Consumer complaint received 2020-01-02
Product: Credit card or prepaid card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Advertising and marketing, including promotional offers — Confusing or misleading advertising about the credit card
Company: JPMORGAN CHASE & CO. (MO)

Complaint:
To whom it may concern, I am writing to alert you of deceptive marketing tactics that Chase Bank is using that are unfairly targeting consumers such as myself in addition to refusal from Chase Bank to refund an annual fee I paid for a card that they subsequently closed as a result of their deceptive marketing tactics. 

On Friday XX/XX/2019 I noticed a special offer from Chase Bank when I logged into my account with them. It was a non-public, pre-qualified offer for the Chase Ink Unlimited credit card ( see exhibit A ). Since I was looking for a new card to separate some expenses out for a XXXX business I had just started, and the offer looked good, I decided to apply for the credit card. Since this was a special offer in my bank account profile, I had assumed that Chase Bank knew what my credit profile looked like and was trying to extend their relationship with me due to my payment and credit history with them ( no late payments, balances always paid in full ). 

On Wednesday XX/XX/2019 I logged into my Chase account and noticed that all of my credit card accounts had been closed by the bank. I found this very odd so I contacted Chase Bank immediately but the department I needed to reach was closed for the day. Over the next several days, I contacted Chase Bank a few more times and eventually got through to the department I needed to get to and was told that my accounts were closed due to a routine random assessment of accounts. 

There was nothing random about the assessment of my account. It is clear that Chase Bank did not like me for whatever reason and deceived me with a credit card offer specifically targeted to me. My application for that targeted offer directly resulted in all of my credit card accounts with Chase Bank being closed as is obvious from the timeline of events. To me this is a clear indication of deceptive marketing tactics by Chase Bank to give cause to close accounts of customers they do not like perhaps due to me never paying interest on cards, I do not know. 

I was able to eventually talk with someone at Chase Bank to give me the reasons for closing my account. The main ones being the number of credit cards I had opened recently and the amount of credit that I had available to me. I explained that I opened credit cards if I saw an offer I liked which was why I had so many credit cards, and that I would go ahead and reduce the credit on other issuers credit cards I had in order to get them to reconsider opening my accounts. 

Two days later I had a notice that my accounts would not be reopened which was a clear indication to me that no one really looked at my credit profile or even considered what I had said, so I tried explaining it again and requested my accounts be reopened again. I suggested they reduce the credit limits on my accounts in order to reopen them. I also suggested they just open one card back up. Their reply to that was it isnt their policy, they will open all or none back up. This was a clear indication to me that they were not even considering reopening my accounts but I went ahead and reduced the credit limits on my other cards and made the request to reopen my accounts a month later. 

To no surprise of my own, this request was denied promptly. Since it was clear to me that they will not even consider reopening my accounts and will not even have a serious discussion with me about it, on XX/XX/2019 I requested that the annual fee on my Chase Ink Preferred that was assessed on XX/XX/2019 and I paid in full on XX/XX/2019 be refunded to me in full. I received a boilerplate response from them and eventually was told to call a number I have called many times before which results in no one actually addressing my issues ( see exhibit B for my refund request and the subsequent discussion ). 

At this point it is clear to me that for any action to be taken and to help protect other consumers from Chase Banks deceptive marketing tactics and refusal to meet my reasonable request of refunding my annual fee since the account was not closed as a result of anything I did other than apply for an offer that was sent to me by the bank itself, I needed to contact a third party. This is why I am submitting this formal complaint to the consumer financial protection bureau in hopes of someone actually addressing my concerns.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation