Comment by dkarl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dkarl | Hacker News Reader

> So we’ll do the whole @financialombuds thing and fill in a million faceless forms. But I bet that not a single person will ever turn up at her home, sit down with her and just talk to her. Shame on you @HSBC_UK

Such a weird place to look for care and comfort.

Let's grant that an elderly person needs assistance and compassion in this time, and as a community we should provide it. Would we want the bank to provide it? Hell no! There's an enormous conflict of interest there. In this situation I wouldn't want somebody from the bank cozying up to my mom and earning her trust. In fact, I'd go ballistic if they tried. Their financial incentives are to use that trust to persuade her not to exercise her full rights, to avoid her becoming aware of all the avenues of recourse available to her, to make her feel that everything will be okay if she lets the matter drop.

What we really want for someone in her situation, besides emotional support, is a savvy legal advocate who will let the bank know that she is aware of her rights and the bank's obligations, and that she has legal resources at her disposal.

That's great in theory, but you missed the part where the fraudsters stole all her money. There is no Legal Aid for cases like these. Charities or (in this case) relatives are the best hope for her.

Lot of passive voice everywhere for some odd reason

> There is no Legal Aid for cases like these. Charities or (in this case) relatives

That's the part that could be fixed. If we manage to provide legal assistance to every criminal defendant who can't afford it, we could provide a consumer advocate for people in her situation, backed up with a lawyer when necessary. They wouldn't have to do much; their attention and their ability to bring legal resources to bear would motivate the bank to do what they are obligated to do.

Thankfully the Financial Ombudsman is a pretty good arbiter (for consumers), and when cases like this land on their desks they love to make examples of banks. It might take a couple of months, but expect this lady to get 100% of her money back, an apology, and a considerable amount of compensation back from HSBC.

or maybe banks, and more specifically people who work at banks, should not be incentivized to screw their clients at every opportunity. which is to say, we should not have a legal, fiscal, and political regime which encourages or excuses this behavior. and, as people, we should not tolerate or accept it

you are, on the one hand, calling for "community" to provide for assistance and compassion and to respect basic human dignity. then, on the other, you accept and normalize this notion that all human interaction is explicitly transactional, and even adversarial. these are orthogonal goals.

There's a Nobel Peace Prize waiting for you if you can solve the problem at that level.

Not really. The notion that all human interaction is transactional and adversarial is relatively new, and the idea that this is actually good and should be encouraged is even newer. It only seems like an iron law of human nature because individualistic thinking is so prevalent in the West and especially the US and the UK, while models of human behavior that even remotely orient around collective goals, behavior, and action, are discouraged and often regarded as something like extremism.

The hardness of the problem is borne of powerful actors making it such: there is nothing inherently difficult about it.

Why? Why shouldn't we obligate businesses with dealing with the HUMAN results of the suffering they cause by not properly vetting people claiming to be you?

The very concept of a business exists at the whims of society. We can make them do better if we want.

I don't think its feasible to expect a global bank with literally hundreds of millions, if not over a billion, customers to be dispatching someone to do a household visit.

if they can't do business at that scale in a way that is acceptable to most people they do business with, then why should they be allowed to do business at that scale at all?

Most people wouldn't consider a personal concierge service to the level that banking staff come to your actual house as 'acceptable levels of service'

Bet they manage to get someone out to your house if you stop paying your mortgage or car payments, though.

Why not? Why is it expected that massive companies cut corners on all aspects of customer support and it be okay?

If they don’t have the means or resources to do business, let them stop doing business. Someone else will take their place, and with proper regulations the successor will take this sort of things more seriously.

I really don’t understand all these “business will become too onerous and they’ll lose money” argument. Society does not owe them success. If a business plan does not work, then let the company die. (It won’t be the case here, British retail customers are a blip on HSBC’s balance sheets).

Businesses aren't human beings, and there's no meaningful way to confront them with emotional consequences. Whatever obligations they have should be satisfied in a way that gives them the least possible influence over the process and the least possible way of taking credit for it. I.e., through taxes and fines that fund aid for the victims.

You make it sound like a business is some fundamental force of nature. Humans invented them. We can change the way they work.

Bank should have insurance for that and should have paid all the money back to the accounts.

If it turns out that there was no fraud, they could look at clawing them back.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com