
My favorite day of the month is bank statement day at my company - ylhert
https://medium.com/@yanismydj/the-worlds-most-epic-bank-statement-6-months-later-6e749c100435#.p00hj1asb
======
wrs
Silicon Valley Bank is a bank that happens to be in Silicon Valley. It's a
"Valleyesque" outlier in terms of bank _policy_ — they are terrific at working
with startups in unusual situations. (Your average bank equates "unusual
situation" to "just hang up the phone".) But their _technology_ isn't like the
Tesla of banking or anything. Though they did buy Standard Treasury, so
perhaps that'll be an interesting direction.

~~~
ylhert
absolutely. First Republic and SVB are the only two banks that know how to
work with startups. The more mainstream banks really don't understand the
challenges of being a startup. They'll ask for things like your businesses tax
return from the previous year when you try to open an account... and then get
confused at what to do when you explain to them that you have only existed for
2 weeks.

~~~
dboreham
Calling BS on this. I've started several companies and opened Wells Fargo
accounts for all of them within days of incorporation. Now, if you are talking
about _borrowing_ money from the bank I think it makes sense to have to show
some businesses financial history. Simply to open an account : in my
experience all you need is the relevant incorporation paperwork and some
money.

~~~
ylhert
I can only speak to my experience and those of my friends who have started
companies. This is the kind of experience we had

~~~
philjr
I realise theres a proclivity to be anal here but there's a lot of companies
incorporated in the US every day and generally one of the first thing every
business does is open a bank account. I'm not saying what you said isn't true,
but I sincerely doubt it's representative. Borrowing, I agree is a different
matter.

~~~
krotton
It's quite interesting in Poland, where you formally have to have a company
bank account in order to register a company and banks refuse to open one for
you unless you give them your company registration numbers (which you get
after registration). So basically, you have to lie.

~~~
koliber
What did you have to lie about?

Did you lie about the company registration number to the bank? If so, how did
it happen to match the one you were eventually assigned?

Or did you lie about the bank account number when registering the company? How
did you guess the one the bank eventually was going to assign to you?

------
kevindong
> Silicon Valley Bank gives us no paperless billing option for our account

I find that absurd. A bank that primarily serves the tech industry doesn't
have paperless statements. My banks, all of which are the very definition of
entrenched corporations, offer paperless statements.

~~~
scrollaway
My company is with SVB because we couldn't find a good alternative that had
decent rates for international transfers (US 100% remote company,
international founders).

Open to suggestions...

~~~
aeden
How about a combination of any other US bank + Transferwise? This is what I do
(using Bank of America in the US). The transfers to Transferwise go through
their US account (thus can be done as a no- or low-cost ACH) and the rates by
Transferwise are pretty close to market rate.

~~~
scrollaway
Considered it, then SVB came back with a better offer. "Other banks" not being
that attractive or much better than SVB in the first place, either, and having
to deal with two systems rather than just one.

Wish there was something like Simple / N26 for businesses.

~~~
superuser2
Simple _seems_ great, but its daily/monthly transfer limits are really scary.
I'm not in the habit of wanting to exceed them, but I can think of some one-
off events where you might want to (restructure your investments, do something
with your bonus, buy a car, buy a house, etc) and the idea that you straight-
up _can 't_ should give anyone pause.

~~~
saiko-chriskun
Where are you getting this 'straight up can't' from? You can just call them
and they will temporarily raise it for you.

~~~
kefka
And, when/if they say no?

~~~
mhluongo
That's pretty much the state of banking in the US, already.

------
hakanensari
> E-statement takes 30+ minutes to download because it’s huge and their
> servers are really slow!

They're lucky that they're able to download after all.

Some years ago I used an AmEx to order 1000+ items every day on Amazon, which
after a while locked me out of the account pages of both companies. Most
probably some database query in the background was timing out due to the
volume of transactions.

To add insult to injury, I remember it was almost impossible to explain the
issue to the support staff on either side. They kept on getting back with
canned responses about what browser I was using etc.

~~~
jey
> I remember it was almost impossible to explain the issue to the support
> staff on either side

Yeah, is there some kind of standard escape sequence to use in these
circumstances? Like "I must speak to the manager" or some analog without
sounding mean? I know these folks are incentivized to not escalate, but...

~~~
notatoad
the escape sequence is to anticipate all the questions they're going to ask
you and answer them in the first correspondence. try two different browsers,
try it in incognito, etc. If you can prove you've isolated the problem, you
get to skip the back-and-forth required to isolate the problem.

And actually _do_ all that stuff, don't just pretend you did so you can cheat
at customer service. because maybe it is just your browser, and if you insist
it isn't they're just going to hang up on you and you're going to deserve it.

~~~
viraptor
I wish this worked... It does occasionally, but I stopped even trying these
days.

My online chats with support usually go something like this "Hi, I'm trying to
do X, but get error Y. It doesn't depend on A, B, C. Tried your FAQ Z already.
Can you fix or do X for me, please?"; "Hi, this is Bob, how can I help you
today?"; "<repeat>"; "Have you tried doing Z as described in the FAQ?"

