People who work in food service or customer service: What’s the dumbest thing a customer ever insisted was “the law” or “illegal”?
Brought to you by my discovery that some people think that “the customer is always right” isn’t the slogan of a long-dead department store, but rather it’s an actual call the cops law.
Working in a financial call centre, a certain type of person considered us to have stolen their money if they sent us an funds for an investment and refused to send anti-money laundering documents with it, because we also couldn’t return the money without them. Sorry, buddy.
That honestly should be the law. If you can’t accept it without documentation, you should be required to return it. Of course you can also report it, but that’s separate.
No, since people can just wire you money. Then, if you return it, they can attempt to use that transaction to prove dirty money is clean. If it is clean in the first place, they should be able to provide documentation.
I’m not seeing how that proves the transaction is clean.
If I put money in a bank account, then transfer it to another account, then back to the same one, the transfer back doesn’t obfuscate anything. If it’s not caught on the initial deposit in the banking system, then I’m not seeing how any subsequent transactions matter.
OK, well I disagree that it ‘doesn’t obfuscate anything’. Additional transactions are in a launder’s interest.
But also consider that If unknown monies can just be returned, then a launderer can keep trying, with multiple institutions in multiple ways, until they are successful in investing it.
Speaking for the UK, that’s every financial institution. The whole point is that everyone is required to complete checks to make sure you are who you say you are, if you refuse them then that is an indicator of money laundering. Even just receiving and returning money helps a money launderer establish a paper trail and assists in layering to legitimise the money they gave you. That’s a big no-no, obviously, so it can’t simply be returned without risking significant legal implications from the regulator. All expectations are set up front on this when beginning transactions.
I understand that’s the law as it currently is. I’m saying that it shouldn’t result in any legal ramifications.
It seems they weren’t well setup, if they were then he wouldn’t have gotten to the point that he wired money before filling the required paperwork out.
Okay, do you work in the UK financial services industry, or an associated regulatory body? Because this was an infrequent circumstance that came as a result of the inattentiveness and belligerence of specific customers. There’s no industry wide issue and this was whilst working for one of the largest investment platforms in the UK.
If you don’t like how things work, then that’s fine, but it was working as intended and would have been no issue if the client had just followed the required, and explained, process. I feel it goes without saying that it is very important to maintain anti-money laundering processes in our financial systems, both legally and conceptually.
I’m not saying it’s a common issue. I’m saying that something like this should never occur.
I’m also not saying that I don’t value anti money laundering process. I agree those are very important.
However, I also think it’s even more important that people aren’t deprived of their money without due process. If you can’t accept it, because they’re not proving the required evidence then you should be required to return it unless there’s more to it. In order to keep the money, there needs to be some form of evidence showing money laundering not just an absence of evidence altogether.
If you receive money without verification and return it no questions asked, then you are opening yourself up as an avenue by which people can launder money. Every receipt and retransfer of that money legitimises that money further and makes you party to the crime. The money is in limbo and can be returned as soon as the regulatory needs are met, but to do otherwise just voids the whole process.
At this point they are depriving themselves of the money by refusing to verify themselves, it’s a basic identify and address check. This is an investment company, they weren’t sending us their rent money, they wanted to invest it. They were just pissed that we expected them to follow the same process that every client needs to follow when investing.
It doesn’t void the whole process. It may very slightly increase the degree to which it’s easier to launder money (I’m not convinced on that aspect since the money already originated from within the banking system).
Rather it prioritizes people’s right to their own property.
What you’re saying makes sense to me if you’re talking about a deposit of cash that was mailed. It doesn’t make sense to me for a wire or electronic transfer.
At one point I worked for an electronics repair shop fixing mostly phones, laptops, and game consoles. We actually had a great manager and we all just enjoyed fixing things, so we really weren’t out to rip people off like they usually came in thinking. Our store policy was even if we didn’t fix it, we didn’t charge you, and we stood by it.
One day a lady drops off her laptop with a cracked screen. Part of the screen was still working, but the majority was non functional and would surely worsen over time. We diagnose the laptop and give the customer a quote and she agrees to the repair. I let her know that once we start the repair, the previous screen will be destroyed during the removal process since it has no more integrity from being broken, she’s fine with that. We get the part in a few days later and I start the repair. At this point the woman’s husband calls - literally while I have the cracked screen half out of the laptop - and says stop the repair and return it how it was. We were like, we’re happy to give the laptop back, but unfortunately we’ve already started the repair and while removing the old screen it broke more so it would end up being returned in a worse condition.
This fucking guy screamed at me over the phone about how what we were doing was illegal, how we never got proper authorization blah blah. We offered to even do the repair at cost, but no that wasn’t good enough. When the husband and wife finally came into the store to pick up the laptop, he left screeching about how he was going to sue us. Unsurprisingly we never heard from him again.
We developed a very effective strategy for this at a furniture store I used to work at; the moment the customer makes any suggestion of legal action, all our employees were trained to immediately say “I understand. Have a good day” and end the conversation on the spot. The unhappy customer immediately tries to press the issue, because what they want is for us to magically teleport a couch here from China or whatever, and at that point the employee says “I’m sorry but as you’ve notified us that this issue is now the subject of a pending legal action any further communication will have to go though our legal team.”
Repeating this a couple more times would inevitably lead to the customer admitting that they were bluffing.
Second lawyer is mentioned, shut down all communication and offer only “Due to your pending litigation, Please direct all correspondence to our lawyers as we are not authorized to discuss legal matters.”
Why do I feel like this is a domestic abuse situation. Husband broke her laptop in order to reduce her attempts to communicate with others? She goes to get it repaired, he finds out.
I think it’s the belief that the wife can’t authorise the repair…
I worked at a book store, and the card readers processed everything as credit. Which is generally fine, since most folks’ debit cards can be run either way.
I had an old dude come up and pay with his debit card. When it didn’t ask for a pin, he started screaming at me about how I’d just illegally charged his credit card. I politely explained that it didn’t work that way and he just kept yelling. So I rudely explained that it didn’t work that way.
Dude, you think you inserted your debit card and that magically, our system somehow found out your credit card information and charged that instead?
In Australia, debit cards are dual-network, and credit transactions cost far more than debit transactions. Debit uses a local system called EFTPOS that has low fees, whereas credit uses the card issuer’s network (Mastercard, Visa, etc) and they take a far larger percentage.
I have no idea, Do debit cards have better protections in australia?
Cause in America, if you run a debit card, you get no protections (edit, banks will generally give you your money back if the card is stolen, after an investigation, nothing else really). I literally have been told by a bank that “If you wanted to make charge backs and have protections, you should have used your credit card”
A lot of people only have debit cards in Australia, and consumer protection is a lot stronger than the USA. Most credit cards in Australia have an annual fee, and the only rewards are usually frequent flyer points, so they’re nowhere near as common as in the USA.
I’m Aussie but I’ve been living in the USA for 10 years. American credit cards are something else. So many good cards with no annual fee, great perks (like extended warranty), and great rewards (like cash back, or points that are worth way more than in Australia).
I work for an ISP and I’ve been told on several occasions by customers that it is illegal for us to see a customer’s connected devices on the router that we supply and manage… Bro if you want to manage your own network, buy your own router and stop bothering me.
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