What makes the next story about reader Pavel trying to get satisfaction from Chase executive customer service so interesting is that Pavel himself is Executive Assistant to the President of his company. He knows how executive customer service is supposed to work. As he puts in, he has the ability to “walk on water” within in his company. Which makes his experience with Chase, where they closed his account for having a zero-balance for less than a week, and then held his money hostage, all the more frustrating…
Pavel writes:
I’ve been reading your site daily for over a year and I get a pure kick when people expose the inner filth of corporate America. As of yesterday I have my own story to share.
I’ve been with Chase for several years now. I have a checking account, a savings account, an Amazon Visa card and United Visa card with them. I carry small balances, pay my “non-chase ATM” fees, my “Online Bill Pay” fees, the occasional “Overdraft protection fee” for when they transfer money from Savings to Checking… in other words the average customer who never creates trouble and generates revenue.
About a month ago I decided to open a second checking account and use it only for direct deposit of my payroll check. Then every other Friday I’d go online, transfer some of the amount to savings and the rest to checking.
Until yesterday morning, when much to my surprise not only was my direct deposit not there, but also the entire account was missing. As in GONE. There was no trace of this account whatsoever. I called Chase customer service right away (it was about 7:30 AM) just so I can hear a totally brain-dead teenager tell me that my account had been closed a week ago for carrying zero-balance for too long. “WHAT??? You have got to be kidding me. I have a direct deposit going there every other Friday, you closed the account a week ago, so you’re telling me a zero-balance for a week gives you a reason to close the account? Despite the fact that every two weeks there is a rather sizable deposit from ADP” Her totally expected dumb answer was: “Sir, it’s the system that closed your account, not us. There is nothing we can do to prevent this from happening”. Evidently, in her pea-sized brain “The System” is an almighty creature with an evil behavioral twist rather than a piece of computer software that 99.9999999% of the time does exactly as instructed.
Escalation to Little Miss Braindead’s Supervisor got me nowhere either. I was told that they can not reopen my account and I’d have to go to the branch that opened my account at, where the manager is the ONLY person who can make this happen, despite my repeated attempts to explain that the branch had been bulldozed two years ago along with the Dominick’s store it was in. Oh, and get this. Even if with the help of the Almighty I somehow managed to get the account reopen they wouldn’t be able to deposit the amount they were holding before midnight on Tuesday. Now I’m not going to start crying that I have bills to pay, checks that were going to hit my account and so on… I’ve got plenty of dough in both checking and savings to cover expenses for months to come. But that’s not the point. So, naturally, I request an escalation to Executive Customer Service (800-242-7399). I get transferred to a Michelle Crabtree (713-262-3866). She tells me pretty much the same story. My simple answer to her was along the lines of “Dear Michelle, if I don’t have my account reopened and funded by noon today, I will take extreme pleasure in writing about this to our our local newspapers (those happen to be Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times) along with spending $25 on a Small Claims Court filing fee.
She promises a prompt resolution and I tell her she has about 4 hours to deliver on her promise. I get a call back midday saying that they will be able to reopen the account (but not until midnight) and create a “credit memo” on my old checking account, but I’d have to go myself and move the funds to savings or the credit memo will fall off at midnight. It didn’t make much sense to me, but hey, this is a specially trained professional who has been entrusted with handling sticky situations on behalf of the office of the president. Or maybe not.
Of course the credit memo disappeared at midnight. And of course my checking account was not reopened, and of course there are overdraft protection fees on my account which currently shows negative balance. And of course, the only people who can fix this are Executive Customer Service but that’s not open on the weekend.
Now let me say this… I work as the Executive Assistant to the President of my company and I CAN WALK ON WATER! Moreover, my attitude is that if 40-some years ago we were able to land on the Moon with a help of a computer that had less processing power than my cellphone… nothing is impossible. If these people really work for Executive Customer Service, Chase has to either redefine what that means and admit it’s just a bunch of glorified idiots, or train them better.
My 2 cents.
Cheers and keep those stories coming!
Pavel G.
Chicago, IL
(Photo: Ben Popken)
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I can co-oberate this as happening to my account at least once from Chase.
