Like billions of Americans, I use Chase for my day-to-day banking needs. My wife and I switched to Chase when we consolidated our checking accounts when we first moved in together, and the decision was largely made due to pervasiveness: Chase ATMs are everywhere.
Last week, Chase’s online banking site went down. Hard. It stayed down Monday through Thursday, an incredibly long time. During the outage, Chase only issued terse press releases. No notices were sent to customers. No firm reasons were given, other than the mention of a third-party software upgrade gone astray. And worse is that Chase told customers who called and complained to just go to a banking center or use an ATM.
Everything is back to normal now, and Chase has indeed sent an email to its customers. Again, though, there’s no explanation as to what happened. There’s nothing in the email that suggests Chase has taken steps to remedy the situation. To me, it was a prime opportunity for Chase to be transparent and open with its customers. Instead, Chase blew it. How is this possibly acceptable in 2010?
As a result of this debacle we’ll be taking our business elsewhere. It’s not like we’re going to miss a 0.0% APR or anything.
Posted in Technology