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Comment by qingcharles | Hacker News Reader

Whenever I have an issue with a product that support can't/won't resolve I go to one of those sites where you can buy contact info and purchase the CEO's email addresses and phone numbers then go at them. I just had to do it for the recent Google class action payout (got me my check overnighted).

I did it with Cash App though and it backfired ("Your account has been terminated for contacting employees outside of the support system")

Now, how much is Sundar Pichai's cellphone number going to cost me? I just want to get into my Google account that I have the username, password and recovery email for, but not the old phone number.

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> I did it with Cash App though and it backfired ("Your account has been terminated for contacting employees outside of the support system")

Write the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They'll get you sorted right quick.

First thing I did. Didn't help at all :(

That sucks. Are they not under the CFPB's jurisdiction?

What about your Congresscritter? I usually CC them on any complaints and they pick it up if there's a problem.

OK, I just looked up the CFPB's response. They just acted as middle-man. The response from Cash App was that I should file a chargeback with FedEx and claim that the package was never received (literally lie to FedEx even though their own system shows the package was returned). After that response I was allowed to respond and the CFPB then closed the complaint.

Here's my final response:

https://imgur.com/a/xS7k84X

Is this illegal somehow? I totally understand why a company would take a hard stance against customers contacting employees through weird side channels, and I have a hard time imagining what law they would be violating by enforcing that rule.

I am not a lawyer and I have no idea. That’s why when I’ve been wronged by an institution with dozens of lawyers, I contact the CFPB. That’s what consumer protection is supposed to be.

Unfortunately based on the OP’s experience it looks like the CFPB had been severely handicapped since the last time I had to complain to them. Now they only have authority over banks with more than $10 billion in assets.

If you're willing to share, I'd love to hear the Cash App story. Seems like a slap in the face for them to terminate your account for trying to resolve an issue with their service.

In very quick summary: I bought a product online using my Cash App debit card. Turns out with more research company was a total scam. After 6 weeks of not shipping anything I asked for refund. They shipped "something" to me, but FedEx failed to deliver the box (said I was out but never even came down my street) and the package was returned to the sender. Sender closed their corporation and opened under another name and continued scam.

I asked Cash App to do a chargeback. They told me their system doesn't allow chargebacks where the goods were "delivered." I told them they were never delivered. They argued that they were delivered back to the sender, therefore they were "delivered." I got all their execs cellphones and started politely calling them. One escalated it to their "Executive Support" who gave me the same answer, then my account was terminated. They did issue me a refund as part of the termination, but I can no longer use Cash App which is very frustrating for someone at the bottom of the food chain like me who interacts regularly with people who only use Cash App as their banking.

    In the interest of resolving your dispute, we are providing, as a one-time courtesy, a reimbursement of $93.75 for your transaction with Wibargin, LLC.  Additionally, we are electing to terminate your Cash App account (as allowed in our Terms of Service, section XIII.8).  As a result of the termination of your Cash App account, you will no longer be able to use Cash App and its services going forward.

    You will be able to access your account in order to cash out your remaining funds, however all other features, including the Cash Card, will be permanently disabled.

I hope the absolute contempt CashApp seem to treat their users with backfires on them in the future when they inevitably see actual competition.

Terminating a users account while simultaneously admitting fault by providing reimbursement just screams to me that the leadership team are completely out of touch and don't want to hear a thing from their own customers.

Venmo did this to me in 2019 :)

They thought I was under 18, so they asked for my drivers license. I sent a picture and they responded with:

"Thank you for sending us your ID." "Your account has been permanently deactivated and we regret to inform you that we can no longer offer you the Venmo service."

Absolutely mind boggling.

PayPal recently did this to a friend - asked them to verify their account, then terminated it.

Maybe asking for the ID is a ruse. They already intended to close the account, they just want your ID so you can’t open another one.

I never thought about this before. Instagram asked for this and the literal second I hit upload on my photo it said I was permanently banned with no appeal possible. This is a good scam.

Probably want to make sure you can't sign up for it at a later time.

This is great. We need more people doing this kind of work. The degree to which company employees and leadership insulate themselves from their customers should be unacceptable.

You shouldn't be frustrated by your account being terminated. Why would you want to continue to do business with such a shitty company. I'd take that as an opportunity to explain to other people "who only use Cash App" for whatever reason, what a shitty company they are.

> I'd take that as an opportunity to explain to other people "who only use Cash App" for whatever reason, what a shitty company they are.

Not only that but the more people they run into who don't use Cash App the more likely they'll start using alternatives to also be paid by those people, giving less of a societal reliance on a corporation who will terminate your account because you used outside channels to resolve an issue regular support wouldn't help with.

What people only use Cash App? I've never come across a member of this group. I'm an American who uses (in declining order of frequency) credit cards, Venmo, cash, PayPal, ACH, debit cards, checks. I don't recall anyone even offering to deal in Cash App, let alone exclusively.

> What people only use Cash App? I've never come across a member of this group.

According to https://www.businessofapps.com/data/cash-app-statistics/

51 million monthly active users in 2022 and 13 million people had the Cash Card in 2021.

People at the bottom of the ladder. All the people I deal with coming out of prison find the quickest and easiest way to get a debit card is Cash App.

On a bit of a tangent, something very similar happened to me recently -- splashed out ~£300 for a product and after about 4 weeks of no further contact from the company, turns out it was a scam, and the sender shut down the corporation, website, wiped it from the various archive sites etc.

Fortunately I'd paid using my Amex, and American Express support were incredibly helpful in making me whole pretty much right away. I recall the payment gateway being a Stripe thing, so I really hope the scammer got hit hard somehow.

