Chase Bank Sucks
76Chasing Customer Service
Customer Hell
Does anyone who was born before the seventies lament the lack of customer service in the world today. I will pay extra for good customer service and it is truly a lost art. That is why, when I returned from Central America and found Washington Mutual I was happy. They actually had good customer service. They cared when you were in crisis and needed their help.
Well, as we all know, WAMU is no longer with us and has been replaced by that behemoth Chase. A few days ago they changed their system to Chase permanently and all signs of WAMU were lost. Take what happened to me today for example.
I deposited my check from my job as a teacher. I get paid once a month so it is rather a large sum and I am going through a divorce and I recently changed checking accounts. So, for about two months I have been stuck in the cycle of waiting on my paychecks in the mail and then depositing them in the branch.
Today, my check came and I took it to the bank to deposit it. I have done this in one form or fashion for the last seven years. It is a government check and I realize that that is not saying much these days. I deposited it and the first thing that I noticed was that there was no balance on the receipt. That should have caused me to pause, but I was in a hurry. I went and took care of some business in Los Angeles and was headed to sit and have dinner with two friends when I decided that I should get some cash. I bought a car recently, so I was low on cash before my deposit. I put my card into the ATM at Chase in downtown Los Angeles and it said insufficient funds.
I immediately called Chase customer service. Now, if something like this had happened before with WAMU, it would have been fixed before I hung up the phone. However, Chase’s customer service people have a script and no matter how often you call them they give you the same patronizing corporate dribble.
The minions at Chase told me that there was nothing they could do for me and—one of them even said this—“we are not Washington Mutual anymore.” I spoke with a supervisor, whom I told, that I only needed a little cash available for the night and she gave me the same dribble.
I admit that by this time I was very peeved and my tone was not as professional as I would like, however, what horrible service. A customer—7 years—asks you to make a slight concession and you can only spout scripted baloney to them. Customer service means that sometimes you have to think outside of the box. Chase is so wrapped up in the box that their employees are like robots.
It’s a shame that WAMU had to disappear, but you would think that Chase would understand that customer service was why many of us went to WAMU in the first place. I would rather have the customer service people in India, who at least try to be friendly and accommodating than those at Chase whose brains have been taken out and replaced with sound bites. I’ll be changing banks this week. I’m looking for service and the smile.
PrintShare it! — Rate it: up down flag this hub
Comments
I live in Martinez, CA and bank with West America an am very happy with the customer service. I don't know how large of a bank this is, but they are great. Becuase I signed up online for paperless statements, I am no longer charged the $18.00 a month fee for the rest of my life with them. They even refunded me that month's fee.
I will never use Chase bank again. I had really bad experiences. They took $25 from my checking account on and off. I had to visit the Chase bank branch and asked why. They said it was computer mistake and refunded. They took another $25 later. They said they are sorry about that and refunded. They took another $25 again. They said it is their policy because my checking account has under $15,000. They have never mentioned about this policy! It sucks.
pgrundy says:
4 weeks ago
I worked as a CSR in the call center of a major regional bank for a year and a half. I've been unemployed since last October. I was about to get fired for 1) having a heart attack at my desk (there's an attendance policy of no more than 5 days missed in a year), and 2) not making my $1 million monthly sales goal for the third month running (it's a CUSTOMER SERVICE job--but we were required to sell a minimum of $1 million in bank products to people who called in upset about problems like the one you had--So you know, they have all these unjust fees, and we're supposed to talk them into a Certificate of Deposit after we tell them we won't refund anything).
Anyway, these banks are abusing fees so badly it is all over the news and being debated in Congress. The worst policy at the bank I worked at was that they would hold the funds on paychecks like yours for 3 days before making them available, even when the people had been banking with them for many years and the paycheck was obviously good. They did this, and many other things, on purpose to generate fees. They talked about it in meetings--how to generate more fees and what we had to say to customers who complained.
I saw people get hundreds of dollars in fees this way. I saw one person who racked up $5700 in these fees in the previous year and was on track to exceed that amount in the year I spoke with her. It made me sick, and if I (or anyone else there) tried to help these people, we would be reprimanded and then fired if we did it again. Everything came down to, "...Or you'll get fired." It literally made me sick.
Banks don't care. They set up these policies on purpose to trap you into racking up lots of fees. This year, banks made more money on fees than on investments or loans or any other source of income. I used to tell people to take their money out of the bank. I worked with other CSRs who refused to use a bank because of what we saw. There they were working at a big bank, but they wouldn't use one themselves because of the way the banks treat people and steal from them.
I hope you get some resolution. Write your Congressmen too.