It's so annoying/insulting when they give you a box to summarise your whole
issue, but nobody cares to read what you put there.

~~~
girvo
I've found calling people to make the given solution succeed at a much higher
rate than chat boxes, unfortunately.

------
NamTaf
US banks seem so backwards in so many ways as an outside observer.
Transferring money between accounts of different banks, the prevalence of
contactless payments, digital communications as standard, even the fact that
cheques still exist.

This is all stuff we take for granted in Aus and it just blows my mind each
and every time it comes up that US banks are so behind the times.

------
shermozle
I worked on a project migrating a telco to a new billing system. Somehow the
new system churned out, for only one guy, 144 copies of his bill. No idea how
a gross became a thing in a computer, but it did.

The mailhouse, rather than do the sensible thing and call us to see why, did
optimise the delivery and collect all the copies together and post in a single
box. Crazy.

------
nyrulez
And its called "Silicon Valley Bank" on top of that. You would think they
would be the first to adopt tech, not the last. Do banks still have any legal
reasons to not allow paperless statements ?

~~~
IndianAstronaut
>Do banks still have any legal reasons to not allow paperless statements ?

The more procedures and services offered means a much greater scope for
compliance issues. Running a financial institution means having to put a lot
of manpower into regulatory compliance.

~~~
fnord123
Ye olde <hand-waving> "compliance". There's no need to go without paperless
statements. If it's written in law then the law should be fixed.

------
URSpider94
For those who don't know, Silicon Valley Bank provides merchant banking
services for a pretty big fraction of Bay Area start-ups. They have a
reputation for "getting it," in terms of being able to support venture-backed
pre-revenue companies. This does make the giant paper statement even more
ironic.

~~~
ylhert
Correct, in fact there is probably no one better for a startup's first bank
account (it was my first startup's bank account)! But be careful, if your
transaction volume gets too high you might need to invest in a sizable mailbox
;)

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NKCSS
Check the comment on the article:

    
    
        Recommended by Yan Lhert (author)
        Go to the profile of Silicon Valley Bank
        Silicon Valley Bank
        5 hrs ago
        Got it. We’re looking into it.

------
simonswords82
That's the dumbest thing I've seen in a very long time.

Also, if it's costing the bank $41 per month this must surely be getting
passed on to OP somehow - they can't be making a loss on his account? I wonder
what OP pays the bank?

~~~
kalleboo
From the blog post: "We do hundreds of thousands of searches with the DMV
every month, who charge us a fee by credit card for each transaction"

$41/100,000 credit card transactions = 0.041 cents/transaction. So as long as
the fees per transaction to the DMV are higher than that they're still ahead

~~~
simonswords82
Still crazy - I'd accept a reduction in my bank fee in return for them not
posting a tree out to me once a month.

------
hberg
How about just having your company use a non-SVB credit card (or debit card)
and just pay off the bill via the SVB account? Have you tried calling up SVB
and resolving it with them directly?

~~~
ylhert
but then I wouldn't get my monthly laughs in!

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gambiting
"We do hundreds of thousands of searches with the DMV every month, who charge
us a fee by credit card for each transaction, and gives us no other payment
method"

This is retarded. DMV should offer a one-off monthly subscription for
unlimited searches, or just save each search and produce a bill at the end of
the month. I'm sure banks are making an absolute killing on those searches.

"Silicon Valley Bank gives us no paperless billing option for our account"

Is this 2016? Or 1970?

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sekasi
30 minutes to download the bank statement? No paperless billing?

so many questions about this amazing bank.

~~~
walrus01
my guess: somewhere lurks an AS/400

~~~
wtbob
> my guess: somewhere lurks an AS/400

Not a bad guess. Of course, they're flawlessly receiving their statement,
every month, without fail — so my guess is that somewhere lurks an AS/400.

------
eliben
" _Silicon Valley Bank_ gives us no paperless billing option for our account"

... sigh

~~~
guyzero
It's all about scale.

~~~
revelation
Do things that don't scale!

.. like shipping paper bank statements..

~~~
vijayp
Seems to me like shipping paper bank statements scales quite well -- linearly
in fact!

------
xirdstl
I'm suddenly nostalgic for the annoying buzz of dot matrix printers.

~~~
72deluxe
Ah it's not a buzz. It's a loud impacting sound.

Thanks Epson.

------
Tharkun
US banks (and consumers) are stuck in the stone age. Paper cheques, magnetic
swipe cards, it's pretty bad.

~~~
joshuaheard
In France, you can only pay certain government filing fees (driver's license
for instance) by using "fiscal stamps" which are postage-type stamps only
available at certain retail outlets. They won't accept cash, check, or credit
card, only stamps.

~~~
gambiting
Same in the UK, I was exchanging my EU licence for a UK one, and the only way
to pay for it was to either include a cheque(I have literally never seen a
cheque, I asked my bank how to get a cheque book and I would have to wait 3
weeks for one so I said no) or go to the post office and buy a "postal order"
for the same amount and send it to DVLA. Most other things you can pay for
using a debit card though.

