When a borrower is delinquent, Chase calls … the parents?

Very odd.  Either Chase is ignoring the requests to stop calling for someone that doesn’t live there, or like Chase often does, different people from different departments can’t seem to get a hold of the same information.

Hi! We are receiving contant calls from Chase regarding my daughter and her husband. They married 4 years ago and have called Chase several times, but they continue to call our house…How to stop them?

Read more …

What Chase does when a refund gets lost

In this case, NOTHING!!

I made an international transaction on my Chase credit card during my vacation on 11/26/2009 for about $619 which was subsequently refunded and I have evidence to prove that (receipt for sale being void). When the reversal of amount did not reflect on my credit card for over a month I contacted the bank (over phone) to register the dispute. When nothing happened after few months I contacted again and faxed them the evidence I had. After couple months nothing happened again (they said they never got a fax) then I initiated communication through their website and uploaded the evidence I had on their website. After which I tried communicating several times with them and every time I got response that their investigation is underway and they’ll get back to me. Today I received a call from their representative that they cannot resolve the matter because I did not register the dispute with them within stipulated time, which is incorrect. I consider this lame excuse because they were probably unable to track the error in their transaction processing system.

In summary, delay, delay, delay, deny.

Don’t surprise Chase with out-of-the-ordinary requests

Hold the pickles hold the lettuce special orders don’t upset us?  Yea, not so much for Chase according to this story:

I am trustee of my mom’s trust. We, my mom and I , have a joint account at Chase. It is not a trust account, per the Attorney’s advice. I was traveling (in California) and received a dividend check from a stock in the name of the Revocable Living Trust . The check is made out to me, as trustee for my mom. Chase is the only bank in the area where we have an account (all others are local, and in the trust’s name, where we live). I tried to deposit the check into the account and Chase said they couldn’t do that. I pointed out that I am the trustee, I am trying to DEPOSIT the check, not cash it, and both our names are on the account, and that their computer system has a copy of my Durable Power of Attorney for my mother. FInally, after speaking with three managers, over a period of an hour, one of them decided they could call our local branch (in Tacoma) to get their permission to accept the deposit. Huh?

Two years ago I had to get our State Attorney General’s office involved because Chase wouldn’t accept the DPOA to open a Chase CD in my mother’s name, with her funds from her Chase Bank account!

Never, ever had any trouble with any of the other financial institutions we deal with: 2 brokerages, 3 credit unions, and another bank.

More evidence Chase not that good at technical details

After reading this story, do you still trust Chase with your own personal info?  Chase got her account cross-linked with the wrong persons not once, but twice!

A bad experience has led one Manhattan woman to question Chase Bank’s online security. NY1’s Susan Jhun filed the following report.

Chase Bank’s website reads, “Chase is serious about safeguarding your personal information online.” Yet long-time customer Marie says she personally found that to be untrue.

When the Chase client had a problem viewing her linked checking, savings and business accounts online, she went into a branch to resolve the matter. The bank had accidentally linked Marie’s account to someone else’s.

“I’m linked to their account and they have pending payments about to be taken out of my personal account,” says Marie.

Additionally, she was shocked that she had access to all of this stranger’s private financial information. After much back and forth initiated by Marie, the stranger’s information was finally removed from her account, only to then have her business partner’s personal information link to her account.

“I called the gentleman back and he said, ‘I can’t delete these from your account because it’s from before 2009.’ Their services, their records don’t go back before 2009,” says Marie.

Marie says a Chase representative told her that she should manually delete all her business partner’s information, which to Marie is a ridiculous solution.

“I definitely know I’m not alone, because when I asked, ‘What’s your accountability, what’s your responsibility to this?’ the gentleman in the escalation department was like, ‘Oh actually, this happens all the time,'” says Marie.

NY1 reached out to Chase and a spokesman released a statement that said, “We apologize for the error and are working with the customer to resolve this uncommon issue. We encourage customers to contact the bank whenever they notice any unusual activity with their accounts.”

It is little reassurance to Marie, who says she has lost all faith in Chase.

“I’m definitely changing my account,” she says.

Problems depositing checks with Chase iPhone app

We received this comment and it brings up an interesting deficiency in Chase’s iPhone app:

I deposited a check with my iphone and it was returned. Chase charged a fee of $10 because the iphone photo was not complete of the front check. I am sure I took the photo but the app doesn’t save the photo in your cellular, It will be the last iphone deposit I will make with Chase. Sorry !!

The question here is why is Chase using this as an opportunity to ding a customer with a fee?  If Chase was reasonable, when something like this occurred, it would be reviewed by an actual person and, seeing it was a technology failure, the customer would NOT be charged a fee but perhaps emailed instructions on how to better use the technology.

But as one customer discovered when the deposited a check written in red ink, which caused Chase to flag fraud and close their account, real people don’t actually review out-of-the-ordinary events at Chase.

Or better yet, their technology would actually recognize an incomplete check.

Just the facts mam

This story sound familiar to anyone?  Seems hard to just get the proper info from Chase customer service.

I had a very frustrating experience with Chase bank yesterday.

I wanted to pay down the balance of our home equity line of credit to zero. I did not want to close the account.

The pay down amount isn’t obvious on their web site, so I called their customer service.

The woman I talked to was clearly a script reading drone, as she could not give me JUST the information I wanted. She had to give me ALL the information that showed up on her screen.

