is the chase worth the hassle?

so, here’s my morning conundrum:

to stay with chase bank or to bail to bbva compass.

i actually have two bank accounts. i never did before, but a couple years ago my chase card got compromised and so i started splitting my paycheck between them and a much smaller small town bank. the latter doesn’t have any customer service outside of banking hours, but they also don’t have any customer service not just outside of american soil, but out of TEXAS soil.

that’s a positive thing.

before we go further, let’s throw a visual aid in here:

so monday i noticed an odd charge on my chase account (i check all my bank accounts every morning after i got compromised a year ago – with apps it takes under two minutes to take care of all three) and so i called. i got a sweet girl from india who was hard to understand, but polite, and it took almost no time for her to pass me off to a “specialist” in their “escalated call center”. to see where they are in comparison to texas (which i didn’t mark on the map because if you don’t know where it is you have no business reading this page) look for the chase icon to the right on india. lower one first girl, second one the asshole. he laughed when i told him my problem, then got offended when i started peppering my concerns with the word “fuck”. i explained that being a customer service rep he should be used to hearing that word, but that he also shouldn’t chuckle when a customer expressed concern. he apologized, as did i, and we got back down to business. the first girl had told me all she could see was the charge did NOT originate in the united states and was put through by a wells fargo bank. also, unline the previous charge issue that had been my card number getting fished, this actually went off the account number.

that’s bad.

so that’s when manjula passed me off to sanjay, the asshole. STA uncovered pretty early in the more civil half of our conversation that the transaction was from paypal. that’s when i brought things to a halt – because paypal is the one entitiy on the planet i’ve given permission to debit this account. when i asked why all the other paypal transactions say “PAYPAL” on the chase app but this just had a guy’s name STA couldn’t answer. but after i told him it was authorized he reassured me that no action would be taken, card not cancelled, account not locked, nothing more need be done. i said, verbatim, “so everything will be like this call never happened?”. he said, “exactly” and i bid him good morning. this all took place on monday morning at around 8am CST.

i went to chase and put cash in and all worked fine. i checked my balances later that night a couple times just to see all was well – and it was. then came tuesday night.

all was well on my morning checks as well. i didn’t check ’em after that because i typically live off my cash, so since i don’t touch the cards i don’t have to check things because NOTHING SHOULD FUCKING CHANGE. but for some reason i thought to check chase and it was up. when i looked to see WHY it was because of them crediting my account for the transaction i (hadn’t) disputed. so i called chase, and back to india i went. when i explained how livid i was that i had been credited for a transaction i said NOT to fuck with, i was passed off – but this time i explicitly said i would ONLY speak to somebody on american soil. i got zach who was somewhere in america (hence no mark on my map, although given the hour (9pm) he was probably on the left coast, so let’s ammend, shall we?)

(there, no zach’s a california kid)

zach informed me that even though “i claimed” (fuck you zach) to have not file a dispute, one was filed on the charge, and once they’re filed they are FUCKING FILED (not his words). they can not be undone. they are forever and ever amen. when i asked zach if he could send me an email i could forward to explain to paypal how THEY had screwed the pooch and not me he had two things to fire back:

1. they will only snail mail you a letter
2. said letter would NOT contain the phrase “screwed the pooch” anywhere in it

so i let zach know this would probably be my last dealing with chase, but we’ll get back to that.

i then called paypal, got a lovely sounding girl on the phone who, again, had to escalate me to “a specialist”. both girls were in the phillipines, which is why you see the paypal “P” floating in the pacific above. you don’t see two P’s because the islands aren’t that large. i had caught things too quickly for them to do shit or even see shit and they advised me to wait for the inevitable email from them saying things were a problem.

that happened this morning…

chase was up thanks to the erroneous credit that was now a locked down transaction. my lockhart account was still down as the amazon refund i started the process of on halloween that normally credits the same day if you use a ups drop box is still dragging out after they claim i got my money refunded as of the day after my second bitch session about it, but still NADA in my account. but paypal was DOWN, and said it was so because they took the money out to pay back chase.

i had several email from paypal. one let me know i needed to attach a bank account to my account in order to use it (saying a charge from them is unauthorized severs the link because they think they have wrong info). i also had one letting me know chase had said a charge was unauthorized and i might need to talk to chase. and then there was a final one letting me know i had a debt to settle with them due to them having to send money to my account. so money had come out of paypal to pay back chase that would now need to be put back into paypal via chase if i chose to keep that account linked.

so, i called paypal…again. and got a lovely AMERICAN woman (dontcha know) in iowa. but again, she had to escalate me, and i ended up with joseph in the motherland (ireland) and since these two seemed to know what the fuck they were doing they’re the dollar signs you see on the map. joseph re-synced my account, advised me on how to handler the coming weeks, and advised me to leave enough in my paypal to cover the hit (which i did).

so here’s that conundrum: do i stay with chase after one indian rep got all passive aggressive and fucked me? before you doubt me, know the psychology – few cultures on the planet have more problems with passive aggressive attacks in the workplace than corporate offices in india. it’s documented. it’s out there. it’s a part of their culture now (i’ll give ’em credit – american greed coming to their region escalated it ten fold). but the fact i saw nothing on my account for thirty-six hours versus a previous legit dispute taking mere minutes let me know this fucktard STA did this on purpose to wreck my shit.

that being said, i’ve been with chase for almost a decade and i know where all the atm’s are. that’s big when we’re all creatures of habit, you know? i’ve resolved to not to shit till after payday (the 25th) and after the last pending paypal charge successfully goes through (the 28th) and then we’ll see where we’re at. i might leave it as is, i might switch to bbva compass, who’s only real selling point is an atm in san marcos and one right across from the shop (where the aforementioned cursed google locker is, actually). thoughts?