Wells Fargo – Ruling the World while F$cking the Planet

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I cannot stand inefficiencies. I have no patience for people, companies, or agencies wasting my time, or anyone else’s. I take it as a sign of severe disrespect.

What’s worse is when one’s time is wasted and the process is causing additional harm; like damaging the environment and the planet. What’s even far worse is when one’s time is wasted, the process is causing additional harm, and the entire incident is asinine and could have easily been avoided.

Yesterday I experienced the far worse case scenario which prompted me to write this post.

Recently I changed the name of one of my companies in the State of Florida. I am the biggest fan the State of Florida has. I feel like I live in paradise and in the near future cannot imagine why anyone would live anywhere else. For anyone that does business in the State you know that SunBiz.org really does a great job of almost anything you need to do online relating to companies, searches, and filings.

One exception is when you need to do a name change. In a perfect world it should just be completely automated and handled online with a credit card payment like our annual reports. Instead you actually need to print up an amendment and mail it in with a check. Imagine the total negative impact on the environment of the wasted ink from my printer, the 3-4 pages of paper being printed, the written check, the envelope, and the stamp.

That’s just the beginning. Then there’s the trip I had to make to get that letter into the hands of the USPS. In this case I actually drove to the post office to mail it with another letter, that could have been filed online, because I needed a return receipt for proof of deliver. Then the USPS has to do their job which I am sure includes multiple truck rides and probably a plane ride to get the letter to Tallahassee. All spewing carbon emissions along the way.

But the above craziness, as bad as it is, is not what set me off and is not the primary reason for this post.

After a few weeks passed, I saw that the name was successfully changed and that the amendment was clearly visible online at SunBiz.org. Before physically heading out to a Wells Fargo branch to update the name on my company’s checking account I checked to see if I could do this online. After all it is 2019 and why wouldn’t the big banks have some of the best technology available to them? Common sense would also dictate that automation of a process like this would not waste the time of a banker and would ultimately make for a better customer experience, while making the bank more profitable, and actually saving the environment?

Apparently Wells Fargo does not share my ideas on common sense and efficiencies.

There was no online option so I had the physically drive to the branch to try and accomplish this. I walked in, sat down, and handed the banker my drivers license and debit card and explained that the filing was completed and we just needed to update the title of the checking account to reflect the new company name. I figured I would be out of the bank in under five minutes.

The banker proceeded to tell me that the branch could not print out online filings from SunBiz.org? How pathetic is that? Wells Fargo, a $200+ Billion company, with almost 600 branches in the State of Florida, can not print a simple four page filing from the State of Florida’s official corporate site, to handle a name change for an existing customer. I did a quick look around to see if I was on Candid Camera as I tried to catch the humor in all this.

I am not sure why the filing would even need to be printed in the first place, unless we just feel like wasting our time for shits and giggles all while f$cking the planet already harder than we already are.

Shouldn’t a manager just be able to view the screen and make an executive decision that the SunBiz filing is satisfactory to then quickly update the name on the account? That would just make too much sense?

As I was driving home to print up the filing my blood started to boil. The audacity of this bloated, inefficient monopoly to just be able to waste 30 minutes of my life for such a mundane task that should literally take a few mouse clicks from my office. Luckily the branch is only a few miles from my home and the whole thing was wrapped up in about an hour.

Again in a near perfect world both processes, the name change filing with Florida, and the account update with Wells, should have been handled online with me exerting less than 10 minutes while minimizing the negative effects on the environment. It is hard to break down all of the events involved in all of the above processes, but to me it is blatantly apparent that the amount of energy and resources involved, to accomplish something that is so simple, is about as inefficient as the whole ordeal could possibly be orchestrated.

The planet is a ticking time bomb. If we don’t stop and think of ways to cut down on paper, and wasted energy, and wasted time we are clearly to blame for what’s about to happen. Anyone not paying attention is either in denial, just plain stupid, or acting out an alternate selfish agenda which is not for the greater good.

Excuses cannot be made for institutions like the State of Florida and Wells Fargo. They have the power to be smarter and make a difference. I see this type of stupidity happening again and again which tells me that they must just not give a shit.

If humanity doesn’t wake up and start making small changes our most certain demise can only be our own fault. This whole thing makes me very sad.

