Always tell them what you think

Recently, BofA called me with an automated message asking me to give them feedback on a recent experience with them, which happened to be with their fraud department.

Personally, I NEVER pass up an opportunity to give companies, especially when they ask, feedback on my experience with them.  Sometimes your feedback DOES make a difference.

I once banked with a smallish bank in Southern California.  They invited me to join a group of people for an hour session where they could ask us questions about how they did business and what they could do better.

One of the questions they asked was the thing that annoyed us most about their phone banking service.  My comment to them was that it took too many levels to get to a live operator and they should make that easier.  About a month later, their phone banking systems first message included an option to dial 0 to get to an operator immediately.  I suspect that my feedback helped them make this very important usability change.

The point is, if Chase calls you asking for feedback, please dear God, for the sake of humanity, call them back. 🙂

Bank of America and the good Chase

I hold a Bank of America credit card and was recently contacted by the BofA fraud department to verify some activity on my card.  I wouldn’t say that the charges they wanted to verify appeared to me to have fraud red-flags all over them, but that doesn’t bother me so much.  Unlike some Chase stories I’ve heard where people’s credit cards become useless because Chase puts a fraud lock down on them that becomes hard to remove, BofA raises fraud alerts sparingly and gives me some time to respond before locking the account.  They also contact us via multiple phone numbers and email, rather than relying on just one contact method.

I’m not saying BofA is perfect, but this is one thing they seem to be doing well right now.

My point is that our discussions of Chase should probably include the things that Chase IS doing well.  The reason I started this website was to effect Washington Mutual, and now Chase, to change for the better, hoping they would see the criticism in a positive light and use it to-fine tune their operations.  From what we can tell, the only fine-tuning going on is to maximize profits.  But perhaps we are missing part of the story, the part where people actually like and benefit from some of the things that Chase does well.  What are those things?

We’d like to know.

Chase says to customer, go somewhere else

Well, they might as well have.  Found this recently in response to a post about Chase:

I have perfect credit and when I went t get a loan for a car I only needed 3k because I had the rest saved up..well after being drilled about the year make and model (which they said I couldn’t get one older than 2006 or they would not loan) they said I had to borrow a minimum of $7000 and there will be penalties if I paid it off before a certain amount of years, that was very ridiculous.

Wow, Chase sure has a lot of rules for a simple car loan.  It just begs the question, do they really want customers?

Chase below average on Yelp

As an exercise, I searched Yelp for Chase in New York City, added up the total number of stars they got and divided by the number of reviews.  Chase’s total score for New York city is 2.21 out of 5 stars.

I did the same for the bank I use, First Republic, for New York City.  Admittedly, there are far fewer reviews.  They scored a 4.67 out of 5 stars. In San Francisco, where First Republic has far more reviews, they still stored about the same on average.

Unlike some of the West Coast cities where Chase is unpopular due to their takeover of WaMu (and many subsequent snafus) Chase has been in NYC for a very long time.  They should have gotten it right by now.

Consumer reports says bail on big banks

Ok, I am heavily paraphrasing with that title, but if you read Consumer Reports article entitled When to bail on your bank, the only conclusion your can come to is that big banks suck and small banks rule.  Specifically, they find in big banks favor for:

• More branches
• Better online and mobile banking

But, small banks outshine big ones in many more ways:

• Better service
• Closer community ties
• Better credit cards – much lower rates, lower late fees and over-limit fees
• Higher yields on savings accounts
• Low-rate loans

Update 6/5/10:  The Wall Street Journal seems to agree.

Chase employees not only act ineptly, but criminally too

This story about a Brooklyn NY Chase teller should give us all the shivers.

A brazen teller at a Chase bank in Brooklyn used her job to recruit victims for a phony investment scheme — telling customers they’d get a better return by giving their money to her than anything her bank could offer, prosecutors said today.

So, in addition to getting just plain wrong advice from Chase employees, seems you have to worry about getting scammed too.

Roadmap of a Chase short-sale

For nine months and three buyers Lauren Moughon tried to close a short sale on her house in Washington.  She had to give them the same documents over and over again.  Finally she called the local TV news station consumer advocate, who called Chase, and they immediately pulled their head out of wherever it was and closed the deal.

Is that really the only thing that will make Chase respond?

Hey Chase, what kind of credit card do I have?

This thread over at myFICO is very funny.  Basically, it is a bunch of former WaMu customers wondering what type of Chase credit card their former WaMu card was converted into.  Apparently, when logging into Chase online, there is no indication what type of card it is, and none of the customers received a notice of what kind of card they were being converted into.  One customer reports he WAS able to figure out what type of card he has but the type of card has been changed twice since the WaMu takeover.

Little help Chase?