Chase doesn’t like red ink
Wow, was my first reaction to this this story. Can Chase really be THIS screwed up and insensitive to their customers? You would think that closing someones account and accusing them of fraud would at least require a review by a real person of the circumstances involved and perhaps even some contact with the customer.
My husband and I (Berkeley residents) were recently treated terribly by Chase Bank, as I briefly describe below. I think that this story is of interest to many of your readers because Chase is a new bank in California. We, along with thousands of other Californians, had our Washington Mutual accounts become Chase accounts after the buy-out. I’ve heard many stories of people being mistreated by Chase, whereas Washington Mutual was known for their customer service — my husband, a Seattle native, had his Washington Mutual account since he was a child.
My husband Ethan’s grandma wrote us each a check for $100 for Christmas. She is going blind and she could only find a red pen to write the checks. My husband went to deposit these checks at our local Chase branch ATM last Tuesday (12/28/10). Apparently the red ink did not show up well on the scan that the ATM took of the check, so Ethan had to manually enter the amount of the checks. We went out of town for New Years, returning on Sunday (1/2/11). On Monday, I went to pay our mortgage (held by a different bank) online and realized that neither of our paychecks were direct deposited in our account, so we didn’t have the funds to pay. I called Chase and was told that the direct deposits had been refused because our account was “restricted,” had been closed by Chase due to “fraud,” and there was absolutely nothing we could do about it. They said that they would send us the funds remaining in our account in 10 days. I then went to my local branch in downtown Oakland and spoke to the branch manager who was sympathetic, made some phone calls, but could do nothing about the situation since Chase had already decided to close the account. She confirmed that the “fraud” concerned the checks from Ethan’s grandma which they said were “blank’. Clearly no human every looked at the checks, as they were decidedly not blank. They made no effort to find out what had happened, instead just immediately closed our account.
The letter informing us that our account was closed arrived only today (Monday 1/3/11). Meanwhile, not knowing our account was closed, we sent a check for our car registration to the DMV last week and gave our day care a check today. Per Chase’s (unconscionable, I think) Account Agreement, they will not honor these checks, likely resulting in many fees, which they are not liable for according to this “agreement”. Not to mention, we have no bank account, do not have access to the funds from our paychecks, and cannot pay our mortgage or other bills. We might have fraud reported to credit agencies and our credit will likely suffer because we will inevitably be late on some payments since we have no funds or bank account. All because no one at Chase bothered to actually look at the checks from Ethan’s grandma, showing the ultimate disrespect to their customers and causing us completely unwarranted and unnecessary hardship.
Update: This story was picked up by the San Francisco Chronicle (Chase misses checks’ red ink, closes bank account, 1/7/11). And it looks like all the media attention has gotten the couple results, as Chase has reopened their checking account. No word if they received an apology from Chase.
Bad bad Chase, Ineptitude | admin January 5, 2011
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By Jerry, January 5, 2011 @ 8:56 am
Good grief! Common sense along with customer service has been sucked into a black hole at Chase.
Now I know to avoid ATM deposits at Chase. Have they implemented fees for deposits with a human teller yet?
By coakl, January 6, 2011 @ 10:22 am
The tellers use the same type of scanner. Both the ATM and teller scanners have high error rates (about 20%). Even perfectly printed and typed checks can kick out fatal errors.
In fact, if you have the numbers 2 or 7 in your account number, I strongly recommend closing your account. Many Chase account numbers differ by as little as one digit. If the scanner misreads a transaction slip or check and comes up with your account #, and the teller doesn’t notice that the account owner is different, the transaction will hit your account. In other words, the bad handwriting of someone in Georgia or Arizona could strip you of your money.
But at least inside the branch, there’s a human around to correct the errors. This is also why the line moves so slowly in a Chase branch; the tellers are busy correcting scanner errors.
By coakl, January 6, 2011 @ 10:28 am
Chase is a “Check 21” bank, i.e. Processing checks using 21st century technology. Images of checks are sent to other banks. Everything runs on the scanned images of transactions. Most banks still ship paper around but some of the bigger banks, such as Chase, took advantage of a federal law allowing images to substitute for paper.
So what happens to the paper checks and deposit/withdrawal slips? They go into a bag and are then shipped to a warehouse somewhere. For “small” problems like the one in this blog post, no one will look again at the paper documents. If it were a bigger check, they might go through the hassle and dig up the original paper. But no, a $100 check from grandma doesn’t count as “significant.”
By coakl, January 6, 2011 @ 10:34 am
Also, run down to your nearest credit union and open a new checking account ASAP. Once Chase reports you to the CheckSystems fraud database, you won’t be able to open an account at any financial institution that uses CheckSystems for new customer verification.
By bluemax99, January 17, 2011 @ 9:56 pm
Frankly anyone at Chase that has anything to do with that type of corporate behavior should be summarily xxxxxxxx. Bank and people tha work at most banks are inheritently evil.