Consumer complaint received 2019-09-21
Company: JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.
State: MD
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Getting a credit card
Sub-issue: Sent card you never applied for

Complaint:
In typical fashion, Chase botched my application for its VISA Freedom card and, without informing me, changed an application I made into one I did not make, did not authorize, did not want, and do not want ( one with a wrong address on it ). In addition, it has violated my privacy, against my express wishes, and contrary to what I was told, it has stored and used an email address for me it told me years ago it had deleted and no longer retained. The habitual lies of its credit card division should be sanctioned definitively by the CFPB. If XXXX XXXX was sanctioned for making unauthorized applications for its customers, why is Chase allowed to do so? 

Recently, I applied online for the credit card because a hard copy application is not available to down load and use. To protect myself against Chases unauthorized use of my personal data, I want to submit my own applications that are completed in my own hand and to retain a copy of what I submit, but this is not allowed in the mindless age we live in. Chases changing my application as it did, without even telling me, into an application I did not make, is exactly why I do not want to apply through its website, because the website is not secure, especially from its own employees, and I can not obtain real proof of what I submitted. Chase engages in a harder-to-detect version of what XXXX XXXX became infamous for : applying for products that are not authorized by account holders. Chase altered the application that I tried to make in the only way it allows, and then submitted an application that I did not know about or want. It appears to have checked my credit for something I did not authorize, for something it advertised, falsely, a credit card I tried to apply for but was prevented from applying for by Chases unauthorized and untraceable alterations to the application I submitted. 

Worse than the foregoing, I would never have discovered Chases falsifying my application and using an email address it had told me years previously that it had deleted since I told it never to use it, unless I went into a Chase branch office recently in XXXX, VA when I was travelling, to see if I could get the card Id been approved for so that I could use it while returning home. I had seen through online banking that a new credit card had been set up under my accounts with a new account number, but could find no other information about it, such as the application that I had submitted for it or how or when I could get the new card. Later, some information was added on its online banking website, but subsequently deleted so that its reprehensible behavior could not be traced, no doubt. The number on the unusable credit card account it eventually sent to me is XXXX. Although I was told that it was activated after I followed steps to do so, it is blocked and Chase no doubt wants me to explain just how and why it screwed up the card. I prefer to have the CFPB do so. 

The young gentleman who helped me in the XXXX branch called someone to try to find out about the new credit card that had been issued to me. He was told that it was sent to an address I had not used on my application, much less would want a credit card for. Thanks to the inept handling of the application, the address was changed by Chase without telling me which then sent me a credit card, at the wrong address, that I had not applied for and do not want. The gentleman then told the person on the phone to send it to the correct address where I eventually got it ( or another one ) but could not use due to more recalcitrant errors by Chase. In the middle of it all, Chase appears to want to talk to me about what theyve done, despite me applying for the card I wanted, no other, and despite the gentleman in the branch telling the credit card automatons to mail it, what a surprise, to the address on my application. Still this did not satisfy the deeply entrenched dysfunction of Chase credit cards, as I received a credit card, eventually, at the address on my application and was told in material that accompanied it that I had been approved and just needed to activate it. This, typically, was more weaseling and false advertisement from Chase. Although I was told by one of Chases myriad of unsupervised, lobotomized computers, that I succeeded in activating it, the card is blocked, I can not use it. Why doesnt the CFPB do some good and require Chase to get its credit card division to clean up its act? Heres a hint : only graduated sanctions of sufficient monetary amounts, freezing its ability to open new accounts, and not allowing it to pass on its bumbling operations ' expenses, including sanctions, to its customers, will get XXXX attention. But of course one wonders whether the CFPB really wants to get this kind of disciplinary attention of credit card issuers these days. 

Neither I nor other applicants should be abused, deceived and treated unfairly by the secret machinations of a deeply embedded, robotic culture at Chase credit card divisions that is not effectively sanctioned and prevented from wrong doing. 

Get this credit card working without requiring me to jump through any more hoops, particularly without having me to spend any more time talking to these intolerable XXXX XXXX, and ensure that my brother, XXXX XXXX XXXX, is credited with the advertised amount for referring people to apply for the Freedom Card. If it had not been for him, I would not have known about this credit card, much less applied for it. ( Online, in its typically creepy ways that the CFPB does nothing about, the credit card division requires an email address to award this credit, another sign of the below-the-radar invasion of peoples privacy that Chase credit cards engages in. Chase has the ONLY email address for me that I want it to have : XXXX, and I am forced in the obnoxious, harassing, invasive practices of Chase, to confirm this ad nauseum, each time I use online banking. )

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation