Consumer complaint received 2022-09-29
Company: JPMORGAN CHASE & CO.
State: MD
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Trouble using your card
Sub-issue: Credit card company won't increase or decrease your credit limit

Complaint:
Chase is engaging in unfair and deceptive practices concerning credit limit increases. Furthermore, it abusively exploits a lack of uniformity in what it requires to increase credit lines from one of its cards to another, while these sloppy, non-existent intra-card standards are largely hidden from its customers and an unethical corporate culture is incentivized within the bank as a whole. These conditions, in turn, recall a larger problem that has remained unaddressed for decades : behemoths like Chase, in its thousands of iterations, are simply too big to fail, XXXX, effectively sanction, or manage. Despite regular, on-time payments for some time, Chase Freedom XXXX has not increased my credit limit for some time. When problems that Ive previously reported to the CFPB in prior complaints occurred, and I was forced to rely on this particular credit card, the greater use on this low-credit-limit card probably lowered my credit score. As a result of Chases poor operations on its credit cards, and to protect myself from lower credit scores and higher interest charges, I requested a credit limit increase on my Chase Freedom XXXX card. 

I have had this card since 2019 and have been a JP Morgan Chase customer for 30 or more years, yet I could not request a credit limit increase online. I had to call which takes longer because Chase does not employ enough people to answer its phones. When I got someone, he announced that I would have to have a hard credit pull of my credit report for Chase to consider increasing the cards credit limit. I objected to this and asked that it make a soft credit pull instead which would not degrade my credit score as much. He refused to use a soft pull after I objected that Chase should use a soft pull since I am a very long-standing customer who has paid her credit cards on time. He again said a soft pull was not an option and that a hard pull was required for a credit line increase on the card. I then consented, under protest, to have a hard pull of my credit report. Shortly thereafter, however, he started to ask me a bunch of questions, the same questions I was asked when I first applied for the card. Without forthrightly disclosing it, Chase required that I reapply for a card I already had. 

I asked if I was being made to re-apply for the card all over again despite being a customer for so many years. He then acknowledged that that was indeed the case : I had to reapply for the very same card and have a hard credit report pull as well. 

This is unfair, if not discriminatory, on the face of it and deceptive because it is not announced from the outset that long-standing customers are forced to re-apply for the very card they have had for years. Why is Chase allowed to do this? It is an abusive practice that degrades credit scores because of Chases refusal to use soft pulls on existing accounts. 

I then objected and said I would not consent to this kind of abuse. Instead, I asked that Chase transfer some of the credit that was quickly increased on my XXXX XXXX XXXX card, without pulling any credit report, or even asking me if I wanted the credit line increase, from the XXXX XXXX to the XXXX XXXX. He then said he would do so and that it would take effect immediately. Clearly, Chase is caught in another one of its signature hypocrisies. While it essentially throws credit at the same user for one card ( XXXX XXXX ), it surreptitiously subverts what is already provided to the same person on another card ( the XXXX XXXX ). Why is Chase allowed to blatantly manipulate consumers and markets in this way by luring, pushing and shoving its customers to spend money at XXXX, while reducing their abilities to spend it elsewhere? Obviously, it is because XXXX with the complicity of Chase, is furiously defrauding millions of consumers with its pay-now-get-later scams that law enforcement has not caught on to or up with. Catch them ( Chase XXXX XXXX ) if you can. 

Since the credit reporting system in this country is broken and a sham vassal system that was instigated by banks like Chase, it remains an unfair burden to the overwhelming majority of consumers and a conducive means of abuse by Chase. Under such conditions and with such a notable history, Chase should not be allowed to engage in further abuse of the kind Ive described. Customers already are subject to having their identities stolen for life by poorly designed credit bureaus that are built on habitual non-compliance and doing whatever they can get away with. When cyber breaches occur, individuals, not credit bureaus or their overlords like Chase, pay life-long for the damage. 

Chase and others like it created the credit system we have through which personal information of all kinds is hawked and trafficked in the black market all over the world, with little means of self-defense left to individuals injured by these practices. Consequently, an accommodation, long over due, should be required of Chase and other credit card banks like it. 

It is clear from what Chases Freedom card wanted from me, that it had next to nothing to do with how reliable I am as a credit card customer, since it already knows that and has known it for years. Its quickly transferring credit from the XXXX XXXX  to the XXXX XXXX  confirms it. 

Chase should be sanctioned immediately and monitored indefinitely for the abusive, deceptive, manipulative, invasive, unfair practices concerning credit pulls and credit limits on extant accounts, that Ive described.

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief