Consumer complaint received 2024-01-19
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem with a purchase shown on your statement — Credit card company isn't resolving a dispute about a purchase on your statement
Company: JPMORGAN CHASE & CO. (CA)

On XX/XX/XXXX, I booked through Chase Travel Center using my XXXX  Preferred Ultimate Rewards points a four hotel, 10 night stay in XXXX across three cities, XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX in the order under trip ID XXXX. This was planned for XX/XX/XXXX, and I am a US citizen. 

The hotels were as follows : XXXX XXXX ( XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX ) from XXXX, XXXX XXXX ( XXXX the XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I checked into the first hotel, XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, and was told that the entire XXXX XXXX franchise did not permit foreign nationals to stay. 

I examined the rules and policies disclosed to me by Chase carefully in booking, and I retain the travel confirmations that state that there was no clause or info disclosing to me that foreign nationals were banned from 3/4 of my bookings. 

They offered to give the original form of payment a full refund, and I told them they would be refunding Chase Travel they went ahead and refunded Chase and later told me that they would ask the other XXXX Hanting Hotels to refund Chase as well. 

However, I was on a tight budget with limited minutes, and the XXXX Hotels were the only hotels offered by Chase within my budget. This, I needed Chase to provide me with housing at no additional cost to me, because I depended on their service for housing and had set aside the costs I already paid them as my total housing budget. 

So they offered to relocate me to a new hotel of my choice on their portal, and they would refund me the total cost of that hotel. As the supervisor stated, this refund was equal to the total cost difference of what I already paid and the cost of the old housing ( which was being refunded ) and the new housing, and therefore it would incur no additional cost to me because the XXXX Hotels were refunding Chase. 

I said this was an acceptable solution, so I received confirmation by Chase that they were using my credit card to book and would be soon refunding me. They said it would take 1-2 business days to approve and 5 business days to arrive. The cost was {$420.00}. 

Then, they had to arrange for my other housing. Upon my arrival in XXXX, I found that the fourth hotel, XXXX XXXX, also did not permit foreign nationals. Thus, I needed another emergency relocation. In further searching, I found that much of that information was only visible from XXXX internet, whereas the websites were either hidden or did not disclose that information when on a VPN located in America. More research found that other travel agencies did not list those properties while on American internet, but Chase failed to region-lock those or disclose their status, and for that reason American consumers could be susceptible to booking an infeasible hotel using Chase Travel with no awareness anywhere within their customer service as to the infeasibility of the housing. 

I was offered relocation to vendor-provided hotels in XXXX, XXXX, and my return to XXXX. In XXXX, I had to call customer service international for over an hour die to both Chase Travel and myself being unaware that XXXX XXXX banned foreigners. In XXXX, I had to call twice for over 1.5 hours combined because they provided me no relocation info until my first call, and upon arriving at the hotel they provided me, had to call again since they initially provided the wrong hotel name and reservation number to me. 

In my return trip to XXXX, they offered me two vendor-provided relocation options. The first of which openly banned foreign nationals on their website - which they were unaware of. The second was over an hour by transit away from my original booking, which was near city center, and lacked a physical accommodation I originally booked the XXXX XXXX for ( perpetual access to potable water, due to a condition necessitating I drink 15L per day ). 

I took the latter, but the distance and lack of potable water forced me to stay inside for the entire day since I slept a night with lack of significant access to potable water which weakened my state significantly. This caused me to miss my reservation to see the XXXX XXXX. 

On the same XXXX call, which lasted over two hours, I asked for the same accommodation I was provided before - a hotel of my choice with full refund. The supervisor told me that they could only give me that option incurring an additional cost to me. That is, they would only refund me equal to the hotel cost minus my original reservation cost, meaning I'd have to pay my hotel cost to Chase again for the relocation. I had no budget for that, so I could not take it. I said I had evidence in writing that I was originally due to be refunded in full for my first XXXX hotel, but was told that the initial supervisor made a mistake. 

These hotels were provided by Chase as a mistake. Unlike other companies, they failed to region-lock reservations or otherwise disclose the hotel 's policies and rules that ban foreign nationals. They told me that they would investigate and remove those listings after I brought attention to them, but my entire trip was significantly more costly due to that mistake. I paid $ XXXX/minute to call them for a combined total of almost 8 hours, spent two nights lacking a physical accommodation I originally booked for, missed multiple restaurant reservations, a reservation to see an attraction due to a medical problem, and lost multiple tourism days due to needing to communicate with both Chase Travel and the respective front desks. 

As Chase Travel told me on my first call, placed in XXXX, this should have never happened to any customer and Chase has failed to provide either my {$420.00} promised refund, or any compensation for the displacement of my trip at large. When contacted about these issues, I was told to file a claim, but was directed to a claims office that did not have options applicable to receiving refunds from Chase over errors within their own Travel service.