Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo customers will soon be able to send money to anyone with an e-mail address or mobile number using a new Voltron of a service called ClearXChange. Chase already has something similar to that called QuickPay, which Derek and his roommate (a Wells Fargo customer) used to transfer their rent money while Derek was out of town. Let’s see how that worked out for them.

I wanted to warn Consumerist readers about the horror that is Chase Quickpay service. Apparently it is soon to be renamed to ClearXChange.

QuickPay allows you to send and receive money with only an email address and a bank account tied to that email address. I was excited about this service, as I long ago closed my Paypal account due to their incompetence.

I am currently in China on business and needed an easy method for my roommate to pay his rent. He set up a QuickPay account tied to his own Wells Fargo account and sent me a successful $225 maximum allowed first transaction. He sent another $400 transaction several days later.

Then it happened. Chase decided it didn’t like something about the $400 transaction. They locked my roommates access to Chase.com and for good measure my access also.

What followed was 6 hours of expensive calls to the fraud prevention department from China. They informed me that there was no way for either party to cancel the transaction. They refused to tell me why the transaction was suspect, if the transaction would ever expire or why my access had been frozen.

Further, the only way to EVER regain my access to Chase.com was for my roommate to physically go into a Chase branch and show 2 forms of ID! They honestly expected me to force someone to perform a physical action to regain access to my own bank account!

I told them that this was the most absurd thing I could possibly think of. What if my friend lived hundreds of miles from a Chase branch? What if he was deployed in the military? What if he was physically disabled?

My friend rushed his return from vacation and made it into a Chase branch the next morning to submit himself for his Chase exam. After a half an hour in the branch they finally restored his and my access.

Shockingly, 36 hours later the transaction was still shown as suspended. I yet again called and was informed that the transaction had been cancelled! Wait for it……because the transaction had taken too long to complete.

Let this be a warning to anyone who thinks these email based transactions are a good idea. These banks can and will lock your account for perpetuity, based upon completely undefined standards and at their sole discretion. You’ve got to ask yourself one question before using these services: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?

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