THE PSYCHOLOGIST : Westpac customer calls out bank after teller's alarming question and claims they are 'punishing' him for using cash

Westpac customer calls out bank after teller's alarming question and claims they are 'punishing' him for using cash

Cautions used to prevent scams make sense but it is hard to see how the actions described below help anyone or anything. Bureaucratic stupidity would seem to be the best descriptions of them. Banks should clearly have a better appeal process for such instances

In the circumstances, I am mildly surprised that when I recently transferred a sum in excess of $10,000 to someone else I experienced no friction at all from CBA. But I did put in the note field "school fees" so that was probably calming. Expensive private school fees are well-known

An outspoken bank critic claims Westpac froze his accounts when he tried to withdraw $2,000 and would not allow the transaction until he told them what the money was for.

Author Crispin Rovere said it was only by showing the branch manager the publicity his previous run-in with Westpac generated that he was allowed access to his money.

'She then visibly panicked,' Mr Rovere told Daily Mail Australia.

However, he said he still had to wait 45 minutes before the manager came out and said the accounts were unfrozen.

'There is no conceivable explanation for this continued trespass other than seeking punish me for using cash,' Mr Rovere said.

A little more than a year ago Westpac froze his accounts when he tried to make a substantial cash deposit that was considerably less than the $10,000 threshold banks must report to the federal government.

Mr Rovere said Westpac's 'anti-fraud team' were the stumbling block on both occasions and acted dismissively when he challenged them on their right to stop him using his funds the way he wanted.

'The teller was in communication with the Westpac fraud team to get an explanation,' Mr Rovere said about the more recent funds denial.

'The fraud team demanded to know what the money was for.

'When I said it wasn't any of their business the fraud team simply replied "if you are not willing to disclose what you want the money for we will not unfreeze you accounts. Thank you for contacting us, goodbye".'

It was then that Mr Rovere had to call in the manager.

'I have since submitted another internal complaint regarding this incident but have yet to receive Westpac's reply,' Mr Rovere said.

'Last time Westpac said that it was because the deposit was made from a state other than where it was opened. 'However, this time the freezing occurred when I was physically standing in a branch in the same state as the account was opened.'

Mr Rovere accused the bank of not being truthful when it issued him a statement about the block which read 'we've detected unusual online activity on your account'.

'Westpac are straight liars,' he said. 'There was no "online activity" - I was literally standing in the branch in-person.'

Mr Rovere is promoting a petition to federal Parliament that declares 'access to banking is a human right'.

'Banks must not be allowed to deny financial services to customers unless explicitly required by law,' the petition states.

Westpac said that 'due to confidentiality obligations we are unable to comment on individual customer matters'.

'In response to the high number of scams and fraud cases, we apply extra care to ensure the safety and security of customers,' a spokesperson said.

'This might include temporarily blocking an account when unusual activity is observed so relevant checks can be carried out.'

Last week TV personality Prue MacSween told Daily Mail Australia she had a similar experience where her 100-year-old mother was denied a substantial withdrawal unless she could answer questions on what she would be doing with the money.

'It's none of their God-damn business what she wants to do with it!' MacSween said.

'It's the Spanish Inquisition if you want to go in and take out a few grand you need a letter from your blasted mother telling you why you should be allowed to have the money.

'It's just disgusting. It's your money and they are using it to make these huge profits and you have to justify why you are spending your money.

'I am offended we are all treated like we are money launderers for the simple act of wanting to take out money out.'

As further evidence of the control banks are asserting over their customers money last week Daily Mail Australia reported the Commonwealth Bank will limit customers from transferring more than $10,000 to crypto exchanges and associated websites.

A CBA spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia the move is to protect customers from scam risks by reducing the amount of money lost by customers.

The spokesperson said the bank was trying to find a balance between keeping customers safe and minimising inconvenience.

Other banks have used the same justification to impose similar blocks on certain sites, although without blanket transfer limits, and this has enraged Australia's crypto community.

Digital currency enthusiasts accused the banks of 'running scared' from a competitor that threatens to muscle in on the traditional financial industry.

'How does this actually help stop crypto scams? Blanket rules don't help anyone. Disgraceful,' crypto trader Ben Simpson posted online.

Daily Mail Australia also reported in June that the Commonwealth Bank reserves the right to stop transactions 'that in our opinion' are 'offensive, harassing or threatening to any person' or 'promotes or encourages physical or mental harm of any person'.

A bank spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia the terms were to prevent 'to address the issue of financial abuse in the context of domestic and family violence'.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12403273/Westpac-customer-calls-bank-tellers-alarming-question-claims-punishing-using-cash.html

*******************************************************

No comments:

Background

The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists.

The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Global warming

Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Two examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):

Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".

Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

Defensible and indefensible usages of the term "racism"

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.

FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.

WWII did NOT end the Great Depression. It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse

Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy!

The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party. They ATTACKED Republicans!

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter:

The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism. The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted. See also here

Did William Zantzinger kill poor Hattie Carroll?

Did Bismarck predict where WWI would start or was it just a "free" translation by Churchill?

Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.

A good article on Leftist hate

The real history of social Darwinism

Some personal memoirs

Memoir highlights

THE PSYCHOLOGIST

Westpac customer calls out bank after teller's alarming question and claims they are 'punishing' him for using cash

No comments:

Post a Comment

Blog Archive