Chase Bank SUCKS (Also Possibly Amazon)

We applied for and received an Amazon.com Visa card a while ago. We used it only to buy purchases on Amazon, and we got it because Amazon.com offered points, gift certificates and $30 free for signing up. In other words, we got it because Amazon offered it to us.

This credit card, it turns out, is managed by Chase Bank and not Amazon.com.

Because we were having problems with our mail, we switched our Amazon.com Visa bill so that we would receive online-only notifications of it. And then we proceeded not to use it for 8 months.

Around Christmastime, we used it to buy presents. This, it turns out, was a very, very, bad idea.

We did not receive any online notifications about the charges we had made. And because we hadn’t used this card in a while, and because we tend to make more charges than usual during this time, we never realized that we did not get a bill for the Amazon.com charges. We didn’t even receive any phone calls or letters (thanks, local post office!) until yesterday, when we got a letter telling us we were late in payments and should call to arrange a payment plan.

Please remember that I am the kind of person who practically has a nervous breakdown if I return a book late to the library (1999, Salem Library. Chris had used my card to take out a book. After this incident, I told him to get his own card).

Chris called Chase Bank today. It turns out that our account has already been closed, and they have already reported us to the credit bureaus TWICE!!!!!!!!!! And that they don’t care that we never got online notifications telling us that we owed money, or that the first we’d heard of any of this was yesterday — at which point, according to what Chris found out from Chase today — it was already too late for us to do anything. They said they had sent two letters to us already, one of which was the one we received yesterday.

Chris nearly had a heart attack on the phone because the customer rep was extremely rude to him. She said there was nothing she could do other than taking off 2 of the 3 late fees. As far as the credit bureaus go, she said Chris could write the credit bureaus a letter. Chris asked what that would do, and she said, “Well, it’s only a suggestion.”

“Yes,” Chris said, “But what would it do?”

She said snottily, “It was only a suggestion, SIR.”

Eventually Chris got so angry, he had to hang up on her.

I called the Consumer Affairs person with the post office about our missing mail. She said she would call back after she spoke to someone at the local post office.

I then called Amazon customer support. They did not care, or at least, India did not care. They said they could only do something if (commence script reading) I had not received the $30 to which every person with a new Amazon.com Visa card administered by Chase Bank is entitled to, and only then if the $30 did not show up could they help me with my issue.

You would think Amazon would care. I mean, the goddamned Amazon logo is all over the credit card, and they’re offering the card from their site, and the only reason we got the card was because of Amazon’s name. Which, as you might suspect, is basically worth nothing at this point.

I spoke to a supervisor at Amazon. Also in India, but at least he was more polite. He said he would register my complaint with the people who make the affiliations but that the Amazon customer service people could not do anything. Then he went off on a long story about how he’s going through it now with a different bank and he paid with a check and the check bounced and now he has $70 in late fees and the account has been closed but he really needs that card, so he understands what I’m going through, etc.

Which is all well and good, except the difference between him and us is that we pay our bills — that is, WHEN WE KNOW ABOUT THEM.

I called Chase Bank. They asked for our account number and my name, and said I had to pay at least a minimum ($145) to avoid further fees to reopen the account and then they could discuss the issues with me. Then he transferred me to the Internet Department (that is what they are officially called, apparently) to find out what had gone wrong with our email notifications.

The woman in the Internet Department (and you may wonder why I am stressing her department name, so just wait for it) asked me a few questions to verify the account. As Chris is the primary cardholder, I gave them the account number again, his name and my name, the last 4 digits of his social security number and his mother’s maiden name. Then she verified our email address and told me they had sent out several email notifications and did not receive notice of it bouncing.

I changed the email address to a gmail account, and asked if she could send out a test email just so I knew these emails would go through.

She said, “Oh, I don’t have email access. I have to transfer you to a technician who may be able to do that for you.”

The Internet Department does not have email access.

I would be horrified except I have a giant ulcer where my stomach used to be.

The Technical Services woman wanted to know our account number, both of our social security numbers, and refused to do anything unless she could speak to Chris.

“So why did all the other people I talked to not ask to talk to him?” I said.

“I don’t know who you were talking to, Ma’am,” she said. Apparently these days, all departments work independently and no one is responsible for anything outside of their department. And sometimes, not even for anything in their own department.

So to sum up, I was able to find out account balances, change email addresses, and discuss the issues about the credit bureau on my own, but in order to send a freaking test email to test THEIR system, I had to practically give them Chris’s DNA.

Shortly after speaking to this woman, Chris checked his email. Not only did he have the test email, but he also received one at the original email account we’d had on file, saying the email address had been changed. Funny how our email works when we change the address, but somehow didn’t work when our bill notifications went through.

Look, I’m not saying this is all their fault. We bought stuff, and totally forgot to keep an eye out for forthcoming bills. But we never received the online notifications (and clearly, their address is not being blocked as spam, since Chris got the email from them today), and maybe it’s just me, but shouldn’t you send more than one letter before you go running off to credit bureaus and closing our account and, oh yeah, raising our interest rate to 29%? (It’s one letter, because I don’t count the one we got yesterday which said nothing about our account being closed or us being reported to the credit bureaus even though all this had already happened, so by the time we got yesterday’s letter, the letter did not matter.)

Fucking banks.

Posted by: ssjane | March 22, 2007 | 10:38 am
Posted in: Rants