Chase’s mistake gives customer the run-around
A reader sent us this story, which has to be one of the most blatant examples of Chase having no clue what they are doing.
Chase is merely a group of putrid thieves. I’ll explain what happened at this ridiculous bank.. i want more people to know about what a sad deal they have going on there.
I didn’t know a single thing about chase last week. I saw a coupon for a bonus of 150 dollars for opening an account with them. I’m pretty young, just got my first job, knew i wanted to open up my first checking account.. so i did a tiny bit of research on them.. they seemed somewhat legitamite as a company.. not just one of those archaic internet scams with no information and no physical locations. But they still were a scam..
I open my account online, give my opening deposit, check the verifications for the deposits and every thing is seemingly dandy. This is about the 2nd day of dealing with chase.. what I expected so far.
So my account opens up that day after doing the verifications. They even text me and tell me how great it is that i will recieve text updates about my account. I think. oh.. they can’t be too shady.
Log on next morning to check on my account.. it says.. invalid. Please call this number. They gave their standard service number. I thought.. oh great. here we go.
I call the number.. ask them a seemingly extremely perplex question of.. “what’s the problem here? I am wondering why my account is invalid. I have not deposited nor taken any money from it. All I did was open my account 2 days ago.”
They reply.. “we’re sorry, we can not reveal this information to you. Please go to a chase branch near you and talk to a personal banker.”
Ugh.. that’s fine.. i’ll just go up there and they can verify it, hopefully quickly, but i doubt it. They didn’t tell me any thing about what it would require on the phone. they merely said.. “go to a branch, we won’t be revealing any thing to you”.
I prefer being safe than sorry, so I actually brought my original birth certificate from when I was born, my drivers license, and my social security card.. just to be sure I could have every thing they could possibly imagine to bother me with, to save me some trouble.
But oh.. guess what. That’s not enough. These bankers start saying that my state issued birth certificate from when i was born.. with all the seals and every thing.. and drivers license.. and social security card aren’t enough. I need some “letter of social security” to open a bank account. All that was not enough. Not once would they ever explain why. “We cannot reveal that information to our customers.”
I figure this is ridiculous, and my mom says it’s ridiculous. But.. I want to give them a chance, even though I offered them all that, i want to give them one more chance. I call the social security office.. even THEY told me “A what? a letter of social security? do you have your social security card? well that’s all you need. it has all the print needed to be verified. I’ve worked here for 20 years and i’ve never heard of a letter for it.”
Well that’s refreshing.. so i call and call until finally some one says “I’ve never heard of this either but if a letter is what you want i can write you a letter that says that number belongs to you.”
After hours and hours of waiting in line at the social security place, I finally get my letter for great ole chase bank that has me on a wild goose chase for they won’t even explain why. The lady even wrote on the letter.. if you have any more possible doubts about the identity of this person.. you can come to our office or give us a call and talk to us about it.
I go to another chase branch. I figure.. great.. what else are they going to try. Do I have to bring every one i’ve ever met in my entire existence to say “yeah, that’s him”. Or do I not exist. Seriously.
I go up there with the letter and every thing. They make their calls to their main office as usual.. and then they go and say.. we’re not going to be accepting this. It doesn’t have all the stamps we want on it. All the stamps? I tell them.. I need information about what you’re talking about and I need it now. No one I know has ever heard about doing all this to open up a simple, standard account.
Then they say one of their workers might have typed in the wrong social security number in their system, and some one has been banking under my social security number.
So I respond to them.. That’s great. Well what do they have to prove their identity? I’ve got all this to prove I am who I say I am.. what do they have?
“Well, we can’t reveal that information to you.” Seriously.. you guys don’t even know what you’re saying now. You’ve got me jumping through all these hoops for nothing. How about this.. how do I know this is chase bank? How do i know this doesn’t just look like chase bank and have all these forged documents on the walls? I want undeniable proof. I gave them so many chances, and after all this, I’m done with them.
And as for the opening deposit money.. they said they have frozen the account and will not transfer or provide any of my own money back to me until “I clear this up”. Clear what up?! It’s a problem with your system. You can go down to whatever offices you think you need to, you can pick you a number, and you can wait in line to get what you need to fix the problem in your system. I’m not the information system manager for chase bank, I don’t need to be traveling the globe to compensate for your problems.
To lock the account and not provide my own money back too is just thievery. That’s a great scam isn’t it? Snatch peoples money right out of their hands, put it in an account, freeze the account, and tell them they’ll never get it until they prove who they are and nothing is sufficient to prove who they are. I can’t even drive by that place any more, it disgusts me.
Bad bad Chase, Ineptitude | admin December 17, 2011
By Jerry, December 21, 2011 @ 1:26 pm
What a nightmare!
I hope the opening deposit was not much and can be recovered when the account can finally be closed.
My bank was a local bank, advertised as “The Friendly Bank!”, and they were for years. Sadly they have been acquired by the unfriendly bank.
By coakl, January 16, 2012 @ 9:22 pm
Likely reason: An illegal alien Chase customer is already using your social security number.
WaMu had many illegal aliens who opened accounts and took out loans. When Chase took over, they became Chase customers.
It’s odd that this wasn’t caught immediately when you opened your account online. I think this type of discrepancy is only detected after the account is already open.
In other words, the online account opening process isn’t really complete when the web site says that the account is open. Some clerk or rep still has to review what was input and maybe do some additional data entry into the REAL Chase computer system. This would not be surprising as Chase has some fairly primitive systems and terrible procedures.
The federal Social Security Administration does offer an online method of verifying names, dates of birth, and SSN’s for businesses but its not free. I suspect Chase doesn’t use it. Banks are pretty much cheapskates if profits aren’t involved.
By Corey, March 20, 2012 @ 6:32 am
Hey, im just wondering how everything turned out for you? Im having this same exact problem except i have not visited them yet. my account was just froze online and i called and they told me to go to a branch with a letter from ss office to verify my account =(
By Shawn, May 9, 2012 @ 5:00 pm
Having this same problem now, and I’ll be damned if I’m driving two hours to my local Social Security Administration building just to wait in line for a few hours and get a letter verifying that I am who I say I am. If anyone has any more info about this I’d love to hear it.
By Alejandra Garza, May 16, 2012 @ 3:13 pm
Chase recently did this to me. I am a young adult and did not know this happens too often with Chase, so I have been sweating these past 2 days thinking my identity has been stolen. I am now awaiting for my $500 initial deposit to be returned to me. I opened a new account with $100 but will most likely not be using it. I am very disappointed and stressed out at this point. I should have just stayed with my local bank. At least there I know where my money is.
By Joey, July 13, 2012 @ 7:06 am
This is happening to me right now. I was getting ready to go down to Social Security, but now I think I’ll just cancel my transfer to the Chase bank, tell them to cancel my account, and go somewhere else.
I even checked my credit report from Transunion last night, and everything was fine. When I called Social Security last night, they said it sounds like it could just be a typo, but I don’t want to deal with it…