topic Re: Terrible Chase experiance in Personal Finance

Terrible Chase experiance

Green456 — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 18:27:08 GMT

So Im moving to city/state where there is no wells fargo, bank of amreica and chase is the only national bank. Chase has a pretty good reputation up here and so I thought, I will have no issues.

April 1:

Opened 3x checking and 1x savings accounts via local branch. I ask the lady there, am I gonna have any issues transfering large amounts of money via bank check? Do you need additional documentation. She said no, driver license just fine. This is Chase. We will not lock you out.

April 5:

I recieve a letter that they need additional verrifications or else my accounts will be closed in 10 days. They requested I fax a utility bill or a paystub. Now I don't have a printer or a fax machine... So I went to the same branch and they scanned the paystubs to their system. They gave me confirmation number but recommended I call nex day to confirm that everything is a okay.

April 8:

I call their Texas office, a very nice lady confirms that everything is okay. She recieved my paystub and my accounts will not be locked out.

April 10-20:

I transfer my all online payments including rent, cars, loans, etc into chase. I close my other bank accounts thinking "This is Chase." A big bank that will not screw me over. At least that is what was promised.

April 22:

Account suspended. I have no access to my money, I work 12 hour shifts and I cannot visit a branch....

I call their number on the suspended account notification. I am told that they don't have copy of my ID or proof of address. I told the guy what happened April 1-20. He said. No, he does not have copy of my ID or address and accounts are suspended and they will be closed in 10 days.

This is a joint account BTW. My wife has no issues on it but because of me her access to the accounts have been suspened too.

UPDATE:

So I went to the branch. They unlocked my account. I really don't blame them or get upset at wanting to verify my identity or my wife's identitiy. They have to do their due deligence and verify me. However I feel like I have done my due deligence and did exactly what they asked me for. 1) When opening bank account I asked if they needed any extra information. 2) When I recieved letter few days later I went directly to the branch with the documents they asked for. 3) I called their Texas office from which I got the letter to confirm that everything was okay. Then out of nowhere, without email, phone call or any kind of warning my accounts are frozen. I really feel like this is just unacceptable. It kind of makes me feel like my experience with Schwab.

I talked to my wife, we will keep this one open for now, get our bonus out of it and see how things go. But we may close their account 90 days from now and go with a credit union or a local bank. I will just park my money elsewhere and it is not a small amount.

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

xaximus — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 12:41:23 GMT

I actually had a similar issue awhile back, but I did not close my other accounts until I had the Chase account full up and running. At this point, I would reach out to a manager at the branch and see what can be done. If you know the name of the people at the branch, reach out to them to see how they can resolve this since you have done everything on your end correctly yet they are dropping the ball. After that, definitely file a complaint regarding the whole situation.

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

Green456 — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 12:49:28 GMT

@xaximus wrote:
I actually had a similar issue awhile back, but I did not close my other accounts until I had the Chase account full up and running. At this point, I would reach out to a manager at the branch and see what can be done. If you know the name of the people at the branch, reach out to them to see how they can resolve this since you have done everything on your end correctly yet they are dropping the ball. After that, definitely file a complaint regarding the whole situation.

I kind of lost my trust with Chase. I do have large amount of money that I need to park somewhere and I thought a large bank would provide me that assurance. I will go to Chase and try to resolve this issue but long term wise I don't know how much I can trust them traveling out of the country or do buisness with them.

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

xaximus — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 12:56:23 GMT

I have always had multiple checking accounts and have my money parked in 3 different banks at any given time. Anytime I travel, I don't keep my debit card with me anyway, I'll have a couple credit cards and some emergency cash if anything. I do let the lenders of the CCs I take know that I will be out of the country at whatever given time so that they don't lock the cards thinking its fraud.

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

DaveInAZ — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 13:46:40 GMT

Well, this is pretty inexcusable for accounts opened in branch, when you open in branch it's a requirement that the rep properly documents your identity and enters that information in their system. It sounds like she failed to do so.

I opened a Chase checking in branch a couple years ago. Everything went fine until the first time I tried to transfer in over $1k from an external account, this after I added the account on the Chase side and verified their trial deposits. My access was promptly suspended, when I called the number the rep wanted me to stay on the line while she called the other bank to verify I was the owner of the account. I told her No Thanks, just cancel the transfer. Then I removed my funds and closed the account. You might consider doing the same, although yes, while your accounts are suspended you can't do that. Again, for accounts opened in branch this is inexcusable.

