JPMorgan Chase has 9th worse corporate reputation in the US

Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recently complained that the New York Times hates banks.  There is some good evidence that it isn’t just the New York Times, or media in general that hates banks, but pretty much everyone on the US.  Furthermore, Chase in particular seems to have people’s ire, and a Harris Interactive poll found them to have the 9th worse corporate reputation in America.

A company’s reputation is formed not only by the products it sells, but by the decisions it makes in times of crises. For some, that’s a good thing. For others, some present on this list, not so much.

Using survey results, market research firm Harris Interactive has compiled a list of the U.S. companies with the best and worst reputations. For the 12th Annual Harris Interactive U.S. Reputation Quotient Survey roughly 30,000 Americans were asked to rate the 60 most visible companies in the United States based on six factors: financial performance, products and services, workplace environment, vision and leadership, social responsibility, and emotional appeal. Combining these factors, Harris tallied a total RQ Score. Scoring above 80, for reference, indicates a company’s reputation is “excellent.”

Overall, companies in this year’s survey ranked higher than the previous year, with 16 companies rated as “excellent” compared to only six last year. Tech companies, in general, seem to have the best reputations, while financial and oil companies have the worst. Notorious scandals like the BP Gulf Oil Spill and Goldman Sachs’s role in the subprime crisis seem to have lingered in American minds, and companies with the worst reputations scored especially poorly when rated on whether they have “high ethical standards” and could be “trusted to do the right thing.”

Car companies largely fell somewhere in the middle, but that could change in the coming years. General Motors and Chrysler, while stuck in the bottom 11 this year, did make the third and fourth highest gains on the list, respectively, of any company.

Below are the 11 companies with the worst corporate reputations:

9. JPMorgan Chase

Chase banking glitch causes double charges on accounts

Another gift from the technically savvy people at Chase (article 1, article 2).

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM) acknowledged Tuesday that it accidentally charged customers in some states twice for their debit-card transactions.On Tuesday afternoon, the bank fixed the glitch that had affected transactions between Friday and Monday, a spokesman said. J.P. Morgan will refund any fees tied to the double bookings.

Purchases were booked as a temporary charge, but when the transaction was actually processed, the temporary charge remained, which meant the customer was charged twice for that same purchase, customer accounts show.

By Tuesday afternoon, J.P. Morgan, the nation’s largest bank by assets, had credited customers for the errant charges. Account balances are corrected, a spokesman said. The original, duplicate and corrected transactions are still on the online account statements until those are synchronized overnight, at which point only one transaction will be shown.

Fraud is not the issue, the spokesman said. Rather, a technical glitch related to a recently changed computer program inside the bank occurred Monday, the first business day of the month. Since debit transactions made over the weekend are also processed Monday night, those were also impacted by the double booking.

Chase couldn’t say how many of its 25 million customers and transactions were impacted. But the glitch hit customers in the tri-state metropolitan region of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Chase told customers in Twitter messages, “We do apologize for the error. We are working to get the charges reversed as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience.”

“Chase bank gave me a heart attack,” one Twitter post said. “I was declined for a $2 coffee this AM, checked account… HUNDREDS of $ in duplicated charges.”

On March 26, J.P. Morgan Chase said its consumer-banking website experienced technical difficulties that slowed online banking for several hours and intermittently made access to the site unavailable, including through mobile devices. It resolved the issue the same day.

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