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One wierd trick can save Californians $37

94 points by Animats ↗ HN
If you're in California, you may have received a "California Middle Class Tax Refund" gift card, in the form of a VISA debit card. This is a "stimulus program" payment.

The debit card comes with fees. Lots of fees. About 3%, plus a $7 charge. Plus, by activating the card, you authorize My Banking Direct, a service of New York Community Bank, to use your financial info for marketing purposes.

But there's a way out. Hidden down in the fine print, in what looks like 8 point type, is "If you do not agree to all the Cardholder Agreement terms, you should cancel the card by calling customer service and request the funds be issued to you in the form of a paper check".

Now it gets interesting. There's a number to call, 1-800-240-0223. It leads to a phone message system, of course. First, there's press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish. Then a long spiel about the cards and payments, which you can't skip. Then you get a list of options, 1 through 8.

None of those options is customer service. Some try to trick you into activating the card, by typing in the number and your Social Security number, before they will tell you anything.

So how do you get a check? That's the trick. And here's the answer, from KCRA-TV.[1] "If you received a card, you can call 800-542-9332 and select option 9 to speak to an agent." This seems to lead to the same phone menu as the number on the notice. No Option 9 is listed. But if you press 9, you get sent to customer service.

Now, that's not the end. Now you get to talk to a voice recognition system, which asks what you want. It rejects "send check" and "cancel card". After two tries, it hangs up on you, and you have to start over.

But it does, it turns out, recognize "customer service". Which, finally, gets you to the hold queue for a human. The first human said her computer was down and she couldn't issue a check. On the next try, the human hung up when I asked for the company's business name and address. On the third try, the human actually did the transaction, or at least pretended to. I asked for a transaction ID, which was not offered, and was grudgingly given one. In 10 days to 2 weeks, I am supposed to get a check.

Now that's a dark pattern.

New York Community Bank has a rating of one star with the Better Business Bureau. They probably make at least $150 million off the fees from California alone.

[1] https://www.kcra.com/article/california-middle-class-tax-refund-debit-card-explainer/41860421

42 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 110 ms ] thread
DevKoala
Sheez, disgusting. Do you need to provide any PII to get the $35?
Georgelemental
Might want to fix the typo in title (should be "weird")
evgpbfhnr
Now just consider how much time you need to spend on it vs. how much $37 is worth to you, and just throw the slip out to the bin if that's not a net positive.

It's still capitalist big corp winning, but people really should value their own time more than they do.

cameron_b
Those of us on salary can just consider it overtime.

But seriously, every single strike against one of these ploys is a step in the right direction. A penny saved is a penny earned. And if I don't have clients lined up for the next 15 minutes, this is a great way to spend it.

OP put in the hard work, it didn't scale for him/her, but it scales for Californians.

zaps
“California Middle Class Tax Refund” sounds like a phishing scam
superchroma
What a nightmare. Truly americans live in a dystopia. Not a cool one, either.
mrlatinos
Mostly just California and New York.
fnordpiglet
And in states without public health care.
frmrcnck
The US public spending per capita is the highest (by far) in the world. The problem is not lack of public health care. At least not lack of money.

(My pet theory is that Americans, for all their amazing talents and qualities, are terrible administrators. By comparison I grew up in Canada, which Im not fond of, but where you can get a drivers license in 15 minutes or a passport in a day)

https://www.statista.com/statistics/283221/per-capita-health...

fnordpiglet
It’s unclear what they’re counting as public dollars on health care but I assure you none exists unless you qualify for special programs like Medicare or medicaid. Perhaps they’re including public research money and other subsidies for medicine? I find it implausible Medicare / Medicaid costs $10k/ year / person. We pay for these out of our income and it’s not nearly this much.
frmrcnck
Well, there are worse places. Ive fled to the US from Canada, for example.

Dystopia seems to be a Commonwealth thing, really. Take Australia. For decades they've bribed a poor country to keep a concentration camp where they throw brown people in.

"Its ok" they said, "legally these people never made it ashore", "Australia is full". Canberra even distributed cute little cartoons in Bangladesh about how sadistic the Australian response is to would be refugees.

Then the COVID hit and Australia got its own internal checkpoints and concentration camps. Funny how the crimes committed abroad circle back.

The US has its problems, sure. But I grew up in four different countries in as many continents before coming here for grad school. As far as I can tell, America's the best. And flyover America the best of the best.

Therefore, I am honored that in a few weeks time Ill say an oath of loyalty to my fellow citizens and promise to protect our homeland's honor from enemies foreign, domestic and hypocrites wherever they may be.

superchroma
I'm glad you found somewhere you fit right in.
tomjakubowski
Is this a different thing from the stimulus I received as a direct deposit in the checking account I use for taxes (and tax refunds)?
jeffbee
My refund was directly, and silently, deposited into my checking account. Presumably because I use the account to pay my taxes?
chevman
I checked out their fee schedule and the "3%, plus a $7 charge" appears to be for international transfer fees:

https://www.mctrpayment.com/pdf/CA_MCTR_Fee_Trans.pdf

For domestic transfers, appears free per your linked article:

"As long as you have your bank’s routing and account number, you can transfer funds to your bank account without paying a fee in the following ways

Transfer funds online at mctrpayment.com Transfer funds using the Money Network Mobile App Transfer funds by calling 1-800-240-0223"

Animats
The news article says you can do a transfer easily, but the actual contract terms do not.

An "external transfer" means out of their bank, not out of the country.

RecklessSir
I don't see anything in https://www.mctrpayment.com/cardholder-agreement that defines "external" as outside of their bank.

