I recently made a human error and Chase Bank fined me hundreds of dollars in fees. Background: At the beginning of the summer, my children ages 9 and 6 decided they wanted to mow lawns to earn enough money for a Nintendo Wii. They worked hard all summer under close parental supervision and at the end of the summer they'd saved enough money to purchase a Wii. After some research it became evident that eBay had some of the best deals for games and components. I have a PayPal account because of a small online golf website that I have called agamegolfinstruction.com where I accept payments through PayPal and that money is transferred from PayPal into a Chase bank checking account. We decided to use a credit card for my children’s eBay purchases so I added my credit card to my PayPal account and we deposited my children’s money in the Credit Card account to cover the purchases. We purchased about 10 separate items on eBay using PayPal for a total of about $250. A week later I received a statement from Chase bank that I had accrued nearly $300 in NSF fees. I did some research and after calling PayPal, I realized that somehow during the eBay checkout process, we failed to link the purchases to the credit card on the PayPal account and so PayPal was trying to take money out of my Chase Bank checking account which was nearly empty. At this time, there were still about 4 transactions that hadn’t been completed and I called PayPal and asked if they could change where the eBay transactions were being billed and they said they could not. I called Chase Bank and asked if they could refuse the remaining requests for funds so that PayPal would bill the credit card on file and Chase said they couldn’t do anything. The really frustrating thing is that PayPal requests the funds from the checking account twice before it goes to a backup funding source which is the Credit Card on file. So for example, PayPal tried to request funds twice for one purchase of $5.49 and Chase declined both requests and charged me $35 each time for a total of $70 for that one purchase alone. After all the purchases were completed, Chase charged me over $400 in NSF fees. I spoke with Chase managers to see if they would consider reversing the fees and they gave me $70 which they said is the annual limit they’re allowed to offer. There is no room for negotiation here. It doesn’t matter what your track record is with the bank and how high-quality of a customer you’ve been. Chase takes your money and runs. BEWARE of Chase because their policies and procedures are structured to take advantage of you with no means of recourse on your part. Go to a credit union or a local bank where they’ll get to know you by name and treat you as a valuable member.
0 comments