience that Apple Pay onboarding works at all. (And obviously it is complex enough scammers are using it as an excuse to scam, given the article contents here.)

What happened after that, was it a hassle to unblock things? Though at that point I'd probably just close out my account & switch to another bank's credit card.

They were actually quite nice about it, unblocked my card and down the road I went. Good for them, but they should have terminated that guy because he really did get so obnoxious that I actually thought I was taking to a scammer.

the customer service and attitude towards the ordinary person at average american banks is rivaled only by american domestic airlines.

It would be nice if banks need this kind of a process could agree on how it should work.

Like maybe the automated "we will never ask you for this info" email should only contain decimal digits and the "we are on the phone and will send you a confirmation code to read back" could only contain alpha characters. Or something obvious and consistent.

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