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June 13, 2011, 08:49:25 AM |
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When I first read your post about problems using Chase QuickPay, I planned on chiming in by saying 'thanks for sharing your experiences, but for another viewpoint, I've been using QuickPay for dozens of transactions and have yet to have any kind problem'. I'm glad I didn't, because now I've also had a problem ... a serious one:
Late last week, a few of us in #bitcoin-otc were scammed by someone (GPG-registered and positively rated in the Web of Trust) who was buying Bitcoins and paying with a stolen/hacked Chase QuickPay account.
The first I realized something was amiss was when I tried to sign into my Chase online banking the next morning and was unable to, with a message saying my online access had been locked out and I'd need to call blah blah number to fix it.
After wasting 2.5 hours on hold and being passed around like a hot potato between no less than 7 different Chase "telephone bankers" and call centers, they still could not tell me anything useful about what was wrong with my account or why I was being locked out. (Lots of conflicting/wrong stories and excuses, but nothing helpful or correct.)
It was only after I was contacted by some of the other #bitcoin-otc traders who had been scammed was I able to piece together what happened.
Armed with this information, I wasted another 2 hours on calls with Chase the next day, me TELLING THEM what I think happened to my account, and asking what needed to be done to alleviate the situation and get my account working again.
Apparently, the other scam victims had better experiences than I with Chase's customer service and got to the bottom of what happened, but if it weren't for them I would still be left wondering to this day why my account was frozen.
Unfortunately, the bottom line for all of us was the same: our accounts would all be PERMANENTLY closed, the fraudulent payments to us would of course be voided, and in order to get to our money or access our accounts again we would need to GO TO A CHASE branch and open a completely new account and wait 5-7 days, blah blah, etc.
Of course none of us will be getting any of our stolen Bitcoins back, nor will we be receiving any help from Chase to get to the bottom of this little cybercrime. Rather than being treated as the victim of a crime, and being backed up or helped out in any way by our bank, we are being made to suffer as if we did something wrong here.
I had my account at Chase since the mid-90's, never had a major problem, and it will be a major headache and inconvenience for me to change all my bank account details for all the things I use it for. After trying to speak to three different managers and explaining that there would be no way that I could get to a Chase branch any time soon and PLEASE do not close my account, I finally had to tell them: if you are going to close my account, go right ahead ... I won't be opening another one. I am now permanently an ex-Chase customer.
After getting my PayPal account frozen around the time that Coinpal was shut down, I had been relying on QuickPay more and more to do my online transactions. I liked it, because of three benefits: 1.) it is fast (the money shows up in your account a lot faster than with Dwolla or similar), 2.) it's free, 3.) and if you only deal with other Chase customers (as I tried to) I thought it was a bit more secure than most of the other ACH or credit card based alternatives.
Unfortunately, at this time there still really is no perfect online payments alternative to use to trade Bitcoins. Given the points mentioned above, I thought Chase QuickPay was about as good of as option as exists at the time, but unfortunately "the fraud card" pretty much trumps any of the possible alternatives. Given Chase's heavy-handed (or downright retarded) response to my problem, after going through this unfortunate experience I can now also concur with casascius: Chase QuickPay NOT RECOMMENDED!
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