More Fun With Chase, The Credit Card Company

I’m still pulling my hair out with Chase, the credit card company: This latest chapter is too crazy to pass up! Let me know if you have had a similar experience.

(ROTR Note: Most people think the life of a full-time traveler is all pleasure. A permanent vacation. They envy the idea that full-time travel is nothing short of one big party on the road. The truth is, most of life’s festering abscesses, like dealing with credit card companies about mysterious problems cropping up on your credit report, have to be dealt with. Nomads like me don’t put all that off just because we’re traveling, since we’re always traveling. Whereas most people take a vacation for a couple of weeks a year to forget about all that stuff, those of us always on the road have no such time set aside for avoiding those painful tasks. So while you might think we’re constantly traipsing around historic sites, sipping exotic coffees in colorfully quaint cafes, or relaxing poolside at swank resort hotels, in fact we have to pay the bills, file our taxes, monitor our finances and deal with all the other annoying things that our friends at homes with jobs have to do. We just have to fit them all in among the revelry.)

The Beginning of The Journey

Chase credit cards has a feature on its web site called Chase Credit Journey, where it supposedly gets reports from a credit agency, such as Experian, and relays alerts and potential credit problems to its credit card customers.

I look at my “Credit Journey” occasionally and recently discovered a balance on a card I didn’t recognize. It said I went over my credit limit of $600 on this card by about $6. None of it made any sense to me.

After my episode with Chase a few months ago, I like to avoid any contact with the “Customer Service” people there. But I called anyway.

The first rep said that from the identification it looked like a Paypal account. He advised that I call Paypal. Chase knows nothing about it, the rep said. They just put alarming information on their website to alarm you. That’s what they do.

And just in case I wanted also to call Experian, which provides the info for my “Credit Journey,” my rep happened to have handy a number for Experian. Good! I took it.

But first I dutifully called Paypal and the rep there also couldn’t tell me anything about my “Credit Journey,” since that’s something Chase does, he told me.

“We don’t have any record of a balance on your account,” said my pal at Paypal. He recommended I call Experian.

Good thing I had that Experian number the Chase guy gave me.

The Blogger in Pursuit

Lo and behold, it was actually a number that took me back to Chase Credit Journey where it was explained to me that I had a credit alert. Had I seen it?

Now any sane consumer might have thrown up their hands, or their lunch, at that point of madness and just forgot about the whole thing.

But not your intrepid ROTR blogger. I searched the interweb for a legitimate Experian number and found one.

Experian, however, is no piker when it comes to separating consumers from information about their precious credit. I know that. I’ve dealt with them before.

Experian is perhaps the gold standard for avoiding meaningful customer service with a smile. Their obstinate automated answering system would not allow me under any circumstance to speak to a human being, and the standardized auto information their phones were programmed to ask about had nothing to do with my inquiry.

I ended that call a tired, defeated man.

But when updated alerts about the same problem continued showing up on my Chase Credit Journey, I called Chase again. After explaining my problem, a woman earnestly pretended she wanted to help, fiddled around, put me on hold, promised to get me a good number for Experian, and about five minutes later came back with the number, which I recognized immediately as the same number that the last Chase rep gave me that connected me with the Chase Credit Journey.

The woman didn’t believe me. She’s a Chase customer service rep, after all. She wanted to try it herself. So she put me on hold again, then came back saying it went to the “Credit Journey” and that I should try it, ignoring the fact that Credit Journey, in fact, is Chase, the credit card company she works for!

I remained remarkably calm while pointing out to her that “Credit Journey” was a Chase operation, not Experian, and that “Credit Journey” was where all this had started with a bogus entry that no one seems to want to discuss. “Oh,” she said.

That’s when I started losing my reserve of composure and fell into my critical mode. We talked (I complained) for another ten minutes while she was apologetic and promised to get me a good number for Experian, because they were the ones that could help me.
She put me on hold for another five minutes and came back explaining that she didn’t want me to leave without some good information so she finally found the number for Experian that I should call, she said.

“Ma’am, thank you very much, never mind,” I said, cool as Fonzi. “This is the end of our conversation. Enough of this. Good night.”

I’m Not Making This Up

Now you, the discerning reader, I’m sure is going to think I’m making up this part. But I was ready, pen in hand, to take this number that this woman apparently had gone to considerable trouble to find for me, finally, with the full equivalent of a telephonic pinky promise.

The sweet-talking lady didn’t want me to go away with my frustrations without something that would help me. That’s what she said.

Three digits in, I dropped my pen like a hot poker. She was giving me the same number that the other Chase rep had given me two days before; the same number she tried to pawn off to me about 20 minutes earlier, about which I’d patiently explained was a Chase number, which she tried calling unsuccessfully herself!

It was the SAME FREAKING NUMBER!

“Ma’am, thank you very much, never mind,” I said, cool as Fonzi. “This is the end of the call. Enough of this. Good night.”

Now I’m thinking this “credit alert” must be the work of Russians planting phantom photons in my laptop. I decided to ignore it and see what happens. Maybe it will all just disappear like a dissident in Moscow.

And the worst that could happen?

Soon all my accounts are wiped clean and you’ll find me begging for walnuts on a back street in Batumi.

Such is fate.

Travel well, my friends.