I suggest, no on go with J.P. Morgan Chase Bank. They’re awfully incompetent.
I’m currently trying to change banks.
Rawsteak – My opinion (and it’s only that) is that reading about how companies screw, or even inconvenience unnecessarily, their customers is a part of that education process.
I can see from a cold business perspective that there might be a business rule about closing accounts with a zero balance. But anybody with an ounce of common sense or basic decency should understand that suddenly closing accounts with no advance notice is a crappy way to treat a customer, whether it’s in the “rules” or not. You simply don’t treat people that way, and if you do, you should expect your corporate reputation to crater.
Chase should have sent the OP a letter at least, say, 2 weeks in advance of closing the account, warning him of the pending action. At a bare minimum.
@RINO-Marty:
I’m sorry. Are you saying that you, as an assumed regular reader of the Consumerist, don’t read contracts fully before signing them?
I’m not saying it in any way excuses Chase, or any other company for that matter, for hostile consumer policies, but Christ man – take some responsibilty for yourself from time to time. Big Business isn’t going to look out for your best interests for you.
I don’t understand these posts that have the “I’m so much fucking better than you because you are a poorly paid CSR” attitude. I really fucking hate that. Your attitude *MIGHT* be the *REAL* problem here, you fucking douchebag. Maybe if you weren’t such an unpleasant dick to people who probably want to help you but PROBABLY CAN’T BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT THE EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT JUST SOME REGULAR CSR, than maybe you’d be a little happier and not so fucking manic. Really, you need to work on your ego/bastarditis problem. There’s medication for it if you can’t work it out yourself.
Anyway, long story short, fuck you, I hope Chase keeps your cash and gives some to the CSR you bashed for no good reason.
Call me turncoat, but I think Pavel’s a great writer and tells a compelling story of woe. “Little Miss Braindead!” Classic. Know ‘em, teach ‘em, work with ‘em, occasionally mimic ‘em to evade a dicey sitch.
@BigElectricCat: Whoa, whoa. I never said that we need to define all of these things. You’re right about all of that, though, except the accusations of flipping back and forth, which I don’t follow.
I’m not advocating the policy of closing zero balance accounts, nor trying to define what is or isn’t activity. I was replying only to the comment about zero balance accounts being irrelevant. They are not. They cost money, and to an accountant and the company itself something should be done about it. If balances under $100, or $1000, or any arbitrary value are costing money too, then they should and will attempt to find a way to correct that. I guarantee they’ve brainstormed about how to close those low-balance accounts or shift resources around to save money. The specificity here is that the article, the post, and the banks’ actions specifically note zero balance accounts, and many banks are following this example.
By the way, what is a “non-existent” balance? An account is one or more balances, unless you mean that the account doubles as insurance or some other service, in which case it would be absurd to close the account. Without the balance, there is no account. I suppose you mean it as inactivity on the account, which is fair enough. As a trade: I meant “stalled account” as an account that is just sitting there, not producing–not earning money for the bank. An “active account” is defined by the bank, as whatever they want to define it. Consider it to be how you define an active account, since you use the term “activity” later on.
And on that note: yes, the algorithm is pathetic. I mentioned that in another post elsewhere. If your intention was to draw attention to this fact, then I misunderstood. It’s not difficult to make an algorithm that will examine activity and flag any account properly, instead of just examining end-of-day balances. Of course, there are costs associated with the processing time, but I don’t see it being too much more expensive than simply looking at the balance. Regardless, the handling of the situation is also pathetic. Simply notifying the customer that they must keep some balance at the end of the day, week, or month or they’ll close the account seems necessary. What sort of image are they presenting where people’s accounts get closed seemingly at random?
Since you point it out, then I will say too that I do mean this all respectfully.
@EricaKane:
This is not true at Bank of America, at least for me.
I had a second checking account there that had zero dollars in it for years, and they never touched it. As a matter of fact it was damned difficult to get them to close it even on my request. The reason? They considered the account with zero dollars in it my “primary account” and wouldn’t touch it.
@Charybdis: You and Chase are a matched pair.
@trujunglist: I suggest anger management counseling before it gets ahead of you.