The "Transaction Limits" refer to "Transfer to External Bank Account | Domestic or International" but the "Fee-Based Services and Transactions" section only references "Transfer to External Bank Account | International" and all the context there on the 3.5% + up to $7 fee is all about foreign exchange conversions.

Animats
I don't see anything in https://www.mctrpayment.com/cardholder-agreement that defines "external" as outside of their bank.

It's standard banking terminology.[1][2]

[1] https://www.commercebank.com/personal/online-features/extern...

[2] https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/external-bank-account

RecklessSir
I don't usually cite on other sites, when this is plainly spelled out in the site I'm talking about ("International" clearly different than "Domestic and International").

Regarding using information for marketing purposes, the privacy policy at https://www.mctrpayment.com/privacy/ explicitly says they don't do that, they only share information related to everyday business purposes, not for marketing. What leads you to believe otherwise?

Animats
The New York Community Bancorp, Inc.'s consumer privacy notice mailed with the VISA debit card. Their form M-135389, rev 12/21, page 1 of 2. If there is sufficient interest, I will scan it and post the scan.

Table:

--

Reasons we can share your personal information: For joint marketing with other financial companies.

Does New York Community Bancorp, Inc. share?: YES.

Can you limit this sharing: NO.

--

This probably violates the California Consumer Privacy Act.

RecklessSir
Interesting. Is there also conflicting information (what came with the card mailing vs. what's published on the website) regarding the fees or does that match?
jhart99
It does not unfortunately because this is covered by federal law under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. There are exceptions to the CCPA for FCRA, HIPAA, and GLBA.
dehrmann
I bet a double-digit percentage of California HN readers made too much to qualify for any refund.
georgeburdell
“Middle class” is surprisingly high in California. The AGI cutoff is $500k
dehrmann
For couples. Making $250k at FAANG for a software engineer is pretty common.
otachack
This seems a great topic to organize around and better your system, or help elect a responsible person(s).

Here in Illinois, the Treasurer Michael Frerichs would beat the crap out of whoever came up with that system and make an efficient method to get you your money. His administration is doing it now for any funds the state owes you where you fill out a simple online form and you know within the 1 POST call if the state owes you anything.

RecklessSir
I don't see anything in the fee schedule that matches up with what you're claiming. https://www.mctrpayment.com/pdf/CA_MCTR_Fee_Trans.pdf

Withdrawing to an out of network ATM is $1.25, but there's no mention of any fee for a withdraw to an in-network ATM.

Transferring to an non-US bank is 3.5% plus up to $7, but there's no mention of any fee for a transfer to a US bank.

Can you clarify?

judge2020
> New York Community Bank has a rating of one star with the Better Business Bureau

Please do not under any circumstances support the Better Business Bureau. Their entire business model relies on companies paying them $x/month PER EMPLOYEE for access to the BBB system where they can mark reviews as 'resolved', which therefore allows them to 'resolve' negative reviews and get them removed from the calculation of their BBB rating. Without paying BBB, the business can't 'resolve' reviews and thus will be stuck with a low rating.

schappim
>> Please do not under any circumstances support the Better Business Bureau.

Totally agree. Remember you can always give the BBB a 1-star review on the "Better, Better Business Bureau".

the_only_law
> The debit card comes with fees. Lots of fees. About 3%, plus a $7 charge. Plus, by activating the card, you authorize My Banking Direct, a service of New York Community Bank, to use your financial info for marketing purposes.

Sounds like there was some er… lobbying involved.

smegsicle
just the invisible hand of bureaucracy at work
tempestn
It seems like a uniquely US thing to provide government services via private entities like this. I most recently ran into something similar when creating an Apple developer account. In order to do this you need something called a "DUNS" number, which apparently everyone in the US has heard of, but which was new to me. This is a unique number that every corporate entity in the US supposedly has, but which is provided and administered by a single private corporation, which uses similar dark patterns (at least with foreign companies) to try to funnel you into signing up for their identity monitoring in order to get the number you need. It kind of boggles my mind that the problem is, "need unique identifier for every corporation operating in country", and the answer is, "farm that off to a private company so they can do marketing off it".
chrismcb
DUNS is not a government thing. The US government does have a unique number, it is your tax ID number. Typically called an EIN, but it is not farmed out to a third party What you are referring to is a private company trying to create a global id. It sounds like most banking institutions what you to have it. But it isn't required. I've never heard of it, and I've established companies in America.
tempestn
Yeah, I realize it isn't a government thing, guess I phrased that poorly. What I'm saying is that it's something that one would expect to be a government thing: a unique corporate identifier than can be shared with third parties. In Canada that's the "business number". But in the US everyone uses this thing created by a random company instead. (Presumably because the IRS doesn't provide some kind of verification system attached to the EIN.)
anonymousnotme
This is very low class for the state to do. It devalues the refund, but more importantly it gets a private entity involved that they are giving tax payer information to and I would assume some very sensitive information. Thank you state of CA for violating my privacy and making it more likely for me to have to deal with identity theft. Refund should be given in a similar way to how money is sent to them. Can I send the state a debit card for payment where they have to activate it and enter their SSN and so forth? If not, then they should not be able do this to the tax payer. I would like to know the cost difference. If it is less expensive, then I would probably asssume that the private entity is making it up by gaining access to the private information of CA tax payers.
WirelessGigabit
If you have a past tax return where you authorized them to send the money via ACH, you will get it like that. No fees.
compsciphd
When the startup I was working for in silicon valley went under, I got issued an EDD Bank of America debit card. I could set it up to transfer the unemployment payments from the debit card to my normal bank account without any fees.

I'm wondering

a) why california isn't using the same system for these payments b) if a similar simple transfer system for free isn't available for it.