The balance on the account was about $60 plus some variable interest.

The first amount she told me was to close the account entirely (which I explicitly told her I did not need) was around $500. This included the early termination fee.

The next amount she gave me was (supposed to be) the amount to bring the balance to zero. She quoted me $400!

I explained that the amount she gave me could not be right because my current balance was only $60.

So she had to log back into the account to get the breakdown. Since the call had already gone on for 25 minutes, I just told her to forget it and I would calculate the amount myself.

Back on their website I finally found the variable interest that was due: $0.46.

Unfortunately the website would not let me pay the full amount … I had to pay the current balance first, then pay the variable interest.

The last time I wanted to do this I was unable to make a payment less than $1 … So I had to make a $1 withdrawal so I could pay a little more than $1.

This time it let me pay the .46 without jumping through hoops.

I like many of the services Chase offers, but their phone customer service leaves a lot to be desired.

Chase: Ask a question, get a wrong answer

You would think that asking your bank if a check has cleared would be a simple one to answer, but apparently Chase can’t get even that right, as evidenced by this recent blog post:

It’s true that “Sad Sack” bounced a check.  What I didn’t mention is the fact that Chase Bank told me that the check had cleared.  I had been checking my balances via online banking obsessively, waiting for the moment when I could be sure that I was done with “Sad Sack” forever.  The day it showed the check cleared I celebrated with a martini and a huge sign of relief.  It was over.

The next day “Sad Sack” called and informed me that the check wasn’t going to clear.  I started to cry.  There was no way this could be true!  My balances showed that the check had cleared!  In this case, I was sure, “Sad Sack” was mistaken.  But not sure enough…  “Sad Sack” had a way of wasting my time and energy.

I called up Customer Service.  I said, “Is there any chance that this check hasn’t actually cleared?”

The lady helping me was a sweetheart.  “I don’t think so,” she said.

“So absolutely the check has cleared?”

“Let me check.”

She was gone a long time.

When she returned her voice was small and meek.  “Actually,” she admitted, “the check won’t officially clear for a couple more days.  I’m sorry.”

“Wait a minute.” I was livid.  “I know this isn’t your fault, but Chase told me that this money was available before it was actually available.  I could have spent it and wound up bouncing checks all over town!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She kept apologizing.

“It’s not your fault,” I told her again.  I know not to shoot the messenger when dealing with these companies.  They’re just trying to make a buck in this cold, hard world too.

What’s in it for Chase Bank for me to think that the check cleared before it actually did? Any number of bounced check fees–that’s what!

Chase doesn’t like red ink

Wow, was my first reaction to this this story. Can Chase really be THIS screwed up and insensitive to their customers?  You would think that closing someones account and accusing them of fraud would at least require a review by a real person of the circumstances involved and perhaps even some contact with the customer.

My husband and I (Berkeley residents) were recently treated terribly by Chase Bank, as I briefly describe below. I think that this story is of interest to many of your readers because Chase is a new bank in California. We, along with thousands of other Californians, had our Washington Mutual accounts become Chase accounts after the buy-out. I’ve heard many stories of people being mistreated by Chase, whereas Washington Mutual was known for their customer service — my husband, a Seattle native, had his Washington Mutual account since he was a child.

My husband Ethan’s grandma wrote us each a check for $100 for Christmas. She is going blind and she could only find a red pen to write the checks. My husband went to deposit these checks at our local Chase branch ATM last Tuesday (12/28/10). Apparently the red ink did not show up well on the scan that the ATM took of the check, so Ethan had to manually enter the amount of the checks. We went out of town for New Years, returning on Sunday (1/2/11). On Monday, I went to pay our mortgage (held by a different bank) online and realized that neither of our paychecks were direct deposited in our account, so we didn’t have the funds to pay. I called Chase and was told that the direct deposits had been refused because our account was “restricted,” had been closed by Chase due to “fraud,” and there was absolutely nothing we could do about it. They said that they would send us the funds remaining in our account in 10 days. I then went to my local branch in downtown Oakland and spoke to the branch manager who was sympathetic, made some phone calls, but could do nothing about the situation since Chase had already decided to close the account. She confirmed that the “fraud” concerned the checks from Ethan’s grandma which they said were “blank’. Clearly no human every looked at the checks, as they were decidedly not blank. They made no effort to find out what had happened, instead just immediately closed our account.

The letter informing us that our account was closed arrived only today (Monday 1/3/11). Meanwhile, not knowing our account was closed, we sent a check for our car registration to the DMV last week and gave our day care a check today. Per Chase’s (unconscionable, I think) Account Agreement, they will not honor these checks, likely resulting in many fees, which they are not liable for according to this “agreement”. Not to mention, we have no bank account, do not have access to the funds from our paychecks, and cannot pay our mortgage or other bills. We might have fraud reported to credit agencies and our credit will likely suffer because we will inevitably be late on some payments since we have no funds or bank account. All because no one at Chase bothered to actually look at the checks from Ethan’s grandma, showing the ultimate disrespect to their customers and causing us completely unwarranted and unnecessary hardship.

Update:  This story was picked up by the San Francisco Chronicle (Chase misses checks’ red ink, closes bank account, 1/7/11).  And it looks like all the media attention has gotten the couple results, as Chase has reopened their checking account.  No word if they received an apology from Chase.