@chrisjames: “I’m not advocating the policy of closing zero balance accounts, nor trying to define what is or isn’t activity.”
Okay, fair enough. We were apparently talking past each other. No harm, no foul.
@chrisjames: “I was replying only to the comment about zero balance accounts being irrelevant. They are not.”
You apparently misunderstood me. I wasn’t trying to suggest that the accounts themselves were irrelevant – I was trying to say that the balances were irrelevant, insofar as the accounts themselves are still being used.
@chrisjames: “They cost money, and to an accountant and the company itself something should be done about it. If balances under $100, or $1000, or any arbitrary value are costing money too, then they should and will attempt to find a way to correct that. I guarantee they’ve brainstormed about how to close those low-balance accounts or shift resources around to save money. The specificity here is that the article, the post, and the banks’ actions specifically note zero balance accounts, and many banks are following this example.”
To the banks’ eventual detriment, I believe. IMO, this is a deplorable business practice and the pendulum of customer service will (sooner or later) swing the other way. Banks that become known for capriciously closing low-balance consumer accounts will soon find that they’ll have a hard time attracting depositors. And without depositors . . . well . . . I’m sure we both know where that road leads for a bank.
@chrisjames: “By the way, what is a “non-existent” balance?”
Some posters seem to be claiming that a zero balance = non-existent. I think we both know that’s not so. To an accounting system, zero’s a number just like $100 and -$100 are.
@chrisjames: “I suppose you mean it as inactivity on the account, which is fair enough.”
I think others may be thinking that; I’m not.
@chrisjames: “As a trade: I meant “stalled account” as an account that is just sitting there, not producing–not earning money for the bank. An “active account” is defined by the bank, as whatever they want to define it. Consider it to be how you define an active account, since you use the term “activity” later on.”
Respectfully, if I have an account that “is just sitting there” with a significant positive balance, it is definitely producing and earning money for the bank. That money can be lent out or otherwise invested to produce income for the bank. That being said, if I’ve only got a buck and a quarter in the unused account, then I certainly take your meaning.
@chrisjames: “And on that note: yes, the algorithm is pathetic. I mentioned that in another post elsewhere. If your intention was to draw attention to this fact, then I misunderstood.”
Fair enough. We clearly misunderstood each other there.
@chrisjames: “It’s not difficult to make an algorithm that will examine activity and flag any account properly, instead of just examining end-of-day balances. Of course, there are costs associated with the processing time, but I don’t see it being too much more expensive than simply looking at the balance. Regardless, the handling of the situation is also pathetic. Simply notifying the customer that they must keep some balance at the end of the day, week, or month or they’ll close the account seems necessary. What sort of image are they presenting where people’s accounts get closed seemingly at random?”
Yeah, I think that’s pathetic, too. I know from personal experience that large financial organizations sometimes “sweep” their cash positions at the end of a business day and dump the aggregate funds into interest-bearing accounts overnight. I’ve seen the overnight statements, and the funds (and interest) involved are certainly not insignificant. But overnight, the cash position balances were at – ready? Zero.
@chrisjames: “Since you point it out, then I will say too that I do mean this all respectfully.”
All’s well then; we just misunderstood each other. I’ll have a chilled Jack Daniels, what’ll you have?
Nobody reads 40-page credit card contracts, Charybdis, as you know full well, unless they’re total losers who don’t have jobs or families or friends or hobbies. But that’s not even the point, which went that-a-way. The point was that it’s poor form (and, indeed, idiotic) for Chase to point to a clause that permits them to do take an action that violates every thinking person’s sense of basic decency.
You, of course, are too thick to get this, but if that’s the case my comments weren’t written for your benefit.
@EricaKane: and all the others suggesting to leave some token amount in the account — this is not always a good idea.
I had a small savings account at a local credit union that I left $50 bucks in just to maintain my membership. Next year’s statement showed $45. What was this? Negative interest? No — they simply have a policy that if you don’t have any “activity” on your account for a year, you get charged a service fee. That’s rich – they get to lend my $50 bucks to someone else and charge interest on it, but I have to pay them for it. Needless to say I withdrew my $45.