Chase Screwed Up!

Many people are aware that the Chase website, Chase.com, was offline for a couple of days this past week. For three days (Monday, September 13 through Wednesday, September 15), customer account information was either inaccessible through the website, or there were intermittent outages. Bill payments that had been previously scheduled were not being made. How this affected me is that I had scheduled a bill payment for my American Express card to be sent on Monday, and completed on Tuesday, September 14 (which was the bill's due date). Unfortunately, that payment was not received by American Express until Thursday, September 16 (two days late).

What happens if you pay a credit card bill late? It could result in a late fee, finance charges, and the credit card issuer can increase the card's interest rate (in my case, that would be increased to 27.24% APR). And that is not even to mention the effect that a late payment can have on your credit score. Well, this was definitely not my fault; I had scheduled the bill payment on-time. It was Chase that screwed up!

Anticipating that many angry customers might be contacting Chase, they sent me a message explaining the situation. Here is the message that I received from Chase:

We are sorry for the difficulties that recently affected chase.com and we apologize for not communicating better with you about this issue. As you may know, we experienced a significant service interruption at the time you tried to initiate, cancel or modify one or more of your scheduled online bill payments.  As a result, the request was not processed.

Please log on to chase.com to check the status of your payment.

If you tried to change or cancel your payment, we are asking that if you have not done so already, please log on to chase.com and resubmit your cancellation or change, if appropriate. If you have concerns about a bill payment that has been made, please contact us.

If you tried to initiate a new payment and it was not made (if you do not see your payment in your online account activity summary), we are asking that if you have not done so already, please log on to chase.com and submit a new bill pay request for any payment that was not made.  If our delay in processing your bill payment resulted in late fees, we will cover 100% of those late fees.

If your payment was made after the date you scheduled, there is no further action needed on your part. Please note:

·    If your payment was to another Chase account (for example, Chase Credit Card Services), we are automatically refunding any late fees.

·    If your payment was to anyone other than Chase (for example, your telephone service, utilities or another financial institution), we are contacting many payees to prevent late fees from being charged.

o   However, if your payee charged you a late fee, please call us at one of the numbers below or visit your nearest Chase branch. We will refund the late fee to you.

We recommend that you keep this letter in case you need to provide information to your payee. 

Please be assured that Chase's online security has not been compromised as a result of this service interruption. Your accounts and confidential information remain safe and secure. 

Giving you 24-hour access to your banking is of the utmost importance to us. This was not the level of service we know you expect, and we will work hard to serve you and communicate with you better in the future.

Again, please accept our apology for this disruption and thank you for your patience. If you have any questions, please stop by your nearest Chase branch or call:

·    1-800-935-9935 for Personal accounts

·    1-877-CHASEPC (1-877-242-7372) for Business accounts

·    1-800-848-9136 for Home Lending and Auto accounts

·    For credit card accounts, please call the number on the back of your card.
 

Sincerely,

Patricia O. Baker
Senior Vice President
Chase Executive Office

One of the key points of this message is that Chase is contacting payees to prevent late fees from being charged. They should; it is their responsibility! It remains to be seen what will happen. I haven't seen any late fees assessed to my credit card yet, and I hope that there won't be any.

Was anybody else impacted by Chase's problems?

DC