I saw this in action on a smaller scale. In a past job, my wife organized events for a decent sized company. After an event, she'd typically have a $300k+ balance on her corporate Amex. When she went on maternity leave, the person filling in for her job neglected to actually pay the bills, so when she returned there were quite a few emails and voicemails from Amex regarding the over $500k balance.
The messages started as polite and eventually started to get more desperate in tone. At no point were they threatening or adversarial.
I think that this might reflect more on Amex to be honest.
Amex realises that threatening would hurt their business trust more than anything. During the great depression, Amex accepted checks from other banks which were falling and paying through their own wallet as a matter of integrity. Amex has always been built around this idea of trust and prestige.
They make most of money from what I have heard on the transaction fees which are more than others (3% compared to 1%). They might get desperate but I am sure that they are one of the last guys who would wanna threaten you if you are paying some large bills for them (as compared to normal credit card companies which might even hire people to extract your loans in some messy situations)
So perhaps be so rich that the credit card company understands it as well and treats ya differently :-D
Interesting. And hard to square with my perception of banks as completely mercenary and ruthless. I had a decade-long personal boycott (I know, LOL) of Amex after they, because, with otherwise perfect credit, I forgot about a $30 department-store card bill and got a 30-day-late mark on my report, Amex got spooked and abruptly closed both my never-late accounts with them (which were at or close to 0 balances). This was around 2008 though, so perhaps this was a genius algorithm designed to try and detect the very first whiff of consumer defaults, so they assumed that $30 was the first domino to fall of my personal financial ruin that could lead to me charging my accounts to the max and then going bankrupt.
(I eventually admitted to myself that Amex isn't a person and thus not really capable of insulting my honor, but it took a while!)
Most banks are completely mercenary and ruthless unless its in their incentives to other outcomes. Incentives lead to outcomes and mostly AMEX's incentives are in being the most trustworthy because their real targets are mostly billionaires/heavily influential people.
This does feel a bit silly for amex to do from what I've heard. Probably 2008 were a weird time in general where trust in systems itself were mostly eroded, whether of people to banking institutions and also vice versa.
> (I eventually admitted to myself that Amex isn't a person and thus not really capable of insulting my honor, but it took a while!)
My favorite recent example was submitting a resume for a job that was almost a word-for-word description of my current title and job at a similarly sized company. Within 24 hours, I got the rejection, and several days later, a recruiter reached out to let me know that my profile looked like a great match for the role and wanted to schedule an intro call.
I remember applying for one position that was around building care and management systems for pregnant mothers - EHR, practice management, claims benefits, etc., all of which I had over a decade of experience in. "Name something that might stand you out from the crowd." "In addition to all this I've also delivered 12 babies as a paramedic". Twenty minutes later "we are looking for candidates whose experiences and skill sets are more closely aligned with the role we are looking to fill".
I was VP Eng of a 40+ person team at a startup, and my workaholic CEO once asked me if it bothered me that other people on the team didn't work as hard as me. My answer was very tactful, but noted that in any decent exit, I would walk away with multiples of some of those people, so it made perfect sense that I'd work harder.
But it is not only about the money. People just have their own lives, interests, and passions. For me, the lack of autonomy when doing my job kills a lot of the motivation.
I'm in the northeastern US and it's very common for weather reporting to include the Heat Index (https://www.weather.gov/ama/heatindex) which takes temperature and humidity into account.
I fully experienced postnatal depression, starting around 12-15 months, and it wasn't until relatively recently (my kid is now 18 years old) that I realized it.
We were living in a 1 bedroom in the city when we had our kid, and moved to a house in a suburb when the kid was 9 months old. My wife and I both worked, but I had a longer commute and a job that frequently required later evenings. Between the job and keeping up the house, I had a few minutes in the morning, random holidays, and part of one weekend day to really spend time. I spiraled into depression and insomnia, overwhelmed by all the work required to keep up the house while also feeling like a terrible father and husband. I was withdrawn, had angry outbursts, and my daily work routine involved sitting in my car in the train station parking lot having a good cry before heading home.
Before our kid started kindergarten, we decided to sell the house and rent a place in the city. Our apartment was about a 30 minute walk from my office with my kid's school as the 1/2 way point. I was actually able to walk my kid to school every day, coach sports that started at 5pm, and have both weekend days available to go on adventures around the city.
>My guess is the bad experiences have to do with bad execution.
This is the key, IMHO. I have not been able to access my Coinbase account for some time due to a login issue. (No error is displayed, but a successful login returns me to the login screen). The AI driven phone agent was actually very good at working through the problem, but there was no escalation to a human after that. When the agent couldn't solve my problem, it told me to mail a physical letter describing my issue to an address on 5th Ave in NYC.
Up until the 2010s I think it was still a lot less socially normal to play a lot of games. We reached a tipping point somewhere that went from gaming being a sometimes activity for kids to basically every kid plays games
Most of the people in my high school in the 2000s didn't play games as a primary hobby. Only a few of my friends had a PC for games or a console. It wasn't nearly as ubiquitous as it is now.
The release of the Xbox coincided with what I viewed as a big jump in video game players. Even the biggest athletic jocks played a ton of Halo. And then not long after that saw much older people start playing games like CoD:MW as after work entertainment instead of just tv.
IMHO, yes, but that'll depend on the kid, their friends, and all the parents involved. If everyone does line up and agree, than it might be possible, but I think the reality is that kids are remarkably clever and resourceful and will find a way to access what you don't want them to. They'll do it secretly and maybe you'll find out or you won't.
My child is 18, and from about 7th grade onwards, everything important with friends happened in one of the various "group chats" for the various friend circles, sports circles, etc. These are app-based, not SMS/RCS/iMessage based. In our family, we opted for "you can use devices" but with some limits around time of day and work completeness. Phone and apps were open to review by mom and dad on demand.
When reviewing, we weren't looking to micro manage or police the conversations, but to make sure that nothing alarming was happening with respect to addiction to the media, stranger conversations, etc. And yes, random phishing, spam, and inappropriate messages did occasionally come through and provide a great opportunity to talk about how to identify the scams, and how to report the inappropriate messages.
As the kid got older and demonstrated ability to manage things, restrictions loosened, but on-demand access is still allowed with random checks every now and then. Obviously we can't see everything, but it's a balance of protection and safety vs. releasing a fully functional and independent human in the wild that can handle these things on their own.
Again, this is going to depend on the situation, the kids, and the families. My sample size of raising a child is 1, so what worked for us may not work for anyone else.
The messages started as polite and eventually started to get more desperate in tone. At no point were they threatening or adversarial.