Saturday I was catching up on paperwork and noticed that the interest rate on my Chase credit card had jumped from 3.99% to 13.24%. It took a long frustrating phone call and talking with a manager to find out what actually happened. Although I had a lifetime interest rate of 3.99% and for almost two years had made electronic payments every month on the last day of every month, suddenly it took Chase nine days to post that payment instead of the usual two or three. And, because it took nine days – it was late! Being late aliowed them to jump the interest rate by almost 10%!
Now the frustrating part was although the manager could see that the payment had always been made on the same day and always took two days to get there, it didn’t make a difference. It appears that Chase’s policy is to flatly refuse all requests for reconsideration. Concern for the customer or even valuing my viewpoint was not part of the policy. Instead the policy is to instruct their customer to write a letter to appeal.
I hung up the phone, frustrated to say the least and thought, “oh forget it—it’s not worth the bother”. And then I thought, “is this what they’re hoping for?” How many customers have given up in frustration? How many times do we lose because we don’t bother to speak up for what we need? Or because we don’t follow through?
Anyway, the letter has been sent. We’ll see what happens. I’m hoping that I’m wrong about the intentions of Chase. I still like to think we are all in this together and that we’re not taking advantage of each other during this financial mess we’re in.
Still looking through rose-colored glasses. Am I blind?
15 thoughts on “Chase Frustration”
Jane,
I guess I’m not as hopefull as you are. My opinion is that the only way companies will listen is if customer take their business somewhere else. Your next letter should include the remains of a shredded credit card.
I would cancel the card…but try to…that in itself can take months..the reason JP morgan chase and goldman are posting RECORD PROFITS this quarter is due to their highly computerized trading system..it’s not brainpower, its math in the milli-cent trading and selling trading and selling..billions of cents and microscopic percentages add up to billions of dollars…”what ” you may ask does this have to do with your credit cards?? My point is EVERYTHING IS COMPUTERIZED!! THEY PLANNED THIS…you have to stand up for this mis-treatment. It is criminal…it is/should be against the law. I promise you, if you try to cancel this card, it will be impossible..they get you..if you overpay even 5 cents to wipe the slate clean
and not have a balance they will send you statements for life. And there is no office in maine of theirs that you can walk in and pay. cancel all but one credit card and pay it off every month. Our consumer debt is part of the economic decline of this fine nation!!!
I changed my way of paying credit cards a ways back. I have my automatic bill pay on line set to pay the credit card bill when it arrives, hence well before the ‘due date’. and I always read those inserts in tiny print as well as the statements which may warn of a change in due date or the length of time they will let the payment sit before posting.
I have limited income, but it is much cheaper to have to pay a bill twice in one month than to pay late fees and the repercussions thereof!!
…so far so good. Jean
Hi Jane,
I’m afraid we are not all in this together anymore. The credit card companies have become very, very nasty and are doing all they can to suddenly lower credit limits, raise rates, and make unreasonable changes that they refuse to negotiate. these things have happened to me. I haven’t had payments delayed yet; I suppose that will happen too. But now I have automatic payments made BY Chase so they can’t say it was late. This auto-pay is at least one way to avoid the issue. Good luck! Pam
I think it is worth a try. I’d rather see the world thru rose colored glasses than be blind.
Jane, you are a great writer! Nicely done.
I’d say your glasses aren’t rose-colored, but you suspicions are probably valid. We need a lot stricter regulation of our banking industry. For example, I recently cancelled by autopayment on Discover because they would take the money whether or not I owed them anything…to mention one of many problems with that card and others. E.g., it is impossible to get a “payoff” amount on a CC as one would with a mortgage and, having paid off several cards only to receive a bill for “interest not yet posted” at the end of the month – interest which was not showing under “current balance due” when I paid off the card, it went down to BOA to talk to a live person and asked about this and simply wasn’t given an answer. I was stonewalled. Why can’t banks, with all their elaborate machinery calculate interest due on an account at any given moment and provide that information to customers who want to pay off their accounts AT THE TIME they want to pay them off? Seems very sleezy to me!
so dear Jane, these guys are my mortgage company and I have been in process or remortgaging for ii months!! I understand your frustration!! We are not all in it together. Some are getting thier needs met off the backs of others!! SE
What happened to the days that businesses cared about customer service and the customer is number one! Now it just seems that you have to fight injustices and there is no more customer service, caring about the customer, or service. It just seems to be all about how much profit top executives can make to get their big bonuses!
I’d love to see businesses go back to treating the customer as a VIP!
Four years ago I gave up all my credit cards for the same reason when I refinanced my home. I took all my credit cards and ducked tape them together about five times till I was ready to cut them up. I took a while to give up the notion I needed for an emergency but I lived though it. I did come on some hard times and unemployment but had to take money from my retirement but survive and came out of it with out any debt in credit cards. This is making it easier because if I don’t have the money I don’t spend it and I don’t buy food with it. I was also spam on a raised interest rate and this is what I did.
This reminds me of an incident that occurred so long ago that I can’t remember the details exactly, but it went something like this: I noticed that we were being overbilled by our insurance company. Rather than “let it go”, I contested the charge, which was time-consuming, but saved us enough money to be worth the trouble. I asked my husband if he thought the over-charging was purposeful. He was not the rose-colored glasses wearer that you are, Jane, and wouldn’t put it past the company to purposely overcharge. Some months later the company was fined a large amount of money for widespread incidents of over-charging. Despite my trusting nature, I don’t trust companies to be fair to their customers. Sad but true.
I think that some of the things we “little people” can do are (a) opt out as Clinda did – if I could only convince the rest of the family (b) complain a lot to the companies so it affects their bottom line just to deal with us – but that would take a LOT of complaining! (c) bombard legislators with emails and phone calls and join or support consumer action groups. Personally, I’m all for opting out. Having grown up without CC’s, I remember the peace of mind that living within their means brought my parents and I truly envy them that!
I have the same frustrations with Bank of America. In the long run, hopefully they will see the light. Interestingly, I was looking for my APR the other day and it was buried on the bottom of the statement not right up front. I think they know what they are doing but in the end I think they will end up hurting themselves as either people will stop using credit, go out of business due loss of credit lines or some bank it going to see a competitive niche and start offering reasonable upfront financing.
I have talked to Bank of America multiple times. They weren’t able to provide me even with a real name and address.
Hey Jane, I wrote my letter from a similar situation, but it was to Citi. The nice people at the desk seemed to think it would all be ok. But my fax was rejected by letter. I called back and the team seemed surprised but was powerless. Credit card companies have become like loan sharks. Now something just happened with my 20 year old chase account. It looks like they feel justified in squeezing the consumer because they are struggling. I looked at the statistics recently-the super high interest rates are going to those in poverty, the ones who have no means out. It is very sad. These kind of things only continue in the US as long as there is no force powerful enough to stop it.
I think it is within idealism to call a spade a spade. The credit card companies have resorted to overtly sleazy dealings even with long term excellent customers, no way around that.