Here is a great story that outlines exactly the tendency of Chase’s customer service to give incomplete or simply bad information.
How Chase Bank Almost Helped a Teenager Get Scammed
by Jeff Sovern
A teenager I know responded to a listing for a summer job on Craig’s List. The employer claimed he was opening an art gallery and would pay $400 a week for twelve hours of work running errands and the like. Because he was out of the country, he was unable to meet her, but emailed her a list of questions. Upon receiving her answers, he hired her. She was thrilled.
Shortly afterwards, he overnighted her two money orders totaling $1,700. He instructed her to deposit them and take $200 for half of her first week’s salary; she was to wire the remaining $1,500 to an artist that day. When she mentioned this to me, I became concerned. What if she wired the money and the money orders later came back dishonored? And why hadn’t he wired the money himself rather than trusting a teenager he had never met?
So she called her bank–JPMorgan Chase–to find out how long it would take before the money orders cleared. The answer she received was one day. That didn’t sound right to me, so I got on the phone. I explained my concern that this was a scam and that I didn’t want to know when she could draw on the funds, but rather when the funds would clear so that she was assured that the bank would not charge back her account when the money orders came back dishonored. Once again, I was told one day. I was still unconvinced, so we called again. Again we were told one day. I haven’t looked at check clearing for ages; had things changed so much in the interval? I tried a third call to Chase, and this time the representative told me what I had expected to hear the first time: while Chase would make the funds available in one business day, it could take much longer than that to determine if the money order was legitimate and that if it were dishonored, Chase would charge back the account. I instructed the teenager to text the employer that she would not wire the funds until the money orders had cleared, on the theory that if he’s legitimate, he will get in touch with her. So far, she hasn’t heard back. I don’t think she will.
The teenager is disappointed at the loss of her seeming summer job and simultaneously relieved at not having lost her savings. But there’s a bigger issue here than just what happened to her. Most teenagers–and probably most adults–would have stopped at the first phone call. Many would have wired the money. Maybe they could later persuade Chase that it should not charge their account back for the dishonored money order because of the information provided by its customer service agent, but more likely they wouldn’t be able to. Chase was in a position to prevent this fraud–and it didn’t.
First of all, I am simply shocked that Chase would make any deposited funds available that quickly. Their tendency has been to stretch out the hold period longer and longer where now it is often 7-10 days. Second, the customer asked, how long until the check clears, not how long until funds are available. When talking with Chase, you may find it valuable to ask questions in two or three different ways, and perhaps with at least two different people, just to make sure you get the same answer each time.
Like a rug store perpetually going out of business, Chase keeps running these “Hurry and sign up for a new checking account because the offer expires soon” promotions. The last one expired on June 30th, and surprise surprise, they now have another one that expires August 14th.
News flash: Washington Mutual ran a constant $100 for a new checking account promotion and Chase has pretty much run the same promotion for years now. Chase, we’ll get excited when you are actually doing something interesting.
We all know how much Chase beat up even its good credit card customers in response to growing worries about the health of its credit card portfolio. But what we didn’t know was just how many people went for the exits. Looks like their treatment of customers has purged the ranks to the extent that, now that the health of their credit portfolio has improved somewhat, they have a serious problem with revenue growth, according to the Wall Street Journal.
But the question about whether their credit card portfolio has really improved is in question as evidenced by conflicting information in the Wall Street Journal story:
- They reduced their reserves for losses by $1.5 billion
- Their write offs went from 11.75% in the 2nd quarter to 10.2% in the 3rd quarter
But this is directly contradicted by the fact that the percentage of customers that were delinquent by at least 30 days went up from 4.96% t0 5.62%.
So it seems that Chase may be doubly screwed here, they still have a fairly sick portfolio and are not that attractive to existing good customers and new customers. Oh yea, and there is our mounting evidence that they are losing retail banking customers.
Yup, another article in a major metropolitan newspaper (the Los Angeles Times and reprinted in the Columbia Daily Tribune) about people getting fed up with their bank and leaving it. As often seems the case, the bank in this example is Washington Mutual Chase. Seems they were very happy with Washington Mutual and feel that customer service has gone downhill and the ridiculous fees have gone up since Chase took over.
Yup, you guessed it, they moved to a credit union.
BY E. SCOTT RECKARD Los Angeles Times
Adding insult to injury, Roberta said, they had to pay a fee for depositing more than $5,000 in cash to their small-business account in a month — something they might do again because Mark, a saxophone player, earns much of his living selling his CDs at street fairs. “I thought banks were supposed to want you to put more money in,” Roberta said.
Mark and Roberta Maxwell had been zapped by fees for overdrawing funds and using the wrong ATM, and they felt their bank, once Washington Mutual, had lost its personal touch since a takeover by Chase.
Read more …
The part that kills me is that Chase is actually charging someone for depositing TOO MUCH money in their account in one month. Are you kidding? Aren’t banks supposed to want more deposits? Especially Chase, who it seems has been drastically losing deposits and customers for a year or more, as far as we can tell.
Jamie Dimon, aka, Jamie, did a big interview with the New York Times entitled “After Crisis, Show of Power from JP Morgan” and calls Jamie Dimon Obama’s banker. This is puzzling given Chase’s abysmal standing in the ranks of big banks offering loan modifications.
Another article, which discusses how he wants to be called just Jamie, claims everyone loves Jamie. Yea, everyone but Chase’s customers.
Hey Jamie, how about getting more personal with your customers?
Seattle bar The Twilight Exit is fed up with Chase and its shenanigans. On their Twitter feed and Facebook page, they have offered to buy anyone dinner who shows proof that they have quit Chase bank.
Hoping to succeed where Washington has largely failed, New York City’s comptroller, John C. Liu, and six large unions plan to begin a campaign on Wednesday to press the biggest banks to do more to prevent foreclosures in the New York area.
Mr. Liu said the group would send Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, among others, a letter that criticizes them for dragging their feet on modifying mortgages that are underwater or delinquent, and that urges them to do “everything possible” to avert foreclosures.
Depending on the response the coalition members get, they might move pension funds and bank deposits to other institutions, according to union officials.
Read more …
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–Charles Schwab Corp. (SCHW) is suing units of three banks over the sale of mortgage-backed securities to the company’s bank, alleging the firms made false statements or omitted facts about the credit quality of loans that backed the investments.
The banks named in the complaint filed on June 29 include units of Bank of America Corp. (BAC), UBS AG (UBS), and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM). Two units of Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) are also named in documents, though the bank wasn’t one of the securities dealers that sold certificates to Schwab. Rather, Wells Fargo is considered an issuer of the certificate that UBS sold to Schwab.
In a filing with Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco, Schwab said it purchased three certificates in three securitization trusts backed by residential mortgage loans for $130 million.
Schwab alleges that defendants in the suit “made untrue statements, or omitted important information, about such material facts as the loan-to-value ratios of the mortgage loans, the number of borrowers who did not live in the houses that secured the loans and the extent to which the entities that made the loans departed from their standards in doing so.”
The complaint alleges that more mortgage loans other than those listed in the document “were the subject of untrue or misleading statements.”
The complaint says that because the certificates are securities, under two California securities acts, Schwab believes it is entitled to rescind the purchase of the certificates or be paid damages for losses on the certificates.
Read more …
Here is a great story that outlines exactly the tendency of Chase’s customer service to give incomplete or simply bad information.
Customer service, Ineptitude | admin July 16, 2010 | 
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