Software Reliability – Technology or Black Magic?

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As a hard core user of cloud software and services, in literally every area of my life, I likely see or notice many things that other people don’t. I often feel that I have the rare ability to consistently jam or break things that should be working for millions, if not tens of millions, of people.

I am also an intense person that tries to accomplish a lot every single day so when something that is supposed to work smoothly doesn’t I get very frustrated and try to look for the logic as to why it isn’t.

Yesterday was a great example of this. I was on Bank of America’s online banking doing payroll for our development team in Colombia. Every month on the 15th I send a number of international wires there. I toggle between Quickbooks Online, where our transactions are recorded, and BofA’s online wire screen to enter and send each transaction individually.

The process usually moves along quickly from wire to wire and I am generally done in 15 minutes or so. About five wires into the process I attempt to do a wire that is above a certain dollar amount and BofA prompts me to text a Safe Pass Code to my cell phone. This is usually just one click to send the code and then one more second extra to enter the six digit code and then press send as usual; not a big deal.

GLX VoodooI enter the wire details and click send to get my Safe Pass Code. I immediately pick up my cell phone to retrieve the number. Weird, the text message does not pop in. I click on the Messages app on my Mac desktop and don’t see the text there either. I go back and resend the message to try and start over but on the second and third attempt still nothing. Already my blood is starting to boil.

I find a phone number online for BofA to call their support. Luckily I operate with two iPhones (the X and the SE) so I can call from my secondary phone while leaving the primary open to receive the text. I dial in and get placed into a series of on hold advertisements from BofA partners. First it’s a roadside service offer. After listening to the offer I press # to pass, then comes home security, # to pass again. After listening to about six offers it seemed as if this would never end. Now I am practically floating out of my chair in anger. I try to collect my rage and hang up to start over.

I go into Google Contacts and pull up the BofA support number for business customers. I dial in a second time and after entering my account number the system tells me that it will be a 12 to 15 minute hold or I can leave my number to get a call back. I am fuming. I leave my number and luckily enough about 15 minutes later their system calls me back and I get a seemingly nice guy on the line that says he is in the BofA office in Tampa, FL. Now I have spent a lot of time in Tampa and I know the city well. With my blood still heated I am thinking this is how much money this company is making, their tech support agent is in the Bank of America Plaza building in Tampa. This is one of the nicest buildings that makes up the downtown Tampa skyline; a very expensive place to have phone support staff.

Before I can tell him what’s wrong he wants to send me a text message so I can confirm the code with him to validate me as a customer. I explain to him my that this is my exact issue and that at this point not being able to receive a simple text from them has my 15 minute routine of doing payroll now cutting into an hour out of my day. He apologizes and tells me he will send me an email to get me the code.

After we validate that he asks me to text the word HELP to a six digit number he gives me. I send the text but there is no auto response back. He doesn’t see anything wrong on their end and doesn’t have any logical answer as to why their software systems are not working properly so he tries to tell me that maybe BofA is not compatible with my carrier.

I explain to him that I have done this 100 times before and it always works. I then reminded him that I use Verizon and BofA and Verizon are both monopolies that rule the world and if their systems are not communicating properly maybe the world is coming to an end?

He chuckles and tries telling me maybe short code messages have been disabled on my phone and that I should contact my carrier. Great why don’t I just take the whole afternoon off and go stand in the Verizon store for a few hours. I wanted to rip through the phone and smash the guys head on my desk.

I explain to him that I have not changed any settings and have no reason to believe that short code texting would be disabled on my phone. He realizes he is out of answers so I catch my temper and deicide to let him off the hook. I said look I think I remember that this happened once before a long time ago. Your systems are probably experiencing a temporary glitch and I will give it a day and try again, if that doesn’t work I’ll contact my carrier. He says great and is happy to end the call.

Sure enough three to four hours later I get text blasted with four or five consecutive messages from BofA with random six digit codes that I no longer need. LOL, I guess their systems came back up. I returned to login again and received a new code and did the wire within two minutes with no problems.

The reality is that building and maintaining software, that we expect to run without fail, as part of our everyday lives is extremely challenging. I often realize that this is the case even for massive companies like Verizon and BofA.

