Chase changes debit card PINs with no warning or notice
We received this report from a reader today:
A couple of months ago, I tried using my debit card at a merchant and was told that the PIN was invalid. I have two Chase cards so tried using the second and was told that that PIN was invalid as well. I thought that I had made a mistake and forgot about it until a few days later when I was trying to deposit some checks and was unable to do so, again being told that the PIN was wrong. Since I was at a branch, I went inside and had the PIN reset. Yes, somehow, Chase had changed and re-set the PINs on both checking accounts! I re-set the PINs but the PINs were then switched. Account A now had Account B’s PIN and vice versa (I mark the two cards so that I don’t mix them up). I tried explaining this to my branch but they didn’t believe me. No funds were missing but it really shook me up.
Chase is somewhat infamous for small technical screw-ups, at least according to all the stories we’ve come across. Technical diligence doesn’t seem to be one of their strengths and this weeks 3-day outage has highlighted that in a big way. The initial problem at least could be easily explained as a technical problem, but the reversing of the PIN numbers on the two cards probably not.
Or the initial problem could be explained another way. Chase is also notorious for lack of communication. When they change your credit card limit, they do it and send you a letter a month later. When they have a major outage, they tell customers almost nothing. When they take money from your account to satisfy an old debt that may or may not be valid, they say absolutely nothing.
Perhaps they thought they had some good reason for resetting the PIN numbers but felt communicating that was not important.
Ineptitude | admin September 17, 2010
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By Catherine, September 18, 2010 @ 11:37 am
Oh this is the same crowd from WAMU who spent millions on mortgage software they never used, kept an IT team in Santa Rosa CA – away from their WA corporate IT department because they didn’t know how to incorporate old NAMC information into their system. They also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars remodeling the same Santa Rosa building for executives who never came and ultimately the building was never used and they sold it – except for that IT room they had to have.
I tried to set up a small business account at a branch in Santa Rosa and the girl spent all her time on the phone with tech support and in a guide because she didn’t know how to set up a small club account. She actually said to me, “They don’t train us how to do this because we don’t get that many and they feel it’s not worth training time away from work to train us on something like this.”
So in other words I am so unimportant that a transactions hat should take about 20 minutes, is taking an hour because Chase doesn’t want to train their employees.
It got so bad by the end and the bank was closing that she asked me to come back. I went to a local bank instead and it took them 10 minutes to get my account set up and wonders of wonders that bank employee didn’t have to call anyone or try to look it up in a manual.
Chase is like the Walmart of banking. I can get better service at a busy Ross department store at Christmas.