You might call them and ask this question: How is it possible that I opened the accounts in branch with my photo ID and you now claim that you don't have a copy of my ID or proof of address and can't verify my identity? Are your branch employees really that incompetent?

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

Streetervillelady — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 14:44:02 GMT

@Green456 wrote:
@xaximus wrote:
I actually had a similar issue awhile back, but I did not close my other accounts until I had the Chase account full up and running. At this point, I would reach out to a manager at the branch and see what can be done. If you know the name of the people at the branch, reach out to them to see how they can resolve this since you have done everything on your end correctly yet they are dropping the ball. After that, definitely file a complaint regarding the whole situation.
@xaximus wrote:
I actually had a similar issue awhile back, but I did not close my other accounts until I had the Chase account full up and running. At this point, I would reach out to a manager at the branch and see what can be done. If you know the name of the people at the branch, reach out to them to see how they can resolve this since you have done everything on your end correctly yet they are dropping the ball. After that, definitely file a complaint regarding the whole situation.
I kind of lost my trust with Chase. I do have large amount of money that I need to park somewhere and I thought a large bank would provide me that assurance. I will go to Chase and try to resolve this issue but long term wise I don't know how much I can trust them traveling out of the country or do buisness with them.

The banking crisis in the 1980’s resulted in bank failures, mergers and buyouts. Now NO bank has an integrated system. Because of this and ever-changing anti-money laundering laws what happened to you could happen at virtually any bank in the country. For some it’s easier said the done, but everyone needs more than one banking relationship.

At this point you need to take a day out of the office and see a branch manager. The manger should have a higher level of systems access. Keep your support documents with you/available. With Chase everyone you speak to will request them. This won’t be a quick fix.

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 15:14:02 GMT

I am so sorry to hear you had such a bad experience with Chase. As others have pointed out, this literally could happen at *ANY* bank in the country, because they are all a little skiddish with the current laws. Chase is especially so. Their branch folk warned me as much when we opened accounts, so we made sure everything was *100%* to their spec, and kept other bank accounts open.

I also want to second what someone suggested re having multiple accounts. My DW and I keep multiple banks for both our business and our personal... and we don't bank at the same bank, with the exception of one CU (NFCU). She's with a local CU, USAA, and BofA, i'm with Chase, Cap1 and NFCU. That way, if there is *ever* a problem with one bank freaking out, screwing up, or otherwise something odd happening (like when chase held our $12k deposit into our business account), we had a backup.

Switching banks is a pain. None of them are *GREAT*. Chase is *pretty good*. Even the beloved NFCU has issues. Good luck - remember, they are trying to mitigate financial and regulatory risk, too.... so once your account ages a tiny bit (like a month or less) you should be fine.

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

Revelate — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 15:30:25 GMT

Hrm. A piece of advice, when dealing with banks simply act like everything is absolutely fine.

Repeated calls and awkward questions, while not the core issue (which at least sounds like a bank flub though seriously use an online fax or Fedex or UPS store if really required: get it to the right group the first time instead of going to the branch), don't help one's case.

Almost every customer is ignorant, you want to be able to plead that if things go sideways. Don't get angry (even though I would be at least annoyed as hell), be patient, be polite, and work through it.

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 15:50:11 GMT

@Revelate wrote:
Hrm. A piece of advice, when dealing with banks simply act like everything is absolutely fine.

Repeated calls and awkward questions, while not the core issue (which at least sounds like a bank flub though seriously use an online fax or Fedex or UPS store if really required: get it to the right group the first time instead of going to the branch), don't help one's case.

Almost every customer is ignorant, you want to be able to plead that if things go sideways. Don't get angry (even though I would be at least annoyed as hell), be patient, be polite, and work through it.

This is some brilliant advice right here......

Dummy curve. Know everything, tell them nothing. Act like everyone else. At least until your account gets out of the "new account" phase.

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

Green456 — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 18:31:21 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I am so sorry to hear you had such a bad experience with Chase. As others have pointed out, this literally could happen at *ANY* bank in the country, because they are all a little skiddish with the current laws. Chase is especially so. Their branch folk warned me as much when we opened accounts, so we made sure everything was *100%* to their spec, and kept other bank accounts open.

