It’s one thing for people to complain amongst themselves. It is another thing for people to complain on the internet where anyone can read it. But when journalists start writing their columns around bad bank customer service, like this recent article in my local daily print only paper, it makes me wonder if the contempt of retail banking by the public is reaching the point where Congress will start to notice and propose even more legislation to keep them in line. Chase is one of the chief culprits in the article. Among the authors complaints:
- Being overly marketed to by bank employees
- Pathetically low interest rate on what Chase calls a “high yield” savings account (0.045%)
- Taking way too many people and way too many days to answer a simple question
- Fees that are “accidentally” and inappropriately applied
In the end the author concludes that banks have lost their fiduciary morality. I would go as far to say that banks want our capital without the hassle of actually having us as customers anymore. Perhaps banks simply see customers like a factory farm dairy sees cows, and we see how well that has worked out for the cows (not well).
What is the solution? Well, for one, find yourself a bank that does actually want to be in retail banking. You are most likely to find this at a smaller bank such as a credit union or community bank. Second, when your bank does something ridiculous and inappropriate, hold them accountable, even for the smallest infraction. If enough people did this, banks simply would find it unprofitable to try and cheat us in all the ways they do.
The way Chase treats its retail banking customers makes me think they don’t really want them. In particular, in light of the fact that banking customers are a drain on profits lately and all the banks profits come from their trading and investment banking operations, why do they continue to run a retail bank and why in particular was Chase interested in Washington Mutual?
Why indeed? Because of banking capital requirements. Chase’s ability to make money depends on its capital, capital that it can leverage many times over to trade on its own behalf to make money. Hybrid investment/retail banks today make a lot of money trading on their own account, and capital is a very necessary part of this. Retail banking in particular is a cheap way to get capital that they can then use in their other operations, and when those operations become unhealthy, as they did for most banks in 2007-2009, they needed more capital to meet minimum required capital levels and to appear healthy.
So, Chase customers, you are really only there because Chase needs your money, not because Chase wants a banking customer.
The story goes like this:
1. Woman applies for a loan modification
2. Is approved for a trial mod
3. Is then told she is approved for a permanent modification. The verbal approval confirmation goes on for three months as she religiously calls in multiple times every week to check on status and see if they need additional information. Every time she talks to someone during this period, they confirm, she has been approved for a loan modification.
4. Then one day she calls and is told she has been denied. Not only that, that she must now pay all together on one lump sum everything she has missed for the last 6-7 months. She won’t actually be getting a denial letter in the mail, just a foreclosure notice.
5. Have a nice day.
My question for Chase is, why be dishonest like this? Do they simply not have a clue, or is this some type of malicious game to extract more money before foreclosure? These are peoples lives and homes here, and many of them were duped into the unmanageable loans they have (by WaMu), according to the recent Senate investigations.
Three former Chase executives have formed an investment entity to target the purchase of US based banks. Encore Financial Partners Inc will “seek to acquire an manage banks with a focus on consumer lending and technology-driven, back-office functions because of its founders experience.”
Does anyone else find that incredibly funny? Here at the front lines of Chase complaint central, it sure doesn’t look like Chase has their act together with handling the day-t0-day banking functions that should just work.
Another complaint of Chase’s bad customer service that pretty well spells it out: Rudeness, talked down to, and different answers from different people.
Wow, Chase claims that 2/3 of the mortgages it inherited (read, stole) from WaMu are deemed impaired in some way or another. In this same article is the news that Chase is eliminating more WaMu jobs, mainly in, get this, call centers, mortgage processing centers, and back-office units. Sounds like you can expect customer service to get EVEN worse.
As soon as WaMu was bought by Chase, one customers mortgage problems started, such as, unable to go into a local branch to pay the mortgage, can’t pay with an electronic payment, can’t go to Chase’s website to pay the mortgage, frequent failure to send the monthly mortgage bill/statement, longer payment processing time leading to late payments, lost payments … I could go on, or you could read the whole story yourself.
I had to laugh at this latest loan modification story. Chase would take so long to process their paperwork (the times they didn’t lose it) and then come to the conclusion that the paperwork was too old and needed to be resubmitted.
Customer service, Ineptitude | admin April 19, 2010 | 
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