Chase customer service says one thing, Chase does another

We received this story from a reader:

I have been a customer with Chase for over 15 years and have dealt with the chronically terrible service which seems to just worse year of year. Most recently, I had an issue with fraudulent charges. After trying to work this out for a month dealing with Chase employees in three different countries who never talked to each other, the issue was finally resolved. However, as a result of this issue, all I wanted was to divorce Chase and never deal with them again. Because this was a business account, the branch employees advised they would do restricted access on my account so while I was transitioning away from chase, ACH debits and automatic transactions would not apply to this account while I waited for other invoices to come through so I could shut this account.

Needless to say, I trusted them and was SHOCKED when I logged into my account as I was making final preparations to close the account to find that automatic transactions had not been stopped and I was overdrawn receiving insufficient funds fees daily for charges I was not aware would be authorized by Chase. Furthermore, there were additional fraudulent transactions, exactly what sparked this issue to begin with.

I started the process to resolve this avoiding my local branch as they had clearly misled me. After escalating the issue I finally was directed to Janette Reves in Texas as my customer “case manager”. Keep in mind I have written documentation for all this, and numerous recorded phone transactions for the branch office told me. Janette Reves indicated to investigate my case she needed to confirm with the local branch. Well, conveniently, Gerrod Black ther gentlemen who handled my initial fraudulent case left for a ten day cruise the day this began and his supervisor took over. Wouldn’t you know it, Janette confirmed his supervisor is no longer employed by Chase. Janette used the word of an employee who wasn’t there for this and an employee who is no longer there to say I was incorrect and they wouldn’t refund. I asked her to investigate the further fraudulent charges and resulting insufficient fund fees. That was on October 28. It has been two weeks and multiple messages later with absolutely no response. I know I am right here and have the documentation to prove it. They are making a huge mistake over a whopping $264. I have closed every other account with them, but this account remains open as it is being resolved. The information is public, just curious if you have information of who I can contact above Janette Reves? Many thanks for your efforts!

This is not atypical behavior for Chase:

1. Getting different stories about how things work from different Chase employees and then Chase goes and does something completely different than you were told
2. People at Chase making up stories far from the truth to cover their butts or simply making stuff up when they don’t know what they are talking about.

But going higher up can sometimes help resolve problem.  Take a look at our How to Contact Chase page to find more higher up contact information.

Additionally, if you aren’t getting satisfaction, it is always a good idea to file complaints with the BBB, your state’s consumer protection office, and the Federal Reserve, who regulates chase.  You can find information for Chase’s regulators and other people to complain to on our What You Can Do page.

JD Powers banking satisfaction survey says it all – customers think Chase sucks

JD Powers released its 2010 retail banking satisfaction survey and the ratings for Chase aren’t good.  Chase’s recent satisfaction survey results are the lowest its had in years.

For instance, in California and New England, Chase got a 2 out of 5 star overall satisfaction rating.

The percentage of people who said they would consider leaving their bank went from 54% three years ago to 66% today.

Why Chase should be worried about their bad customer service

A new report is available from an organization called RightNow called the Customer Experience Impact Report 2010 and from what it contains, I think there is good reason Chase has gone completely down the wrong path with their seemingly conscious choice to provide bad customer service.

In short:

• 85% of people say they would be willing to pay up to 25% more for good customer service.
• 82% of people say they have stopped doing business with an organization because of bad customer service.

Biggest reasons for people leaving a company:

• 73% of people cite rude staff as an issue
• 55% of people cited issues that were not resolved in a timely manner

Due to a bad customer service experience, 95% of people have take action as a result and 79% of people have told someone else about it.

We’ve pointed out recently how, even though Chase isn’t talking about it, the information available seem to indicate that Chase is loosing customers fast and I think these survey results are spelling out exactly why.  Their customer service sucks and people aren’t standing for it.

On hold with Chase for over 4 hours

This customer was decided to document via YouTube how long he had been on hold with Chase, 280 minutes!

WaMu debits cards about to stop working?

From a reader this morning:

Was just wondering if you’ve heard of anything weird about this.

