I have a Chase credit line. I logged on to the site to pay my bill, and find a message:

ATTENTION! Your account is over its credit limit. Please pay now to protect your credit privileges. Please call us at 866-252-5780 immediately.

Why is my account over its limit? Because they charged me a thirty-five dollar late fee. Why did they charge me a thirty-five dollar late fee? Because I pay it on line, and Chase won't tell you when your payment will actually post, so it's pot luck.

I call the number, am put on hold for several minutes, and then finally get someone. She asks me what she can do for me. I explain that I'd like to get my fee waived.

"Oh, we don't do that here. For that, you have to call 800-551-8340."

"But this is the number that it said to call on the web site."

"I wouldn't know about that, but that's the number you have to call."

So I call the other number, and wait again. I finally get a message asking me to input my sixteen-digit number. Of course, since it's a credit line, and not a credit card, the number has less than sixteen digits. I enter it anyway.

"We're sorry, but we don't recognize that account number."

I then get a person.

"What's your account number?"

I read it to him.

"Is that a credit card account?"

No, it's a credit line account.

"We don't handle those here. I'll transfer you over."

(Note, I get no number to call if the transfer doesn't work--I just get to go through the process again).

Ringing again.

"If you want to use our speech recognition system, say 'yes.' If you want to use our touchtone system, press '1'."

I press one, which takes me through a menu of options, none of which are "If you'd like to waive your late fee, because our sucky web site is uninformative about when your bill will actually get paid when you pay it on line, and furthermore can't even provide the right number to call about it, please press..."

I finally hear an option to talk to a representative, and hit it.

"Please enter your account number, followed by the number sign."

I do this (this is probably the dozenth time I've done it on these two calls).

Long pause.

I don't know if this is the exact wording of the next words I heard, but it's close:

"If you think that we're ending this call by mistake, please feel free to call back."

Dial tone.

It would never have occurred to me to try to make this stuff up. No one would believe it.

Reason #3,002 not to deal with Chase for anything.

What an inefficient system!

If they went to a totally touch-tone system, they could have kept you running around in circles without ever having to speak to a single person.

Now if only they would be so nice as to compromise all your private data, then they would be truly great!

A natural consequence of an unregulated "free" market where Big Business can conspire with government to create barriers to market entry.

Besides, Chase needs to make money somehow.

Sounds typical. Bank of America is about the same. I stoped using their on-line bill pay after they did this to me a couple of times. The dirty little secret about most banks' on-line bill paying setups is that only the front end is on-line. For each transation, they actually print a paper check and route it to the payee's bank through their regular off-line paper check clearinghouse system that's been around forever. Neither they nor the payee's bank wants to give up the "float" associated with the check processing delays occasioned by their antediluvian back-room processes.

Banking occurs in an "unregulated, free market"?

Who knew?

What planet are you posting from, Bill?

I've got a BofA account and a Chase card. Haven't had to call chase yet, but I've learned my lesson about calling BofA. Rand's experience sounds veery familiar, especially the business of being told to call a number and then hearing the person who answers tell you "we don't do that at this number".

My local Time-Warner cable franchise now has the nice trick of not giving you the option to speak to that special sub-species of human known as a "customer service agent". You get add service, billing, report outages, and cancel. If your question doesn't fall into one of those predefined categories, you just hafta try and convince someone to pass the call along.

My pet peeve: they require you to punch in your phone number at the top of the call, but every single person you speak with asks you for the number, your name and your address.

I have a Wachovia account. Recently I had to call to temporarily up my check card limit to make a large purchase.

I got a voice-mail/voice-recognition system. The first time, I got lost down a blind alley in the menu, so I gave up and said "operator." Guess what? I had a human in under a minute.

Week later, I had to do the same thing. I worked my way 2 levels into the menu and said the magic word. This time I got a human after single-digit second waits.

Now I don't particularly like Wachovia, they have their fair share of annoyances in the line of keeping their floats (did anyone notice one of the many benefits to banks of Check 21? When you write a check to someone, and he deposits it, his bank can immediately convert it to an electronic check, and the money disappears from your account instantly. However, if anything puts a hold on it--out of state check, "you might be a money launderer" hold, etc--he doesn't get the money for up to 5 days, even tho it's already theoretically in his account) but I don't mind that particular phone system.

So remember, kids, if you call customer "service" and get a voice-recognition phone system, say the magic word right off!

I feel anyones pain who is dealing with Chase or BofA.

Chase sent my NEW cards to the wrong address before I ever recieved any cards on a new account. Someone intercepted them, spent loads and Chase wanted to know when I moved from ND to NC. I never lived in Raleigh, ND and can't find it on any maps. Cancelled those cards before I ever spent a dime.

