This morning, it took me one hour to link my new JP Morgan Chase Slate VISA card with my current Chase accounts so that I could easily pay the bill online rather than send a check each month.
One hour.
In that time, I felt totally exposed and vulnerable to a bunch of strangers on the phone who passed me from department to department asking me all sorts of personal information. They seemed to know too much about me.
I even made it to the fraud department twice because they didn't like the answers to questions they asked me. My answers were, "none of the above," but you see, those were the correct answers.
After asking for my social security number, which I was hesitant to give out, they had my personal info in front of them and they proceeded to ask stupid questions. I had expected to hear the usual, "What is your mother's maiden name?" and "What is your favorite movie?" or "What was your first dog's name?" Things like that. But no. One of the questions was, "What is your height according to your driver's license?" They were actually reading my driver's license info at Chase bank in some bunker somewhere! And they proceeded to ask me three heights, which were wrong and the fourth multiple choice answer was, "none of the above," which was correct, since none of the previous heights were correct as to what height I am and what is on my driver's license.
Then they asked me a multiple choice question on the color of my car, and again, the correct answer was, "none of the above," which was the correct answer since none of the other choices was my car color. So they have all this personal info on me, but to be fair, they didn't have the answers it seems.
This set off a fraud alert and I was sent off to the fraud department for more stupid questions. they then sent me to another department and so on and so on. I was asked to give them my previous addresses that they had on file for me and they wanted to know what my mortgage payment amount was every month and other much too personal things. Keep in mind, it took seconds to get this credit card with basically no questions asked, just a credit check; but trying to link this card to join the 21st Century took all these personal violations.
Finally, they needed my debit card info, which I never use, so I had to dig out my debit card and then they switched me to some sort of electronic device on the phone and I punched in pin codes, expiration dates, etc.
I understand this is all done to protect me from fraud, but when I first applied for the card, wouldn't the simplest thing be to just add the card to my Chase accounts? I have a bunch now -- mortgage, business account, personal checking, savings, etc., so all they had to do was add the credit card. If I didn't want to use it online, that would be my choice. But in this day and age, why wouldn't I want to have access to my credit card bills and statements online?
My other credit cards are Citi and American Express so they are on their own accounts. I don't ever remember going through all this fuss with them and I basically had them all before the digital age.
As all this was happening with the ladies at Chase Bank, I was typing away furiously, writing this story; I wanted to remember all this nonsense and to get it down correctly. I was kept on hold so long between transfers from department to department, that I was able to basically write the whole thing down while on the phone with them. My phone was a half inch from the keyboard, so I was flabbergasted by one of the ladies on the phone who asked me if I was next to a computer, she wanted me to test to see if it all worked at the end. I asked her if she didn't hear the clicking away of me typing. She said she did hear it. I'm not sure what she thought what I was typing on, but the way they do business at Chase is like back in the stone age, so maybe she thought I was on a Smith Corona typewriter or something.
Anyway, after an hour of back and forth on the phone, my Chase card is now connected to my previous accounts and I can easily pay my bill online. All this so that I can pay them what I owe them.
At the end of this nightmare hour, I was asked, "Do you have any other concerns?" I said, "Yes. I would like to know why this took over an hour when you could have easily done this for me the day I applied for the card."
She ignored that question and asked me again, "Do you have any other concerns?" I honestly think they are robots there. I just said, "No, thank you," and hung up.
All I wanted to do was pay my credit card bill; I shudder to think what it's like to get a loan from Chase Bank. I now hate my new Chase Slate card and out of frustration, don't even want to use it.