This is a rant about my Chase Business card, the credit card I use to buy most of my gadgets, so while it is not strictly a gadget, it is most certainly a “gadget enabling device". The short of it is my Chase Business credit card, specifically the Southwest Rapid Rewards card sucks, it sucks hard and with gusto! At this point some of you may ask “Gee, just how much does Chase Bank suck? Can we get a visual metaphor?" Let's just say that it could probably suck a golf ball through a length of garden hose running from Boston to San Francisco. Read on for the full details.
Due to a mild masochistic streak, I have used this horrible Chase credit card since 2005, and experienced random declines of totally routine charges. Mind you, it was never a balance or limit issue, more of the hey lets screw with this guys life for $hit$ and giggles. The “best" part was always the complete and utter lack of communication - nothing like a call or an email notifying me of potential fraud concerns.
Most recent example, a totally routine repeat purchase from a company that I purchase from twice a month for an unremarkable dollar range got declined. Upon calling Chase at their 800-346-5538 I got greeted by a smug customer service representative who dished out pearls like “our fraud system determined that this charge was suspicious" and the ambiguously clever “the fraud system found the dollar amount of the transaction to be suspicious" - not high not low but “suspicious" (for the record it was not a prime number). When I asked what they meant more specifically, they could not give me an answer referring back to the unquantifiably magical “fraud system". I reminded them that this is a business card, and that I was trying to use it for standard business transactions (from a company that I have a purchasing history with) and like a four year old child they told me they were sorry. I asked them if there was something I could do differently so my future charges would not keep getting declined and they suggested that I call them every time before using the credit card, at this point I wasn't sure if they were done “helping me" and were simply screwing with me. The helper, hypothetically let's call her Christine Harwood (since that's the name she used), finally told me that they “fixed" the problem and to try charging the card again. Much to my chagrin the card got declined again. I called back Chase and got the same representative who said, “didn't I talk to you earlier" and I said “yes" and after that warm bonding experience she proceeded to grill me with additional security questions. She asked for my date of birth, and to completely blow my mind she followed that up by asking my age just in case a potential criminal could not do the math.
To make a short story long, I got them to finally resolve the issue, and I am now in the process of moving my business away from Chase Business Southwest Rapid Rewards Visa Credit Card because their fraud practices suck (see the complete suck references in the initial paragraph)! To compensate for the wasted time I am considering going into a side business of selling T-Shirts with the following slogans:
,· Chase business credit card sucks
,· Chase credit cards are the worst
,· Chase bank sucks
,· Southwest Rapid Rewards credit card sucks
,· Southwest business credit card sucks
,· Chase customer service is poor
,· Chase customer service sucks
,· Avoid Chase bank and credit cards