BofA was the only bank on the base in San Diego at NTC when I was in the Navy. When I was transferred to Great Lakes, IL for "C" school, they sent me a letter, to my CORRECT address at Great Lakes, saying they put a hold on my account because they didn't have a correct address. I got the letter hours after I had written checks for an apartment and all the utilities. Had to borrow money from Navy Relief to cover the checks, start a new account and rewrite all the checks. JAG went after BofA and got all my money and $100.00 for my time and trouble and the loan from Navy Relief.

Closed that acct promptly too.

I opened a Bank Of America account when I moved to Mojave in 1996. A few months later, they closed their Mojave branch, so I did my banking at their branch in Tehachapi. A few months after that, they moved out of Tehachapi, so I closed my accounts and did business with another bank.

A year later BOA bought my house mortgage and I have had several frustrating experiences with them. Twice I got nasty letters from my insurance carrier saying they had not been paid for my homeowners insurance. Twice I went through a phone tree at BOA and was told: "We didn't pay that insurance premiun because we don't have the address" Instead of screaming at them "They haven't moved, send the check to the same address as last year" I sent them a FAX with the address. Twice.

Another time BOA sent me a letter telling me that my house is in a flood zone and I have to get flood insurance or they will get it for me and charge accordingly. I went through my legal papers and showed them that the house is NOT in a flood zone. So they sent me a letter saying: "We have determined that your house is not in a flood zone and we have determined that you do not need flood insurance"

BOA is never getting any more of my business willingly. This reminds me of the customer service we got from Ma Bell when she had a monopoly.

My favorite was the time at Citibank when I went to a teller to make the monthly credit card payment, in cash. When I inquired as to when that would show up on the account I was told it could take up to five days.

Five days? For cash? (Sure, read the fine print of the account agreement which, by the way, is a totally one-sided contract)

My revenge is that the only thing that goes on that card is the monthly internet connection bill, and that $15 always gets paid off. They're losing serious money with all of the balance transfer offers they mail me. Heh, heh, heh.

The worst is WAMU and the way they game their system. I was more than happy to close out that checking account.

I'm a banker (not retail though), and I can tell you that their only objective is to extract us much in fees out of you as they can. They want all of your accounts with them, and I'm sure they've figured out how to make sure that postings to the accounts are made in such a way as to optimize fee opportunities for them.

Caveat emptor, folks. No one is looking out for you any more, not even your friendly neighborhood banker.

We have a Chase Platinum Visa, and are paying that sucker off as fast as possible. We won't close it, but we won't ever use it (or any credit card) again. Why do that when you can pay cash with a debit card.

Anyway, I read recently that new bank regs are requiring the card companies to increase their minimum monthly payment to 4% of the balance. The article said that Chase was implementing this. When I called them, they were very vague about the whole thing. The sub-human had to find somebody a little higher up the phylum to get an answer as he/she/it wasn't even aware of the change.

Chase offered me a promotional rate of 0.9 percent on a long-paid-off card with a $35,000 limit. THEN they offered me a CD with a 2.14 APR. Let me offer you this vicarious bit of revenge, Rand.

Of course Chase will credit your account the same day you pay electronically, IF YOU PAY EXTRA FOR IT!
Ithought the whole idea of paying on line was for the speed of the computer rather than waiting 5 days for the mail to get there.

I've been paying bills on line for a few years. I like to use a credit card, and then pay the bill quickly, usually the same day.

BofA payments would usually be credited by the next business day.

Then, I got Amazon's version of a Chase VISA, because I'd get free books every so often. Chase take 4-5 days to bill me, and just as long to credit a payment.

This stuff is exactly why I like to deal with smaller, local banks. The big banks have so many layers of bureaucracy that accountability just about disappears. If you are likely to see your bank's officers at lunch at the diner or in the grocery store, a lot of levels of "not my job" are just not there.

ken referred to "your friendly neighborhood banker" but the banks he referred to were Citi and WAMU. Employees of these banks may live in your neighborhood, but these are not "neighborhood banks."

The US banking system is now almost as modern as the UK one was before I was an undergraduate (over 10 years ago). For whatever reason, the banking free market isn't really free or functioning over here, and it's waaaaaaay behind.

Happy banking.

When calling for customer service, don't select anything. Just stay on the line. If they hang up on you, claim they are discriminating against you because you don't have a touch tone phone.

Rich

This is part of a much larger problem. As long as the public stands for anything less than a true free market... by which I mean totally unregulated capitalism where 'buyer beware' is the bottom line protection... this crap will continue to be the norm. In a true free market, you could drop using the idiots at the first sign of their idiocy with the assurance that someone, somewhere will offer a competitive (and hopefully better) service.