I was a Wamu customer before the changeover.  Was in my local Chase branch about 2 months ago and the teller told me that my old Wamu debit card was about to stop working.  The expiration isn’t until 2011, so I questioned her and she said all Wamu debit cards are about to be turned off and I should order a new Chase debit card.

I didn’t think much about it until I was in the branch again about 2 weeks ago.  I asked one of the CSRs about it and he said yes, those “old wamu” cards were scheduled to be turned off “any minute.”  He was surprised mine worked at all and said mine was probably one of the last ones still working.

I have never received any official notice from Chase about this, only words from the people in this one branch.

Well, I had him order me a new debit card and I asked if it would be the same card number.  He said “no” because they would be switching from Mastercard to Visa.

Fast forward a week or so and my new card arrives.  It’s a Mastercard just like my “old” wamu card, but with a new number.  The thing is, my old wamu card still works fine.  I haven’t activated the new card yet.

I’m wondering why the hard push to get me into a new Chase branded card?  Any thoughts?

Anyone had their card stop working without any notification?

Chase teller rudeness thwarts robbery

Apparently there is an upside to the standard rudeness of Chase Bank tellers.  Not once, but twice in the past week the rude attitude of a Chase Bank teller has so frustrated a bank robber that they left without actually robbing the bank.

When asking Chase to waive a fee, persistence can pay off

This great article in the San Francisco Chronicle goes into great depth as to why Chase charges the amount of late fee it does (credit card) and what the author did to finally get a $39 late fee removed.

I was about to give up and pay the fee, but then I asked to speak to the rep’s manager. As I was transferred, I recomposed myself and then made the same request to the next agent, who promptly and politely said she would remove the fee!

Just like that.

So, why did the bank give in? And why didn’t I give up at the first rep’s repeated rejections?

But even more interesting is why the bank was ultimately willing to refund the fee.

But some credit-card issuers also take into account a “profitability score” when deciding whether to waive a fee — and that score doesn’t just correlate with risk, but with how much a bank expects to make from this customer. And a reliably paying (i.e., low-risk) customer is not necessarily a profitable one.

“Some people might assume that if they have a great risk score, they’re the customer that banks want,” Frank says. “But people who make payments on time are often not where the banks make their money.”

So, when I got to that second Chase rep — the one who waived my fee — she may have calculated that I was either a low-risk customer or a high-potential-profit customer, and wanted to keep me happy. And even if I haven’t been a profitable customer so far, Frank points out, there’s always the chance that I might make them money in the future.

I’ve experienced this myself.  Every few years, almost like clockwork, my credit card companies raise my interest rates for no reason.  It is often only a few points, and doesn’t really matter because I pay my card off every month anyways, but because of the principal, I will call them and ask to have the rate returned to where it was.  This work many times for my card with Citibank, which was my first card and I had it for more than 15 years.  Sometimes when they refused, I would ask them to cancel the card on the spot, and they would transfer me to the customer retention department who would agree to lower my rate again.

But one year, they simply agreed to cancel my card.  This was in 2006, just before the sub-prime fiasco hit.

This really makes me wonder, why is it that banks don’t want customers that are reliable and pay off their bill every month.  Have they become so addicted to the fee income they get from risky customers that they can’t stand having a good customer whom they make less money from?  Certainly, they make some money from me, from merchant fees.

If they are still dropping reliable (but boring) customers for sub-prime ones, perhaps we aren’t through this sub-prime mess just yet.

Chase pulls people out of teller line to upsell

This is simply a ridiculous practice.

[Chase] would like all of the new account reps to have someone at their desks at all times. They do this by having the banker walk up to someone in line, ask them what brings them in, and then tell them that they of course can help them with that and leads them to their desk. Here’s the thing: the banker doesn’t actually have a cash drawer or the ability to post transactions. While the customer is sitting at the desk, the banker will send someone else up to the teller line to post the transaction.

This process takes a lot more time than if the customer had just seen an actual teller. While the customer is now hostage at the banker’s desk, the banker suggests that they do a quick review of the customer’s information, to make sure that everything is up to date. This of course leads to product recommendations – in other words, a bait and switch to get the customer in front of a person that has been hard wired to sell, sell, sell.

What a waste of time.  You can read the rest of this story here.