Think banks like Chase don’t make errors?

Think again.  According to a lawsuit filed by a Seattle business owner, a bank error made by Chase during the holidays resulted in Chase freezing his accounts which ultimately forced him out of business.

Whether or not Chase made an error is not in question.  Chase has formally admitted to the error and the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates Chase, has also determined that Chase made an error.  The business owners account was put on hold incorrectly, and it took a week to get it open again, a week that turned out to be the worst possible time for the business.

Problem with Chase bank? Try Charlie Scharf

I came across this article which names Charlie Scharf as the head retail banking for JPMorgan Chase.  That would make him the top dog for Chase Bank, and, if you are getting nowhere with Chase customers service, one more person to try and contact to get some help.

For the record, here is our list of contacts for Chase.

Charlie Scharf CEO Retail Financial Services
Phone: 212-270-5447
Fax: 212-270-5448
E-Mail Address: charlie.scharf@chase.com

Chase iPhone check deposit app starts to show deficiencies

While the new Chase iPhone app has been widely reported on by the (mostly tech) media, Chase’s website, and specifically their mobile banking information page, still doesn’t show any information, so it is hard to find information directly from Chase on the capabilities an deficiencies of their new app.

According to this article, Chase has limited the deposits to $1,000 per day through the iPhone app, and a maximum of $3,00o per week.  Checks larger than those amounts must still be taken into a branch.  The article also reports that the app relies on the same technology used in the envelope-free ATM’s that scan the checks to get the deposit amount.  This technology has proven to sometimes fail to read the information properly, in which case Chase simply mails the check back to the customer, which adds many days onto the deposit process.

What will they do when an iPhone picture of a check isn’t able to be properly read?  Nothing?

Even their description in the iTunes App Store doesn’t give the full details.  App Store reviews list the following problems people have had:

• Unable to activate the app
• Inability to edit payments
• Inability for some customers to find the quick deposit feature (problem with iOS 4?)
• Not upgraded for the current iOS version
• Inability to pay certain bills (mortgage or HELOC)
• Can’t deposit using an iPod Touch
• Difficulty with rebate checks

I could go on.  Overall, the rating of the app went down over the previous version.

I appreciate that Chase is trying here, I really do.  But perhaps more important than technological bells and whistles, would be more competent customer support and less bilking of customers with ridiculous fees.

Update:  A recent report of problems with the app crashing.

Thousands dropping out of loan modification programs

By May of this year, one in seven people who had applied for a loan modification in Florida in January had dropped out of the program.  (SunSentinal article)

That may sound like a shocking headline for a newspaper, but with all the loan mod stories I see every week, I am surprised the number of people dropping out isn’t greater.  If you are familiar with the past abusive tactics of the insurance industry, such as denying all claims the first time they are submitted (because most people won’t resubmit a claim), you can see very similar tactics being used with loan modifications; make it so difficult and frustrating for people that a large number of them simply drop out and let their homes be foreclosed upon. I’ll admit that I’ve given Chase the benefit of the doubt in the past in wondering whether Chase is inept or malicious with regard to loan modifications.  It is starting to seem like Chase has a serious agenda to deny people loan modifications.

Chase claims that people are dropping out because they aren’t complying with the loan modification rules.  If you read some of the loan modification stories on our site, you’ll know that simply can’t be the reason for the majority of people who drop out.  Imagine that you’ve been pursuing a loan modification for nine months, because one of a two-income earner family lost their job and despite looking for 18 months, has been unable to find work.  In that time, you would probably have experienced:

• Chase loosing your paperwork several times
• Chase dragging their feet so long they claim your paperwork was too old and needed to be resubmitted (about the same as starting over)
• Chase not returning your calls, faxes, and emails
• Chase changing the person you had to deal with several times
• Chase pursuing foreclosure while telling you you were almost approved for a loan modification
• Chase telling you to stop paying your mortgage so you could qualify for a loan modification in the first place
• Chase not accepting their own checking statements because the final page was not properly numbered

With all these impediments, it is simply hilarious to hear Chase trying to put the blame on customers.

Or if you are really unlucky, Chase might have approved you for a permanent modification and then claimed you asked to drop out of it.

Welcome, visitors from Chase

Our web logs indicate that we had visitors from Chase last month.

That’s 20 visits for a total of 167 page views. In May they were here about 6 times.  In April it was 7 visits.

I hope your learning something to improve your customer service.

Biggest Chase loan modofication screw-up yet!

This is a strange story but it sure sounds like something Chase would do.  First, a little background.  The percentage of people who apply for a loan modification with Chase is large, and the number that get them, is small.  This might be partially due to the fact that standard operating procedures for Chase loan modifications is for them to lose your paperwork multiple times, causing you to resubmit.  This sounds suspiciously similar to some insurance companies who automatically deny a claim the first time it is submitted.

So, when Robert Davis actually was approved for a permanent loan modification, it was such an anomaly that a news program did a big story on him, profiling his tortuous path to getting approved.

Happy ending to the story, right?

Not quite.

It seems that Chase now claims that he himself requested that his loan modification be canceled.  They also claim that they never received the final paperwork, despite Davis’ Fed-ex tracking that says it was delivered and phone calls to Chase employees who claimed the paperwork had been received.

So where does that leave him?  Chase is now requesting that he begin the process all over again.

Simply astounding that Chase could screw up this badly.

Chase iPhone app

Chase has released a new iPhone app that allows you to take pictures of checks to deposit them directly through the app.

That sounds neat, but I shudder at the implications of Chase screwing this up on the back end.  They haven’t seemed the most tech-competent of banks in the past.

Lobbying by banks takes off

Wonder why the financial reform bill is stalled in Congress and is now missing the new bank tax?  Look no further than the lobbying efforts of banks like JP Morgan Chase, whose spending on lobbying increased in first quarter of 2010 to $1.5 million, a 15% increase over the $1.3 million they spend in the same period last year.  I can only guess that it went up even more in the 2nd quarter, but we’ll have to wait a while to find that out.