Chase recently touted that it 400,000 customers have signed up to received their statements in Spanish and lists its bevy of customer services that are offered in Spanish in a recent press release. Presumably they are doing this to attract more Hispanic customers. At first glance, it seems admirable that Chase is trying to better serve a demographic which is traditionally under served and may not have access to the same services that others have, leaving them at a disadvantage.
But I’ve gotten used to questioning the motive of anything Chase does, given the many many Chase horror stories I have seen.
In this case, I can’t help but think that customers who speak only Spanish would be less likely to seek justice when dealing with problems or mistreatment they might encounter with Chase. I don’t think this is inherent to Spanish-only speaking people, but to anyone who finds themselves in a country where they don’t speak the predominantly spoken and written language.
So why do I question Chase’s motives in this case? Chase’s press release leaves out mention of some very important services such as bilingual ATM’s and bilingual online banking. Surely they would mention those in a press release if they were offered. ATM’s at least seem fairly essential to banking and not understanding what the ATM is telling you would be difficult, especially when there is a problem. Also, while they do mention in in the press release that they offer bilingual services in their branches, they way they says absolutely nothing about how many branches. It could be in only two branches out of thousands.
This isn’t such a strange concept for a bank like Chase. If they are willing to stack the deck in certain ways against their banking customers (automatic overdraft protection, selective order if debit/credit application) and their credit card customers (moving due dates, preemptive rate increases) why wouldn’t they do the same thing to customers whose primary language wasn’t English by excluding some essential services from those that are offered bilingually?
Yes we have been late on payments to the point when my husband had to give Chase our checking account number to make a payment.
So far so good, the customer agreed to allow Chase a one time EFT from their checking account to satisfy a late credit card payment. But then Chase took the next unethical and probably illegal step and kept taking money out of the checking account, when they were not authorized to do so.
Ever since then, which was 6 months ago, Chase has been automatically taking payments out of our checking account without our authorization and us knowing about the transaction. Because of these incidents our family has suffered from lack of food in our house, care for our child, and medical/dental treatment.
This fits right in with the many documented cases of Chase debiting peoples accounts to satisfy what may or may not be a valid old debt, without informing the customer as to why or that the debit even happened. This has even caused people to unknowingly rack up overdraft charges.
So far, the stories we’ve seen have been limited to old debt that was seemingly charged off and forgotten by the customer, but apparently not by Chase. This story represents a new trend where Chase is willing to bend, possibly break the rules for current debt that is still in relatively current form.
This begs the question of how far Chase is willing to go to gets its payment. If you’ve EVER paid your credit card by authorizing an EFT from your checking account at a non-Chase bank, will they now start debiting your checking account if your payment is even a day late? What if you have never authorized a payment from another account but you have a checking, savings, or investment account also at Chase? Will they start taking funds from ANY account they have access to to satisfy current debt that they feel might be in danger?
I would not be surprised if stories just like these scenarios break in the next few months.
It was bad enough when Chase was sending people repeated fear-based letters about signing up for the new opt-in overdraft protection (they must stop automatically enabling this fee maker for customers starting August 15th), but now they have representatives accosting people who come to the bank to use the ATM:
Anyway, so I was in a Chase branch near my apartment in [redacted] on Saturday morning around 10am, grabbing cash before hitting up the local farmer’s market. And in the area where the ATMs are, there was a Chase employee standing there, talking to a customer. The Chase employee kept saying, “It’ll only take 10 minutes,” and the customer kept saying no. I went to the ATM, took out my $40, and went to leave when the employee stopped me. I was a little surprised – usually most people just get their money and go, right? – when the employee asked me, “Excuse me, but I have a question. Have you made a decision about your debit card overdraft coverage?” I was pretty taken aback that they are now having employees directly ask customers who are just in the bank to use the ATMs. I told her simply “yes” and walked out the door.
Chase is either desperate to shore up their fee income or has just decided that the normal bounds of being obnixious to your customers no longer applies. Perhaps both.
This isn’t the first report I’ve seen of Chase employing this debt collection tactic: place a debt collection call to a customer, hang up before saying anything, and record whatever notes they want on the account for the call. Here is a video describing this scenario.
The comments on the original post are not sympathetic, telling the poster to pay their debts. What is not at question here is Chase’s right to try and collect on debts owed to them, it is their tactics. They frequently seem to provide serious impediments to people who honestly want to try and pay their debts.
There must be a division within Chase who’s only job is to track down people who owe them money and have unsuspectingly come under the Chase umbrella again. These people must be whetting their lips every time Chase acquires another company, as they have a new pool of people to go after.
Yes, yet another story about Chase sneaking money out of someones current bank account for past debts, whether those debts are valid or not.
I have a checking account with WaMu, which failed and was now bought by JPMorgan Chase. A couple of years ago, I had a credit card with Chase. I defaulted and the account was charged off and never paid. I was not (yet) sued, so there is no judgment on the debt. Now that JPMorgan Chase owns WaMu, can they snatch my money out of my checking account and apply it to that old defaulted credit card debt?
No one can dispute Chase’s ability to go after money owed to them. The problem is their approach of guilty until proven innocent and the fact that they fail to inform the customers that money has been taken or what old debt it is to satisfy, often times causing people to rack up overdraft charges for no good reason. Customers are left to call Chase and find someone with a clue that can tell them what happened.
A more reasonable approach would be for them to put a hold on the funds, send the customer a letter describing the reason why their funds are held, and informing them of the process to dispute it.
We’ve been seeing more and more reports of Chase debiting peoples accounts for very old debts, without any notice or concern for what it might do to peoples finances, and apparently without any understanding of whether the old debts are actually valid.
The latest story involves a guy on a road trip and the old debt debit Chase took against his account racked up $294 in overdraft fees.
Upon further investigation, the customer discovered that Chase was claiming the debit was from a time that he didn’t even have an account open with Chase.
Bad bad Chase | admin August 5, 2010 | 
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