I hold a Bank of America credit card and was recently contacted by the BofA fraud department to verify some activity on my card. I wouldn’t say that the charges they wanted to verify appeared to me to have fraud red-flags all over them, but that doesn’t bother me so much. Unlike some Chase stories I’ve heard where people’s credit cards become useless because Chase puts a fraud lock down on them that becomes hard to remove, BofA raises fraud alerts sparingly and gives me some time to respond before locking the account. They also contact us via multiple phone numbers and email, rather than relying on just one contact method.
I’m not saying BofA is perfect, but this is one thing they seem to be doing well right now.
My point is that our discussions of Chase should probably include the things that Chase IS doing well. The reason I started this website was to effect Washington Mutual, and now Chase, to change for the better, hoping they would see the criticism in a positive light and use it to-fine tune their operations. From what we can tell, the only fine-tuning going on is to maximize profits. But perhaps we are missing part of the story, the part where people actually like and benefit from some of the things that Chase does well. What are those things?
We’d like to know.
About six months ago, we installed a spam-wall on our corporate email server. Looking through the rosters of the quarantined spam-mail sometimes provides interesting information. For instance, a lot of spam email is sent pretending to be from Chase bank, and there has been another recent outbreak of these. But another type of Chase spam I’ve found has to do with preying on people that are burried by their credit card debt. Here is what one email looks like:
Angry, frustrated consumers with large balances with card issuers
like Chase, Capital One, Citibank and others are pursuing settlement
offers through popular new bailout programs (click here).
And another
Rising credt card defaults and continuing bank struggles means
more flexible relief options for many frustrated consumers. If you
could benefit from a payment reduction or a balance settlement
offer (click here) new bailout-type options are yielding results
of 40 cents on the dollar and less for many.
The point is, don’t bother with offers like these. There are WAY many more uncouth credit counseling firms out there than there are respectable ones. If you need help, try Yelp or the BBB to find a respectable credit counseling firm.
The other point is, don’t trust any mail that says it is from Chase, if you are a Chase customer. NEVER click links in any email, unless you REALLY REALLY trust the source and are expecting the email. Always type in URLs yourself. It is very easy for a spammer to make a link say one thing but go somewhere else.
Well, they might as well have. Found this recently in response to a post about Chase:
I have perfect credit and when I went t get a loan for a car I only needed 3k because I had the rest saved up..well after being drilled about the year make and model (which they said I couldn’t get one older than 2006 or they would not loan) they said I had to borrow a minimum of $7000 and there will be penalties if I paid it off before a certain amount of years, that was very ridiculous.
Wow, Chase sure has a lot of rules for a simple car loan. It just begs the question, do they really want customers?
You’ve worked hard, dealt with Chase’s many hoops, and got a short-sale approved. Then a small hitch appears and the sales is delayed by a few days. Too bad says Chase, you have to start all over again.
Found this recently in response to a post about Chase:
Had an acct with chase and they even put a 4 day hold on payroll and a state tax checks. i totally stopped banking there after they sent my elec bill back even though i had the money there. they admitted their mistake, but only covered the fee for that check there was 2 other small checks their fee caused to bounce and they wouldnt fix it. so i closed my acct there, ive dealt with numerous banks and by far they are the worst.
So let me get this straight, Chase bounces a check they shouldn’t have, and the customer gets assessed a fee. That fee drags the account negative so that two two other small checks bounce and he is assessed two more fees. Chase admits their mistake and refunds the first fee but refuses to refund the other fees even though it is clearly their fault.
Perhaps I have just seen so many stories like this about Chase that I am not outraged or even surprised. Yes, Chase does stuff like this all the time.
Rumor has it that if you make a deposit at a Chase branch through the drive through (or in branch?), there will be less of a hold placed on it than if you do the deposit through the ATM.
This came from a comment to one of our posts, but it is much to interesting to leave burried there.
Chase has been reading a lot of Kafka lately. Especially, the Castle, and they’re inspired!: There are lots of people caught in a terrible loop of Chase “losing Documentation” and making people continually re-send in forms for an MHA even after they are appoved for one by the gov’t. So we had a Chase bank mortgage specialist at a Chase bank fax all our forms for us but Chase still claims they didn’t receive all the required information and then demanded even more information not asked for on the application. Since we own and live in a duplex we must now send them proof we do not have not formed a homeowners association with our housemates, for example. But the real test of their devious cleverness is a scam based on their own bank statement paperwork. Please admire its Kafka-esque brilliance. On Chase bank statements they leave the last page “left intentionally blank” but they do not number this last page. For example, a Chase account may have 6 pages and all the pages say, i.e., 1 of 6, 2 of 6, but page 6, the blank one, is not numbered 6 of 6. we have been continually turned down for an MHA because we are not sending them, Chase- holder of our mortgage and the bank where we have our accounts- complete bank statements even though we do send them that 6th page. Since it doesn’t say 6 of 6 they claim our application isn’t complete and make us start over from the very beginning. Going on Month 7. Evidently that’s nothing, most people who have tried have been trying for twice this long. There is one recorded incidence of Chase approving an MHA but it was too late and the house was already in foreclosure…
Anyone see the movie Brazil? That is just brilliant, don’t number your statements properly so that anyone sending them in as proof of a bank statement will have an incomplete statement. Brilliant!
This article from back in January 2009 quotes Chase as saying that it had planned to modify $1.1 trillion on loans and Chase could now be considered the most loan modification friendly lender in the country.
Well, we all know it didn’t work out that way, but if you want definitive proof, just read the comments to that article. Even now, almost 18 months later, people feel compelled to dispel the myth that Chase is loan mod friendly by sharing their Chase loan mod horror stories in the comments.
Customer service, Fraud | admin June 14, 2010 | 
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