Consumer complaint received 2017-10-01
Company: JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.
State: OK
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Other features, terms, or problems
Sub-issue: Other problem

Complaint:
On Thursday XXXX XXXX Chase Bank allowed XXXX to use a debit card to draw funds from my checking account, that both I and Chase bank agreed to close about a year ago, for security and fraudulent protection purposes. Never in my 40 years of doing banking have I ever had a bank allow one of my creditors to access funds from my account through a credit/debit card or account that had been officially closed by the bank. My experience has always been that if a bank closes my account or credit or debit cards, then those accounts or cards could no longer ever be used as a link to other accounts our assets that I have with the bank that are open. When I called Chase about this, and spoke with their front line claim specialist both on Friday XXXX XXXX and Saturday, XXXX XXXX, these specialist both said they had never seen this type of transaction occur before, and they agreed with me that they could not see how the bank could allow these types of transactions to occur. However, when I spoke with their senior specialist on this matter, she said this is a common practice. I told her I never experienced this and given the compromises to half of America 's financial information this summer by one of our credit reporting agencies, I could not see how Chase would ever allow this to be a common practice. Chase has temporarily, refunded to me the money that XXXX withdrew from my account with a debit card that was supposedly closed for over a year, but they said if they go back to XXXX and discover that legal zoom had a legal claim on my funds they would reverse my refund. What I have a problem with is Chase allowing XXXX to charge my checking account with a debit card that was been closed for more than a year. For all of my working life, when I have closed an account and a creditor needs to get automatic payments started again, the creditor call, sends letter or emails, alerting me to the fact that they need new card or account information where they can can withdraw funds - Chase appears to have by-passed this step, giving creditors, access to my checking account through a debit card, that has been closed for a year, opening that account for this creditor to debit my account, but when you look on the financial record of my account with chase, it says that that debt card account is closed and is not open to anyone or any company to be used to take funds from accounts that is had been linked to in the past. That is what a closed account means. 

I believe Chase 's senior claims representative was lying or being told to lie to me about what the actually policy is on creditor use of Chase bank customer closed accounts. Every time I asked her the specific question, does chase have a policy and does chase regularly allow selected creditor customers to use closed accounts or closed debit card accounts that are tied to banking customer checking accouts, so that those selected creditor customers can draw funds from banking customer accounts, even though those closed accounts or closed debit card accounts were closed specifically for the purpose of protecting banking customers from unauthorized transaction on banking customers open accounts. At no time did Chase inform me that the closed debit card account that that was supposedly no longer linked to my checking account, was opened for XXXX and again linked to my checking account, allowing XXXX to draw down funds on my checking account, through a debit card account and transaction that was closed a year a go or more, without ever informing me or my wife that that account was reopened and allowed to be used by XXXX. 

I am not a lawyer, but this seem like very very abusive behavior by the bank in support of creditor clients and the gross disadvantage of consumer banking customers. My wife was just lucky to catch this. She asked me on Thursday XXXX XXXX, why was XXXX withdrawing funds from our account. Had she not noticed this, XXXX and many other creditors could be and may have already been withdrawing funds from my account, using past and closed credit cards that I am not aware of. They could be steeling 10 dollars here and {$20.00} there, each week or each month over millions of customers, resulting in cyber theft in the {$100.00} 's of millions or ; Billions per year. Who knows, because most consumers do not have time to check every transaction that is occurring in their account, especially if those transactions are with familiar creditors who are using existing credit card accounts, but with accounts that are closed, but the terrible thing is the banks are not alerting their customers that they are allowing selected creditors to directly charge their accounts with debit cards or accounts that consumers thought were closed and could not be used ... ... ... ... ..This appears to be big banks using their abusive market power, knowing individual consumers do not have the time, resources or understanding to identify and challenge these abuses. Please help me put an end to this practice

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation