Chase no help for high school student

A reader writes:

I have a high school checking account. Recently 43 dollars was taken from my account by a “nas-coal”, chase has no idea what this is, but this isn’t even the issue i came to complain about. Chase has put a hold on my account until july 1st, 2014. Do they have the right to seal me off from my hard earned money? Their lines always seem to be busy and their service is horrible. I’m in a predicament. a reply would be appreciated, thanks.

Anyone had this experience?  Any suggestions?

Chase Loss Mitigation Guide

Want to know how Chase handles  customers in arrears?  Someone uploaded Chase’s Loss Mitigation Guide for Prime Collections to Scribd.  Makes you wonder if the have a different guide for subprime borrowers.

Chase financial advisor likes to moralize customers

From this blog post we find that a financial adviser employed by Chase likes to tell customers when he thinks they are in the moral wrong.

On October 27th 2011 I went in to have a chat with my bank, JP Morgan Chase to find out what investing options they have (if any). This was a pre-planned appointment based on a casual inquiry I had a week earlier with one of the tellers downstairs.

Went to the Chase Bank on Solano Avenue and was greeted by Emmett Peck who is the VP and a Certified Financial Planner (CFP).

I provided some background info and told him that I’ve had to go through a short sale and was looking for more information on other investment areas.

— Bought a home 3 years ago for 350k which is now worth 150k. Pretty much worthless.

1) Emmett Peck told me that it’s people like me walking away from our homes that are causing all these financial and economic problems we are facing today.
— yes, Emmett Peck a Certified Financial Advisor stared at me point blank with total conviction that he believes this to be the truth.

2) Emmett Peck also said that buying a home is NOT an investment. It’s to live in and is only for that purpose.

So if you are looking for some stellar advice from a condescending banker who blames the customer for the banking and economic problems (which apparently is caused by hardworking Americans who paid too much for their houses) — this is the bank you should make a beeline for.

Chase: The squeaky wheel gets the grease

I came across a slightly bizarre review posted on a Better Business Bureau clone called TrustLink

Ref: KELLY WITZEL, Consumer Banking, 1705 E Capitol Expressway, San Jose, CA 95121 (408-528-7301) kelly.witzel@chase.com

I am writing this letter to let you know how appreciative I am of the great job that Kelly has been doing for my company.

I own a telecom cabling business here in San Jose. For six months, I had a problem with Chase getting me the correct Business checks. Every order I received, I got the wrong checks. I placed at least 4 orders for business checks. Each time, I would receive the wrong checks. Each time I took a copy of the check that I wanted printed to the bank and showed them! I still received the wrong checks each time.

I became so angry that I wrote a letter to chase advising them if this happens one more time, I would take my business elsewhere. I was so angry; I decided to writer this letter to each branch in San Jose.

As soon as Kelly heard about this letter, she called me. She was very apologetic and wanted very much to make things right for me. I was very impressed with her eagerness to help me. She made me feel like I did matter with Chase, that I am not just a number!

Kelly was able to get me the checks that I ordered. I was very impressed with hear desire to help me and to keep me as a personal and business customer.

Any issues I have, I just call Kelly now and she always returns my calls and assists me with what I need.

I am satisfied with the excellent service that Kelly offers every time I call.

If it were not for Kelly, I would have closed all four of my accounts with Chase. Thanks to Kelly, she was able to convince me to stay with Chase.

Please let her know how grateful I am to be able to rely on her expertise to handle my accounts.

Sincerely,

I’m sure this customer intended for the review to be a positive one (he gave Chase five stars) but when you consider how they completely failed at the simplest bank-type-stuff (getting checks right) and the fact that he had to go to extraordinary measures (mailing every single branch in a rather large town) to get someones attention, it doesn’t look all the great for Chase.

Yet another example that sometimes you have to complain incredibly loudly for Chase to assign someone competent to help you.

Also, if you are in the San Jose area and are having problems with Chase, you might give Kelly a call. 🙂

Ex customers

We received this great not from a reader:

I just wanted to say that your website and the Move Your Money Project really got the ball rolling for my husband and I. We were only with Chase for a few months when it became apparent that we weren’t fans. They even managed to close our savings without us knowing.
We are in the process of moving everything and we’ve opened an account at a local credit union.
I hope more and more people are realizing the rip-off that Chase is.
Keep up the good work.

It’s not too late to become an ex-customer of Chase!

What a good bank looks like

Marketplace.org recently did a profile story on Umpqua Bank, and describes a bank that is hip, honest, reasonable, and wants to be different than what a normal bank has become. Here is what one customer has to say about them:

Staff is very friendly and courteous, and they have a lot of little perk things about what’s going on in the neighborhood. So if I need to know something I come over here and ask.

First Republic Bank, while perhaps not as hip or connected to the community, is also a bank that tries to create relationships with customers and goes out of their way to solve problems.

The question is, why are you still banking with Chase or Bank of America or another big bank?

Chase phone abuse

This complaint sounds like it stems from the decision of a mindless corporatocracy that decide that robo-calls that bombarding someone with 20 calls per day is appropriate because each one costs only $0.001 each.

If I’m so much as 24 hours late on a payment with these people they seem to think it’s ok to bombard my house with endless calls about payment. 20+ was the lower limit, as it seems like they call every 15 minutes! Any advice on getting them to back the !@#$ off?

Chase screws up pee-wee football account

Many of the problems people have with Chase seem to be related to communication – either miss-communication, lack of communication, or Chase employees simply giving out the wrong information.  Take for example this story:  A pee-wee football team goes into Chase to  set up an account to accept donations to send the team to the football championships.  Chase, in its infinite wisdom sets up a regular account instead of a donation account.  Problem is, a regular account can only accept deposits (donations) from account signers, not anyone.

But then they pile lack of communication on top of miss-communication:

Calhoun says Chase never notified the team when they began declining the deposits, and his concern is whether people will still want to donate again after being turned away once already.

Seems like a no-brainer that when you have tens of people trying to make donations to an account that isn’t set up properly for it, you might want to notify the account holder.

But that’s just Chase for you.