I just paid off my Chase Visa debt in FULL!! Using a combination of snowflaking and balance-transferring, I have managed to see the back of that horrible, oppressive and unmanageable debt. It will take a few days before the payment posts, but the account is already closed and I need not have anything else to do with that horrible company ever again. I hate Chase with a vengeance. And as I browse other PF blogs, I see that I am not alone in my loathing of the company. Every single Customer service representative of Chase that I have dealt with has been rude, offensive, obnoxious and desperately in need of a crash course in charm school. It’s almost as if every employee of the company has had special training in being nasty to customers.
When I first got my Chase Visa card, I was happy – it was at a 7.99% fixed APR and was easy to manage. I did run up huge bills on it – more than $5000, but I was making at least the minimum payments and cruising along. And then through a horrible oversight, I missed a payment when I was out of the country for three months. When I returned, I called them and asked them if they could reverse the late-fee. Now most places I know will excuse a one-time late payment – not Chase. They bumped my APR up to 24.24% variable, and did not reverse my late fee. Every time I called them to ask them to reduce my APR, they were horrible to me. One customer service rep even told me, “The way to keep your APR down is to make regular payments. It’s your fault you are in this mess.” Those were her exact words – I wrote them down in my diary so I would never forget! They are true, but I don’t think that’s an appropriate way to talk to your customers.
About a year later, I received a letter informing me of changes to my account. Among all the other changes in policy etc, there was a note that my APR was being bumped up to 32.99% variable! I had no clue why – I had been making all my payments on time and had not messed anything else up. I called Chase again to find out why. The customer service person this time said it was because I had a high debt and since I was only making the minimum payments, there was a good chance that I might soon default on the account. I was left speechless – if they thought I was running up too much debt to make even the minimum payments, why in the world were they trying to speed up that process?? I did not see how they profited from this. It was only much later that a friend of mine in the finance field told me that they did it because they probably thought that I was a “good bet” – a graduate student who has been making payments and calling often to try and see how I could pay the whole thing off – they knew I was dedicated to returning their money, so they thought they could add on some more money since I was probably going to pay it off anyway. The only way I could get off this hike in APR was to close the account, which I gladly did. I had no desire to use Chase anymore.
A few months ago, I redoubled my efforts to get out of debt. I started calling Chase again. After several rounds of calling, as usual lots of rude customer service reps (one of them even hung up on me when I asked to be connected with her supervisor), placing requests for reduced APRs and several rounds of such requests being rejected, I was not making any progress at all. One stupid Chase employee I talked with even suggested that I transfer my balances to a lower interest card – how in the world did he think that would be to Chase’s advantage? I wonder what Chase would have thought of that!
During this time, I was making several attempts at getting lower interest cards to transfer my Chase balance to. I either got rejected because of my high debt:income ratio, or got cards with miniscule balances until I finally scored with my Advanta card. And now, I am free of the horrible Chase Visa debt. I SHALL NEVER EVER AGAIN BE A CHASE CUSTOMER! And that is even if I get an unbeatable offer from Chase – their rude and ridiculous service isn’t worth any small financial gain their cards can offer.
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