What do you do when the University of Phoenix, your credit card company, and now-conjoined entity of Chase/Bank One can’t figure out where your $828 tuition refund went? We have no idea, and neither does reader Stefan M. But writing us is probably a pretty decent start.

Stefan tells us about the incompetence of both a major Arizona university and the new Chase/Bank One beast-with-two-backs after the jump.

I don’t know if this is a useful tip/story yet as I don’t have a resolution, but when I saw the post on the Bank One > Chase merger I had to chime in yet. I don’t have a commenter account, hint hint. 🙂

I’ve been an online student of University of Phoenix for four years pecking away at my BS of IT degree. Yes, a long long time, but I’m in no rush as have a good gig in IT, just getting ready for the day I’m in the job market and my 11 years of IT experience doesn’t measure up to the recent college grad with no experience (sigh).

The academic part of their program has been OK, a few horror stories of “Professors” with no clue how to teach but for the most part the faculty as been OK considering this is a for profit school. My issue has always been with their financial department.

I had to withdraw from a class a year ago because of personal reasons (two kids under two). I had completed two of the five weeks of the class so they kept 2/5ths of my tuition for the class. OK, I can deal with that, although when I started they would have just rolled all the tuition over to the next class. But I understand they are for profit.

So I was left with an $828.00 credit balance on my account. I asked for a refund and had a less than helpful response so I figured I’d just leave the money on the account, I knew eventually I’d start classes back up.

Fast forward to a year late… I signed up to take another class mainly to keep “active” in my major. They requested payment and when I went to their website my account had a zero balance and the last activity on my account was when I paid for my last class a year ago. I called them up and was told the $828 had been refunded to me. Really? This was news to me. They had no explanation why the refund wasn’t listed on my account and why I was never informed of the refund.

So I checked the credit card that I used to pay for my last class, no refund. I called back and got the last four digits of the Visa the refund had been sent to. Turns out over six months ago they sent the refund to a closed Bank One Visa account that had been closed for years. I’m surprised that is even technically possible. I can only image some accountant at University of Phoenix dug through my records an found a credit card number I used years ago.

I try and follow up with Bank One today to find out they have been assimilated into Chase. OK, not that big a deal I’m a Chase customer. (I second all the comments about a crappy Chase website on the merger post page, btw.) I called up Chase and find out I need to fax a letter to their correspondence dept and this will be researched. OK fair enough, not really their fault.

The part that burns me is that the University doesn’t see this as their problem. The money has just disappeared, I don’t know who is sitting on it earning interest, but they didn’t come forward six months ago. Now I have to jump through hoops to follow money trail left by their accounting department.

I know, I know, this would be more interesting with a resolution of some type. Just nice to vent it all out. 🙂

Stefan
http://kokope11i.blogspot.com/

Anyone have any suggestions for Stefan to help him epedite his $828 bucks?

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