~~~
kennydude
The GDS/GOV.UK are at least trying to change that

------
sliverstorm
Millions of dollars a month in DMV records searches, that's the more
interesting part to me. Background checks? Carfax but for the past owners of
the car?

~~~
tedunangst
There's only a few million drivers in PA. Soon they'll have queried them all.

~~~
xyzzy123
True, although the fact that one validated a driver's license last month does
not mean that the license is valid this month.

~~~
salgernon
But like file permissions, just querying the filesystem (or drivers liceense
database) the result is potentially invalid by the time you actually get it.
You ultimately have to actually use the filepath or drivers license and let
any failure be the truth.

------
PhasmaFelis
My favorite part is that the transactions are printed _single-column._ Look at
all that white space.

~~~
gamedna
from the animated-gif it seems like the back sides are blank as well. Just
think of how much cheaper it would be to ship that statement with the proper
small condensed monospaced font, multi-column, and and double sided. Welcome
to the 1990s SVB!

~~~
ylhert
yep! it's single sided. the box is also filled/packed with the side tearoff
stuff (not sure the name for it) which you can sort of see in the gif. Must
have been terrible to have to rip it all off for this many pages!

~~~
Stratoscope
Perf strips! That's what we called them anyway.

Brings back fond memories...

------
bigjimmyk3
The strangest part of the story to me is that the state charges for each
search individually. PA.gov appears to require the creation of an account, so
they could save themselves a big chunk of money by charging the customer once
a month. I was formerly employed at a portal similar to PA.gov in another
state, and this is exactly what we did. I can't think of any good reason to
charge by the drink, so it's probably some well-meaning but boneheaded state
reg.

------
Androider
Relevant: [https://priceonomics.com/what-startups-think-about-
silicon-v...](https://priceonomics.com/what-startups-think-about-silicon-
valley-bank)

Personally I've been very happy with Capital One business banking for my
startup. One time painless in-person setup at a branch, everything done online
ever since, paperless from the start, free checking, savings, and business
credit cards for everyone. 1% APY on our balance.

~~~
cloudjacker
Capital One business banking has a caveat of having no shared database between
branches and some other twilight zone interpretations of compliance
regulations.

Every time I needed to do something in person, it HAD to be at the Capital One
I originally opened the account at.

~~~
stephengillie
What happens if they ever close that branch?

------
graiz
You can open an operational credit card account at a traditional bank outside
of SVB and keep your primary banking relationship with them. I would expect
American Express will give you the month-to-month cash flow and paperless
billing while SVB can give you the larger line of credit and growth capital.
Plus, think of all those credit card points.

~~~
ericabiz
100% agree. We put most of our business transactions on Amex. You can buy some
significantly cool items and/or experiences when you generate hundreds of
thousands of points per year! I am surprised the OP is not already doing this.

------
avifreedman
We use SVB and luckily don't have this many transactions :)

We once had a Bell Atlantic (that's Verizon now) phone bill delivered that
took 1/3 of a UPS truck. 600 line hunt group that they broke so that instead
of being a hunt group, it was don't-answer-call-forward from the 1st to 2nd,
2nd to 3rd, and on up. At a cost of $.08 per hunt. So if lines 1-599 were busy
that'd be 599 $.08 charges. For each accepted call to our modems. And each
charge itemized one per page. On little index card sized phone bill pages. Mid
month they called and asked if we could take our bills on reel-reel tapes,
which I guess should have been an early warning sign...

So anyway, thus was the 400,000-ish printed page phone bill.

------
flippant
Off-topic: What are they doing that requires "hundreds of thousands of
searches with the DMV" every month?

~~~
ylhert
DMV appointments as a service

------
intopieces
Which banks _do_ provide paperless billing for business accounts, and what
specific policy reason -- compliance? Record keeping? -- prevents SVB from
doing it?

You know, the people responsible for printing and shipping? The expense/hassle
is not lost on them. I'm curious to know more.

------
Analemma_
Before I moved to Seattle, my old three-branch credit union in Podunk County,
Flyover State had paperless statements, and that was years and years ago.
"Silicon Valley Bank", in 2016, doesn't?

------
oskarth
Did you check that the statement is correct? Feels like someone is bound to
drop a piece of paper or ten when refilling the printer. You can probably even
do it by weight, 1g ~= $10-100.

------
daigoba66
Reminds me of when I look at my cell phone bill and see nearly every
transferred KB itemized. At least it's paperless.

~~~
duskwuff
Early iPhone bills (from AT&T) frequently ran to hundreds of pages for heavy
users, sparking at least one viral video:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300-page_iPhone_bill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300-page_iPhone_bill)

------
throwaway7823
it seems to me that taking time out of your day to put down some one who is a
partner to your business would be better spent making your business better

~~~
ylhert
SVB is a great bank and I don't mean to say anything too negative but it
doesn't mean that they don't do some silly things sometimes. It gives me a
laugh that they do this so I thought I'd share. I hope my tone was "friendly
poking fun" and not "putting someone down". The startup I founded used SVB and
I had a great relationship with them.

The DMV on the other hand....

