Many of the problems people have with Chase seem to be related to communication – either miss-communication, lack of communication, or Chase employees simply giving out the wrong information. Take for example this story: A pee-wee football team goes into Chase to set up an account to accept donations to send the team to the football championships. Chase, in its infinite wisdom sets up a regular account instead of a donation account. Problem is, a regular account can only accept deposits (donations) from account signers, not anyone.
But then they pile lack of communication on top of miss-communication:
Calhoun says Chase never notified the team when they began declining the deposits, and his concern is whether people will still want to donate again after being turned away once already.
Seems like a no-brainer that when you have tens of people trying to make donations to an account that isn’t set up properly for it, you might want to notify the account holder.
But that’s just Chase for you.
Marketplace.org did a great piece on the want ads found by various lenders for foreclosure experts, presumably to staff up their operations in light of all the attention they have been getting and the impetus to actually have to review documents rather than just sign them.
But was was interesting about this piece was the comparison of the experience necessary for the positions being advertised.
Moon: So what types of qualifications does one need to be a specialist in foreclosures?
Wang: The types are varied, depending on who’s hiring. We looked at, for instance, GMAC — now Ally Financial — and that bank for instance was hiring a foreclosure specialist and wanted a college degree and three to four years of experience. But then Chase for instance was hiring a quality specialist, someone who would make sure that foreclosures were processed correctly and they were only asking for high school diplomas. So it really depended.
A high school diploma Chase? Really?
Does someone with a high school diploma have even the most basic understanding of what a mortgage is, much less the experience necessary to review mortgage related paperwork for accuracy?
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:
- Getting different stories about how things work from different Chase employees and then Chase goes and does something completely different than you were told
- 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.
You would think that getting different information from different people at Chase would be an anomaly, but it is actually quite common from what we have seen, such as this story:
I live in Indiana. Filed Chapter 7 Bankruptcy in March 2010, finalized in September. House market value was set at $170,000. Was able in late September to finally modify my primary mortgage to continue it (owing $157,000). Was trying to work with Chase Bank on my second mortgage ($43,000), they sent me a letter dated October 18 that they wanted to work with me on a loan modification and told me I had 30 days to contact them. I recieved the letter by certified mail on October 30. I called to start the process on November 2 and was to the loan had been charged off on October 29 and no one will explain why.
What are my concerns at this point? What should I worry about? I know they cannot recover from me personally because of the bankruptcy, but do you think foreclosure is a concern?
This latest article from the Wall Street Journal has a prime example of Chase’s schizophrenic behavior when handling loan modifications:
After J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. agreed in January to her trial loan modification under the Home Affordable Modification Program, Stephanie Lulko made six $767-a-month mortgage payments, even though the bank said it had no record of her loan and then warned in a letter that she would be foreclosed on unless she paid $4,091.94.
The 44-year-old Ms. Lulko, of Oklahoma City, says bank employees told her to ignore the letter. Their tune changed in June, when J.P. Morgan said she earned too much to qualify for a permanent modification. The problem this time: The bank’s numbers were wrong. “I wish I had never applied for this modification,” she says.
In September, the bank rejected her request for a permanent loan modification for a second time. She faces foreclosure unless she pays nearly $5,000—the difference between her original and modified loan payments, plus late fees. Ms. Lulko has been unemployed since her temporary job at the U.S. Census Bureau ended in August.
J.P. Morgan denies any wrongdoing related to Ms. Lulko’s loan. “We worked with the borrower over a number of months and communicated the status of the loan modification during that time,” spokesman Tom Kelly says.
Did you get all that?
- Chase simultaneously claims to have no record of her loan but demand a large repayment at the same time.
- They tell her to ignore a letter they sent her. Seriously? What kind of respectable financial institution sends you a letter and then other people in the organization tell you to just ignore it?
- They claim she earns too much but have the numbers wrong.
Yet another example of a Chase mistake that caused havoc for a homeowner. In this case, Chase incorrectly claimed that Bill Krieger had missed his September mortgage payment and wasted no time in informing all three credit agencies about the missed payment that wasn’t actually missed, which caused Krieger’s credit score to plummet.
After acknowledging the mistake, they sent him a paltry $53 to cover his trouble.
I once had an incorrect derogatory statement on my credit report for a payment applied to the wrong account. It took me 18 months and about 50 hours of my time to get it resolved.
Gee thanks Chase.
This is classic Chase ineptness in action.
They will not let me change my address. I’ve tried three times (meaning – with three new moves, but actually multiple attempts each move).
The address in my online account does not match the address they have on file. So I can change that all day long, and it doesn’t matter one bit. I was just in the branch office one more time today attempting to get them to change ALL of my addresses to the one current address. Neither the regular employee nor the branch manager could do it. She (the regular employee) was on the phone with tech support until I finally just had to leave because I had other things to do.
And I have a gazillion emails from tech support myself with them just saying things like, “Huh, I don’t know.” Except they don’t use the word, “huh.” And when I’d call them, I’d be told things like, “I can’t figure out what’s going on. Why don’t you call back in three hours because that’s when the new shift is on and maybe someone there can figure it out.” But they never can.
It’s finally coming to a head though because the bank has a freeze on my account because of the sheer number of returned mails they’ve gotten in the past 3 years. I currently can’t use Bill Pay, I can’t make deposits, I can’t do anything.
When I left today, the woman said she’d email me before the end of today with an update, but I’m thinking that I’m just going to close my account there if it’s not figured out within the next day or two. If they’ll let me do that! They’ll probably tell me I can’t close a frozen account. I am so annoyed by this.
A reader recently submitted this story:
March 2010 Chase posted my mortgage payment (paid via phone) to someone else’s loan. When I called them about it they confirmed receipt of my payment, gave me a Case Id#, and promised to correct it immediately. Seven months and many phone calls later not only has the payment not been posted to my loan, but they have been reporting me as 30 days late for 7 months. I’ve spoken with numerous customer service reps each of whom has read the full file of notes to me and supposedly sent an email to a supervisor named Jamie (no last name). Two weeks ago I was able to get through to a manager named Josh who also promised to correct the problem immediately. NOTHING. Today I called the executive office number and was told to wait 7-10 days for someone to call me. This is the same thing I was told every time I called customer service. This is their mistake. I did nothing wrong. I pay on time every month. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM???
If you think this is an anomaly, just read more of the stories on this site. Chase seems to do things like this all the time and seems to provide little help when people try to sort out the mess.
I once had something similar happen with a small regional bank I still bank with in California. After upgrading their online banking software, my payment to Verizon went to someone else’s Verizon account. Subsequent payments went to the correct account so it was a particularly tricky problem to figure out. How is this different than Chase you might ask? In 20 years of banking with this smaller regional bank, this was the only such problem I have EVER had, and when I called them to straighten it out, it only took one call.
Customer service, Ineptitude | admin November 21, 2010 | 
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