It's absurd to me America needs some stupid third party app to send money to other bank accounts. In the UK, we can simply login to our bank accounts or the bank phone app, type their sort code and account number, or IBAN for international, and it arrives within minutes but usually seconds.

I don't know why you are getting downvoted. Most of Europe the same -- easy, free cash transfers.

It’s because HN is mostly American and can’t deal with criticism focused on that.

Thank you for this story - I was this close to get aboard and ask all my 42 employees to get one, now we will move forward to researching different solution.

Here in Australia we have the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) which is designed to help consumers, we also have pretty good consumer laws - this has stopped various companies from expanding here due to not wanting to deal with our Government, however given Australians spend $$, they need to dance to their tune.

In my case (below) ACCC said they dont engage for individuals, its an industry level org. Quote: "The ACCC is not a complaints handling body, so we are unable to help you resolve your dispute"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38691458

I always thought Fair Trading was the version for individuals

Buying a private phone number and contacting it for support could be considered harassment.

What about when your device is bricked, and you can't use it any more and the company does not engage with you?

What the legal system says, the words they use, are not that interesting...

Yes, it's still harassment. You have other means of expressing your frustration at the company, but contacting individuals directly (who may or may not even be in charge of that aspect of the company!) is not a valid way of doing so.

... unless it is the only way. Work with dogs, wake up with fleas.

That person is responsible. They make, or oversee, the decision to brick phones for probably thousands of people. Probably this makes even more money for them, as the greater percentage will buy a new phone, rather than reach some sort of resolution. There is no legal comeback for this immoral executive decision. In fact, the legal system will find in favour of the CEO. Their contacts will allow it, and if not, they will lobby for laws to be put in place to allow it in future.

What of any of all that is "right"? It's simple force; right is might.

Do you know what "right" is? Do you think what is legal, is also right?

Another option is contacting shareholder relations.

Helps if you're a stockholder, but you don't have to be (you can decide on the ethics of going through non-standard methods when standard methods don't work). Those inboxes are usually monitored by competent people and they'll at least forward your email to the right people so they can close out the case that gets created on every email on their side.

Patio11 goes into this here: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r... in the section: "Where exactly should I address letters?". Also goes into contacting their legal department. If you can't find an address, can always send a letter to headquarters "ATTN LEGAL DEPARTMENT", those get opened by expensive people.

I've emailed shareholder relations for a company I owned, a smaller company, like $2b, about some question I had about one of their annual reports. Didn't get a response after a followup. Sold half my stock because of their non-response and was very happy I did (unsure if my question was a sensitive topic for them, but c'mon, at least give me a fuck off reply)

Thank you. I was thinking of following up with Cash App's legal dept just to see if they have anyone worth a crap working there who might see sense and reverse the decision.

Thanks for the info. I accidentally downvoted you while copying the text, sorry about that.

We just had a thing like this in my company. A customer asked a technical question to our assistant who forwarded the question to the dev team. Within an hour (before she could reply) they wrote an angry email to the CEO "exposing" her and overall acting petty. The CEO then forwarded that email to her supervisor who then just forwarded it to her again. It was quite unpleasant for every party involved. It's just a hit and miss and if one does this, it definitely shouldn't be an petty/angry rant.

So your dev team humiliated a random female employee for trying to provide good customer support...?

Sounds like a fun place to work for. /s

Or "they" refers to the customer?

The pronouns are super confusing in that comment, but I'm pretty sure that "they" is the customer and "she" is the assistant.

The "before she could reply" implies that whoever wrote the angry email was being impatient and didn't wait for a reply to an email that they had sent. The only replies being awaited are devs->assistant or assistant->customer, and since the devs were only identified as a group it makes more sense to interpret the assistant as the (singular female) victim of the impatience and the customer as the one who got impatient waiting for a reply.

Where in the world can you buy information like that? Seems incredible that something like that exists

SignalHire was the one I used recently, and Jigsaw was the one before.

Basically whenever a friend of yours installs some shitty free app on their phone and it demands to exfiltrate all their contacts your email address and phone numbers get scooped up and sold to the highest bidder. You can guarantee Tim Cook has a bunch of friends, grandmas, etc that have no idea how to use their phones and have 400 apps installed all syphoning off Tim's contact details.

This comment caused me to run a thought experiment about how many grandmas a person can have. I decided the answer is exactly as you described: a bunch.

> You can guarantee Tim Cook has a bunch of friends, grandmas, etc that have no idea how to use their phones and have 400 apps installed all syphoning off Tim's contact details

But how do those apps know it's THE Tim Cook and not one of dozens of other guys named Tim Cook? Also, what if, and this is usually the case, most people don't have you as "Tim Cook" in their phonebooks, but as "Big Baws", "Honey Bunny" or "Timmeh 12 inches uncut"?

> But how do those apps know it's THE Tim Cook and not one of dozens of other guys named Tim Cook? Also, what if, and this is usually the case, most people don't have you as "Tim Cook" in their phonebooks, but as "Big Baws", "Honey Bunny" or "Timmeh 12 inches uncut"?

If a lot of people have that same phone number in their contacts but only a handful have it as "Big Baws", "Honey Bunny" or "Timmeh 12 inches uncut" but do have as Tim Cook, or even have his job description, email address and other stuff attached to it too, it's safe to say it's a dead ringer to be Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, Inc.

You can do network analysis.

He should appear in the contact list of relevant people (Apple employees, press, ...)

Good point.

Curious to which Google class action payout you are talking about.

I'm still waiting for the check from https://googleplaydevelopersettlement.com/, was it this one?

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