I also want to second what someone suggested re having multiple accounts. My DW and I keep multiple banks for both our business and our personal... and we don't bank at the same bank, with the exception of one CU (NFCU). She's with a local CU, USAA, and BofA, i'm with Chase, Cap1 and NFCU. That way, if there is *ever* a problem with one bank freaking out, screwing up, or otherwise something odd happening (like when chase held our $12k deposit into our business account), we had a backup.

Switching banks is a pain. None of them are *GREAT*. Chase is *pretty good*. Even the beloved NFCU has issues. Good luck - remember, they are trying to mitigate financial and regulatory risk, too.... so once your account ages a tiny bit (like a month or less) you should be fine.

I don't blame them for trying to follow local laws and doing their due deligence. I blame them for incompetence. How am I suppose to trust them with my money if Chase employee from Texas tells me one things, customer service on the phone tells me another thing and person at the branch in NJ tells me another.

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

Green456 — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 18:46:31 GMT

@Revelate wrote:
Hrm. A piece of advice, when dealing with banks simply act like everything is absolutely fine.

But why? They are not the ones doing me a favor. There are plenty of banks and credit unions out there.

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 22:03:35 GMT

@Green456 wrote:
I don't blame them for trying to follow local laws and doing their due deligence. I blame them for incompetence. How am I suppose to trust them with my money if Chase employee from Texas tells me one things, customer service on the phone tells me another thing and person at the branch in NJ tells me another.

I don't disagree. That is pretty crappy... unfortunately that crappiness can and does happen all the time to just about every bank imaginable. Bad customer support lives everywhere.

I am glad to see via your update that they got everything straightened out.

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 22:10:42 GMT

It’s foolish to believe that any financial institution is perfect. My recent saga with BECU, a credit union normally known for exemplary customer service, serves as a good reminder of this.

Sorry that they put you through it. Unfortunately it’s not uncommon when you link external accounts as I found out with BECU. They don’t want to be on the hook for fraud and take steps necessary to prevent it. It’s possible that everything was done right at the branch and that the info given wasn’t sent to the department that ended up actually having your case dropped in their lap. It happens unfortunately and those departments almost always do everything through fax which I also found out from my misadventure with BECU.

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

Green456 — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 01:25:45 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
It’s foolish to believe that any financial institution is perfect. My recent saga with BECU, a credit union normally known for exemplary customer service, serves as a good reminder of this.

Sorry that they put you through it. Unfortunately it’s not uncommon when you link external accounts as I found out with BECU. They don’t want to be on the hook for fraud and take steps necessary to prevent it. It’s possible that everything was done right at the branch and that the info given wasn’t sent to the department that ended up actually having your case dropped in their lap. It happens unfortunately and those departments almost always do everything through fax which I also found out from my misadventure with BECU.

It's not the need for verification that I am upset about it is that two different people at two different parts of the country working for Chase told me that everything in my account is a okay and that submitted documents check out. Then no email, no phone call, no warning and my account is suspended and I talk to gentleman (sounded like foreign country) tell me that Chase does not have my driver license or proof of address... and is suspeneded.

I was really not upset at all when they sent me a letter for need for verification. I was happy to come into branch 2nd time and provide them with all the documents they need.

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 02:33:37 GMT

Hey Green! Glad things eventually worked out, as per your update.

I hope that most or more likely all of us are 100% sympathetic with you. It is frustrating to have tremendously bad luck with multiple customer service reps. You are probably knowledgeable enough about statistics to realize that no matter how amazing an institution is on the whole, some lone customer somewhere is gonna have a stroke of really bad luck and have rep after rep make terrible decisions. It just bites being that one customer with the bad luck!

Some lessons learned here:

(1) As frustrating as it is, it's a jillion times worse when you have one bank. My guess is that if you had 2-3 other banks that you did your "real" day to day stuff with, you would have been stressed out much less with this new Chase account. Having the Chase accounts temporarily suspended or frozen would have been mildly irritating but since you didn't use them (yet) for anything it wouldn't have mattered.

We see a similar dynamic at play when a person has only 1-2 credit cards. Mistakes by CSRs in that event become like an asteroid hitting the earth. When you have 5 cards, though, you can just sigh and pull two more out of the sock drawer while the other issuer gets its act together. That happened to me -- curiously enough! -- with Chase recently. My CSR experience with Chase is generally amazing. But they made some mistakes and kept needing to cancel and re-send my two Chase Freedom cards. If those were my only cards I would have been wildly stressed. But as it was it was closer to being water off a duck's back, because I had a number of others.

