We seem to be living in a world where everything is getting increasingly automated, ostensibly in service of the idea that things will move faster and more efficiently without human errors, and yet we end up having to put in more and more time and work to get anything to turn out the way we need it to.
This morning I found myself trying to navigate a "bizarre love triangle" between online marketplace Etsy, my bank, and the Plaid authentication service.
The problem being that not so long ago my bank — that I have had for years and years — merged with a larger West Coast banking organization. In order to provide customers with at least a minimal amount of continuity, my old bank become a subset of the larger bank.
That is to say, instead of having to enroll in a whole new online banking system, there is a pull-down menu on the acquisition banks web page where you can log in to the old online banking just like we did before. The old system was basically ported to the new bank and is still available.
Meanwhile, the automated payment system at Etsy — which I depend on for a good bit of my living — detected that there was some sort of change and sent me a little message that it was impossible for them to deposit my funds from sales unless I re-verify my account. That happened almost two weeks ago.
So I jumped through various sets of hoops, which started out with the Plaid service not being able to verify my bank account because it couldn't figure out how to verify an account that was a subset of another bank.
That required some interaction with an automated AI agent and eventually an actual customer service person and I was able to connect my bank account and get the green check mark back by my account by going through the verification process manually.
Of course one of the consequences of going through the verification process manually was that now I had a different little message on my Etsy account that said "because you changed your banking information (which I did NOT, I just verified was already there) your funds will be held for five business days, for your security." As mentioned, this took place almost two weeks ago.
So I waited for the five day waiting period to be over and when I went and checked my Etsy account because there hadn't been a deposit to my bank account yet... and the same red flag was up on my page saying "we were unable to deposit your funds please reverify your bank account."
At which point I start taking screenshots and go through the process once again with screenshots for every step along the way.
Once again I am able to manually verify my bank account and get the green check mark one more time, after this time having been on the phone with my bank, on an automated chat with Etsy, and another automated chat with Plaid none of which really clarified anything at all.
Except for the one annoying thing that I'm apparently now new subject to a new five business day "holding period for my security" even though absolutely nothing changed.
To be honest I'm getting tired of all these scams — and yes I'm calling them scams — which seem to serve very little purpose and are about as far removed from anything called "customer service" as you can possibly get. And yet they have most people over a barrel because you can't just stop selling because then you have no income anymore.
I'm not even sure whether the hundreds of dollars I don't have access to or the time I have wasted is the most annoying...
Just a little tired and frustrated today!
Feel free to leave a comment — this IS "social" media, after all!
As always, a 10% 