Chase Bank and the Mystery of the Missing Data

Continuing a blog series on our adventures with Chase Bank....

A few months after being kicked to the curb on a mortgage loan - after we'd decided to move away from Chase but before we'd done anything about it - we received correspondence from Chase regarding the n"need to update their files with our current data".    Anne and I both received separate letters.

Now bear in mind that we'd had our accounts at Chase for years - not just normal banking, but IRA accounts invested through Chase.   We'd also had our business accounts there (and still did), and even had a substantial business line of credit that we had never used.   In addition to all of these, we had just gone through a complete loan process, which of course included re-providing all of the personal information needed for a loan.   Yet, here Chase was asking us to update our information.

The letters even had some urgency to them, vaguely indicating 'government regulators" needed the information.

I must also relate here again the consequences for Chase refusing to finance our mortgage.    We'd decided to simply pay cash for our new house.  While this was not a comfortable position to be in, we were in the process of selling our Woodinville house and at that point would be OK again.    As we had completed the transaction on our new house, we had of course taken the money out of our Chase accounts.   Since we had also sold our Woodinville house, we had also put the money BACK IN to our Chase accounts.    File this piece of data away for a few minutes.

Anne provided to Chase via telephone what little information they actually wanted to update.    They would not allow her to provide the information they needed for me.    I was in no hurry to do so, and we had an upcoming meeting with our "investment team" at Chase so I knew I could do it then. 

Fast forward a couple of weeks, to the day of that appointment.

We arrived at the bank around 4pm, and sat down to wait for Joe our investment banking contact.  Joe was going to update us on the performance of our investments.    Anne went up to the teller to get some cash. 

She came back a few minutes later with a funny look on her face.    "They wouldn't give me any cash", she said.    "Our accounts are frozen".   

WHAT??

For a few moments i experienced what a lot of people must have felt like in 192 and in the following years of bank failures, on being told their money was gone.   

We double checked, including at the cash machine.   Yup, our accounts were frozen.   Would  could not access a penny from any account.  The tellers could not tell us why.

Well, we had an appointment with the very guys we needed to talk to anyway, so we got right down to business.

"Why the hell are our accounts FROZEN?", I asked.   

Joe and a cohort fumbled and mumbled and checked their systems.   

"You haven't provided some needed information the bank has requested," they said. 

"And Chase Bank finds that suitable grounds for freezing customer accounts?" I asked.    "Do I need to call my attorney?"

They felt they could take care of it and got to work doing so, but I pressed them and the now-present bank manager on the issue.

"Who do you think you are freezing our accounts without so much as a phone call?   What does 'private client' even mean around here?"

I was astounded that they could even take such an action.

I finally asked the person "taking care of the situation' just exactly what information they needed that I had not provided.

"We need your current employer", he said.   

That's it???

Well, my current employer certainly had not changed since we applied for a loan.   I told them this and few other choice observations.   

Then, they also indicated that we had made several large deposits and withdrawals recently.

"Do you mean the ones we had to make because we had to pay cash for our new house because we are not credit worthy?" I asked sweetly.   "Are those two transactions the SEVERAL transactions you are talking about?"

I relate these blog chapters as a cautionary tale:   Banks are not only making no sense in what they do, with many examples of customer fraud and predatory practices - but they feel they can take actions such as freezing your accounts for next to no reason with no notification.   They are not accountable, and this has become worse under the new administration in Washington.

If they could casually freeze our accounts for essentially no cause, they could do it to anyone,  Freezing an account is a very big deal, and if you have a valid reason for doing so, they don't get unfrozen in 10 minutes' time, which is what happened.

We certainly considered that our intrepid branch team could simply have been fucking with us.   
We had certainly let them know how we felt about how we had been treated and what we thought of the "private client" program.    We'd also let them know that we'd be moving our assets away from their bank.     The timing of our accounts being frozen on the same day as our appointment seemed a bit too coincidental. 

After they managed to unfreeze our accounts because they now had the needed critical data, we proceeded on to our investment review - but that's for the (possibly) last blog chapter in this series, "Chase Bank and the Half Percent Return"

Happy Valentines Day!