(2) Related to #1 is the idea that when you open a new bank account (or credit card), plan on not needing to use it for anything important during the first few weeks, while you are let them get all the kinks worked out. In the case of a CC, use it for only a few small benign purchases at local well-known merchants (Target, mcDonalds, Kroger, etc.) -- rather than immediately using it for big online purchases or using it out of state immediately. With banks assume that it may take a while before they are fully convinced that you are not a criminal or other shady character and that any external accounts you have hooked up to it are also kosher.

PS. You write:

I talked to my wife, we will keep this one open for now, get our bonus out of it and see how things go. But we may close their account 90 days from now and go with a credit union or a local bank.

Bear in mind that most banks and CUs have an early termination fee, especially for people who have grabbed a bonus and promptly closed the account. With Chase you will lose the $600 signup bonus if you close before 180 days and might incur an additional ET fee as well. 180 days is the usual rule at most places, though people like myself who make a couple thousand dollars a year from opening and closing bank accounts (bonus chasers) never cut it that close. I typically wait until 220 days have passed.

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

MansaMusa — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 03:16:21 GMT

I've had issues with Chase and identity with opening credit card accounts. When I opened my first business credit card account I had to go to the branch 3 times, and make multiple phone calls about documents and information I had already given them. Months later when I applied for a second card I was told they could not verify information that they already had on file and previously verified for my 1st card. I said, "it's the exact same information that you ALREADY HAVE. Nothing has changed!" Chase denied me the second card because of these "verification" issues but promised me they would remove the hard inquiries from my credit file without me even asking. They never did remove them, and later claimed they could not.

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 06:12:16 GMT

@Green456 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
It’s foolish to believe that any financial institution is perfect. My recent saga with BECU, a credit union normally known for exemplary customer service, serves as a good reminder of this.

Sorry that they put you through it. Unfortunately it’s not uncommon when you link external accounts as I found out with BECU. They don’t want to be on the hook for fraud and take steps necessary to prevent it. It’s possible that everything was done right at the branch and that the info given wasn’t sent to the department that ended up actually having your case dropped in their lap. It happens unfortunately and those departments almost always do everything through fax which I also found out from my misadventure with BECU.
It's not the need for verification that I am upset about it is that two different people at two different parts of the country working for Chase told me that everything in my account is a okay and that submitted documents check out. Then no email, no phone call, no warning and my account is suspended and I talk to gentleman (sounded like foreign country) tell me that Chase does not have my driver license or proof of address... and is suspeneded.
I was really not upset at all when they sent me a letter for need for verification. I was happy to come into branch 2nd time and provide them with all the documents they need.

Something like that (i.e. the parts are not fully synchronized in terms of info/state, more priviliged ones such as those that can issue 'security shutdown/suspension' only has a subset of info available to the less priviliged entities) is usually a sign of a very good system design rather than a symptom of an internal communication failure. For example, the risk control could be shutting down your accounts while the marketing is trying to tempt you into 'upgrading' the same accounts.

Most banks are structured like that and there likely are banking laws requiring so. This prevents even severe local compromises from affecting the system like a whole. For example, even if someone succsefully bribes all local branch managers and employees, he/she still can't (easily) harm/game the bank to any significant degree.

That's why many have commented that this is possible for any bank (esp. the big ones). Glad to hear that it has been unlocked and it is certainly good advice to open some accounts elsewhere just in case and no hurry to shutdown your old accounts until the new ones are "proven".

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

FlaDude — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 18:37:41 GMT

@Green456 wrote:
So Im moving to city/state where there is no wells fargo, bank of amreica and chase is the only national bank. Chase has a pretty good reputation up here and so I thought, I will have no issues.

To each his own but a mega bank is the last place I'd open an account. I'd look for a local credit union, and if there wasn't one I was eligible to join, a local bank.

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

Green456 — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 21:36:03 GMT

Well. Chase seems to have pretty good reputation up here hence I was more open to give them a try.
At this point we will just keep the checking accounts and see how things go. Most likely we will use Alliant CU for major transactions and use Chase for petty cash.

Re: Terrible Chase experiance

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 21:48:54 GMT

One option is to keep the Chase accounts open for a full 7 months (to prevent any AA associated with early account closure) and then close them. Then reopen the accounts in 2021 to get the bonuses again. We used to be able to get the bonuses once a year at Chase but they became more restrictive in Fall 2018.