I own and run several businesses, businesses that have actual customers, and know first hand that good customer service pays many dividends, some of which don’t come for years. Sometimes good customer service means giving the customer what they want even if they are technically wrong.
Well, Chase’s attitude towards customer service couldn’t be farther from this principle and their slash and burn tactics dealing with the sub-prime customers they helped create will come back to bite them, perhaps years down the road. Take for instance this customer.
I had a low rate balance transfer to a credit card. Most unfortunately, that company sold its card division to that den of thieves known as JPMorgan Chase. I was a couple weeks late just once — I was moving, all my records were in boxes, I thought I had paid the bill but didn’t. I paid it as soon as I discovered this, but oh no, they jacked up my rate sky high. The minimum payment went from about $200 to $600, almost all of which was just to service the interest. The customer service munchkins either said they couldn’t do anything about it, or just acted like I was some kind of a nut. I had to get help from my family, and then work like a slave to get out from under the thumb of those greedy loan sharks.
This is very typical Chase. The reality is that even good customers screw up sometimes, but rather than doing the right thing, Chase takes advantage of an opportunity like that to make more from their fee based banking. But what happens when you treat even your good customers in distasteful ways?
And now that I’ve paid them their pound of flesh, they’ve been sending me balance transfer offers. HAHAHAHAHA!
I got a house recently. Guess which company didn’t get my business? So they screwed me out of a few thousand dollars of interest, but lost the opportunity to get several times that much by servicing my mortgate. May they burn in *** for eternity. 
Exactly what I was thinking. You treat enough people badly and your growth rate somewhere down the line is bound to suffer.
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.
The U.K. Financial Services Authority said today that it has imposed a record fine against JP MOrgan Chase for failing to properly segregate client money in order to protect it. Had the firm become solvent at any time during the period of 2002 and 2009 (and so many firms did or came close) the client money would have been at risk of loss.
Oops!
Chase has apparently decided to bow to all the pressure and stop financing mountaintop removal mining.
I haven’t found the data to back this up, but according to this post over at chasehomefinancesucks.com, Chase started out approving 106,000 trial modifications in the first four months of the governments program, and in the eight months since, only 86,000.
I’ve seen TONS of reports whereby Chase simply takes money out of someones account (with a notation like “transferred to another account”) to satisfy an old debt, typically at an organization that Chase has swallowed. They never give anyone warning and don’t send any kind of letter explaining what happened. Well, here is another one, with the twist that the “old debt” is due to Chase screwing up.
Here’s the story: In April of 2008, I opened a WAMU account because I
was in San Fran (And they had awesome saving rates of 5%). I was happy
with the account until I was getting ready to move back to Michigan
where there is not a single WAMU around (This was just before the big
banking blow up and Wamu’s takeover by Chase). I went into the WAMU
branch, and closed both of my accounts since dealing with a bank you
have no access to is a pain, and ATM fees are killers.
Fast forward to around October of last year. I hadn’t had a bank
account since I closed up my WAMU account so I decided to go to Chase
since my parents have used them for years and years and have never had
a problem. I hadn’t had any problems either, until today.
So today I go on my online account and notice a rather strange
withdrawal of near a thousand dollars with a description of
“Transfered to another account”. Now, after having had my WoW account
hacked I thought at first that someone got into my account online at
Chase, and moved some money. I looked over all the transfer logs, and
saw nothing of interest.
Call up Chase. Get through to a representative finally, and say “Hey,
I noticed this almost thousand dollar transfer, and wonder what’s up.”
So, first time, they go to check, I get disconnected. Call again get
someone else. They again go off and check on it, and come back saying
“Well, that was money you owed WAMU”. Now that’s odd, a bank account I
closed with a 0 balance and I owed them money. The rep then went on to
tell me the account was closed in April of 09…however I had closed
the account in November/December of 08. Odd.
I finally get them to fax the statement over to prove that I somehow
owed this money. The fees were all overdraft (Up to 3 a week mind you
of 35 bucks a piece) on fees that Chase was charging to the account
labelled “Maintenance Fee”. Apparently, my account came back to life
like some bank account zombie, and ate my lunch…and rent…and cable
payment…and gas and electric as well. To top all that off, despite
having two addresses on file, an email address, and two phone numbers,
they couldn’t be arsed enough to tell me that my account was over
drafted (And no, I didn’t have any access to WAMU’s online system
since the accounts were closed). I went on to call my roommate in San
Fran, since he still lives in the cottage, and he told me nothing had
come for me since I left.
Many of the complaints I come across with Chase have to do with former WaMu customers that have been treated pretty harshly by Chase. But there are plenty of complaints from customers that started with Chase, and some of them go back quite far. Chase would be telling quite a yard if it were to claim that problems and complaints were a newer problem.
Like this one, reporting a problem that happened back in 2004.
In 2004 I got divorced. My ex, looking for retaliation, stole my checkbook. I knew he had it, so I called Chase, reported the issue, and closed my account. Three days later, Chase opened my account back up without notifying me or gaining my permission in order to allow a $5 check to come through (the rest I had cancelled, I was not aware of this one), and then proceeded to charge me $775 in overdraft fees while I fought with them about the issue. I had documentation from their bank showing I had closed the account (and why) three days prior to the check coming through, and when I spoke with their legal representative, they told me that the theft of my account was my fault because I left my checkbook in my own house where my ex (who still lived there as well) could gain access to it.
I still owe chase $775.00. I will never pay them. Because of this, I am not eligible to open a bank account ANYWHERE.
It is no secret here at chase-sucks.org that we don’t like Chase. But the truth is that we have struggled to find ANY bank that we like and treats customers like the valuable asset that we are, rather than the way Chase (and most banks) treats its customers, like a resource from which to repeatedly extract fees and treat with disdain.
Well, a new banking concept called BankSimple, a bank built on simplicity and with no hidden fees, or heck, even non-hidden fees is in the works. While this concept is still in the planning stages by one of the early Twitter employees, the fact that someone is thinking of this concept is making us think about whether it is the future of banking.
Is it possible that a bank like BankSimple, and perhaps others of the same mold, could decimate the current banks customer base?
According to the lifehacker poll in the above link, a full 40% of respondants are unhappy with their current banks and would consider switching to a bank like BankSimple.
Do you know what a loss of 40%, or even 20% of their customer base would do to big banks like Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo?
Bad bad Chase, Fees & charges | admin June 3, 2010 | 
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