What we are building at GLX is super sophisticated and I am guilty of being a perfectionist that is paying attention to details that other people will never likely notice. The result of this seems like it is hard to see our progress. I am positive that in the long run the sum of all of these minor details, that have been perfected, will add up to result in a superior product. I do not want to sacrifice that at any cost. Sometimes we need to take a deep breath and remember good things come to those who wait.

As a goof I found the article below that outlines some catastrophic software failures by massive companies in recent history:

America: The Land of the Hindered and the Home of the Scared

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My Grandfather served in World War II. My Father was blown up in Vietnam, waking up on a hospital boat with wounds bad enough to retire him from service, and sent home awarded with a Purple Heart. I have always been truly proud to be an American.

America has been known around the world as the Land of Opportunity. A place where one could achieve anything one puts one’s mind to, no matter who they are. A place that people would immigrate to from different parts of the world to have access to these kinds of opportunities – opportunities so compelling that people would leave their families behind, face famine or even death, to travel by boat, for over a month, to get here.

We have also been known for being at the forefront of freedom and equality. The Land of Equal Opportunity. A nation conceived by the principles announced in our our Declaration of Independence:

“all men are created equal … with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

As so eloquently put by Francis Scott Key, the closing verse of which would ring through our heads every day in school and at the start of every sporting event:

“the land of the Free and the home of the Brave”

Is the American Dream Dead?

This morning I received an email from a colleague about a software platform that aims to increase transparency and protect investors that participate in initial coin offerings by using different screening techniques and other proprietary methods to basically remove scam deals. That’s the claimed justification. Now, I am not a passive investor. Anyone that knows me personally knows that my life is invested in GLX.com. But I am a hyper consumer of technology with an insatiable curiosity to test out cool looking products and services.

So I jump in and downloaded their wallet to test this out. I get four minutes into the process, username, password, personal info, etc. and then the process smacks me in the head like a ton of bricks. To use their software you must own their tokens. But they won’t allow me to own their tokens because I live in the United States?

What the f*ck!

Everyday I am reading legal statements similar to:

  • The term “Restricted Jurisdiction​” means and includes: (i) the United States of America;
  • The term “Restricted Persons​” refers to any firm, company, partnership, trust, corporation, entity, government, state or agency of a state or any other incorporated or unincorporated body or association, association or partnership (whether or not having separate legal personality) that is established and/or lawfully existing under the laws of the United States of America, under the federal laws of the United States of America or under the laws of any of its States;
  • We can’t sell our tokens to U.S. citizens and residents: U.S. citizens or permanent residents of the US, or those who have a primary residence or domicile in the United States, including Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and any other possessions of the United States can not be holders of our tokens, …;

Or my favorite:

  • PLEASE NOTE THAT U.S. CITIZENS OR RESIDENTS MAY NOT PARTICIPATE IN THE TOKEN SALE. IF YOU ARE A NON-U.S. PURCHASER, YOU MAY ONLY PARTICIPATE IF YOU ARE OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES AT THE TIME OF THE PURCHASE.

What the hell has happened?

I am a firm believer that there is a blockchain revolution going on. A technological revolution that, by some accounts, is as transformative as the invention of the internet itself.

So apparently the entire world is building innovative technologies that Americans cannot use?

Or wait maybe some rich Americans, that are considered sophisticated because they are rich. The fancy term is “Accredited”, in some cases maybe they can have the privilege of using these technologies?

Should I assume that if I am an American building one of these technologies I should be keeping in mind to design it for rich Americans or maybe only for use outside of the United States?

Am I the only one seeing that there is a problem here?

Now I know there are certain regulatory bodies that will jump up and down stating that they are trying to protect investors or more generally the public at large.

Let me get this straight. I have lost my ability to spend my own money to use some software because I live in the U.S.?

I am sorry but I am failing to see clearly how that is protecting me or why I am even subject to this nonsense?

Unalienable – not capable of being taken away or denied.

It is said that President Lincoln considered the Declaration of Independence to be the foundation of his political philosophy and argued that it is a statement of principles through which the United States Constitution should be interpreted.

Does our Constitution afford me the right to “OPT-OUT” of the above regulatory protection? Should it?

I wish I could end this article with some answers but I am really confused? I just want to use some software without having to denounce my citizenship?

A revolution is happening and our country seems to be doing a great job of f*cking it up. Good job at making America great again?