Chase Bank An egregious abuse of consumers Phoenix Arizona

Before I begin , I want to be clear
1) I am not saying that businesses cannot choose who they want to do business with
2) I agree I could have handled things better on my end
=========================================================

I own an insurance agency. I have for close to 7 months now
I have a business account at what we will call Bank A and a personal account at Chase Bank. My wife has banked at Chase Bank for 20 years and we have a high schools checking account there as well for my daughter.

I get a call from my daughter that she could not use the debit card on her high school checking so I go online to see if there is a problem. I find a balance of negative 9 million in my checking. Thinking this is an error , I go into my local branch to find out what is happening.

I am told my account has been "flagged" and Chase has chosen to end their relationship with me. I inquire further and I am told that I was depositing checks from another account ( business at Bank A) that had no money and then covering it by writing an equal check from Chase to cover it. Also many of the checks I deposited had been returned It is about 430 so I say , let me go home and look at this .
======================================================
Some facts
1) While it is correct that I was depositing check from my business account and then returning the money via a Chase check to my business account ,the only point of doing this was to show "income" for myself from my agency
Each check had either salary or bonus listed in the memo section.
2) I absolutely wrote a check back into my business account as the only point of what I was doing is to show checks being paid to me.
I absolutely can see how my intent was construed as something different.

The next day I went back to the branch with the following
1) Copies of every single deposited check (8) showing that not ONE was returned as stated and every single one had cleared
2) A copy of a statement from my business accoount showing an average balance of close to 4,000 for the prior months. I did this to show that the checks were NOT wriiten on accounts without any money but a business account that had never had a balance below 1800 and frequently above 6k during the time period in question

I spoke to a personal banker and explained this to him. I admitted that , yes I could have handled it better possibly to accomplish what I wanted but , clearly , I had no intent to defraud and I never wrote any check that did not have a balance to cover it.

He calls loss prevention and advocates my position quite well and puts me on with Christina. Christina tells me that my account has been uncollected for 28 days and is now frozen. I have the personal banker pull it up and I put him back on. My account shows an AVAILABLE balance of 9,595 and zero uncollected funds ( more on this below). In fact , the PB tells loss prevention from everything we see the account has had cleared funds and NEVER had any returns on deposited checks. He has quite an animated conversation with Christina and asks that her manager call back.

He (PB) tells me that Chase has flagged the account for "account abuse" and is going to close my account. I now ask him , by the way , I thought my balance was 5040 , how can it be 9595. Well he tells me that ther were 5 deposits totalling 4,555 made the day before . I had no idea what these were but we notice that they are exact figues for the last 5 checks that had already cleared. He calls loss prevention back , puts me on , and Christina tells me that she has returned all these checks ( all of which appear as cleared) . So now in addition to the money that is frozen , my business account now has an overdraft of 4555 ( actually less as money is in the account) that I need to make good. I ask again how she can return checks on funds that show available and she says and I quote . I don't care what Paul ( the PB) and you see on your screens the money is uncollected.
=========================================================

So at this point Chase is causing
a massive overdraft in my business account( Causing many fees )I now am trying to cover the overdraft before my business account is frozen

a freeze of available funds ( making it impossible for me to pay bills)

a $35 charge for every check being returned even though WITHOUT QUESTION the funds are available

a bouncing of other checks I've written ( $31 and $285) causing another $70 in fees

a rejection of a phone pay ment I made thru this account on my Home Equity line that is WITH CHASE causing fees on both ends
=========================================================
So while we wait for Christina's manager to call back , the PB and I figure the deposits ahe claimed are uncollected are 2299 from 08/26 ( local bank) 2304 on 0827(local bank) 5000 on 0827 ( Fla Bank ..this was a wedding gift from my sister in law)
1)What I am discussing aboce is happening in the branch on 0829
I have copies of both checks (2,299 and 2,304) having already cleared my biz account. I also , again , have my biz statement showing this as well

2) When I deposited the 5K I asked the teller how long does it take to clear and she told me it will be clear the following day , which I thought was odd given it was a Fla check. I have since spoken to my sister in law and she has sent a copy of the check showing it had cleared ( I got this the next day)

3)As I mentiond above I thought my balance was $5040 as I had not touched the 5k deposit. All the checks that Cynthia chose to return were covered when originally posted as cleared by the two other deposits that without question had cleared.
=========================================================
Cynthia's manager calls back and he will not speak with me. The PB , however states my case as clearly as I would have.

He asks how can you return checks when everything the consumer sees , everything he ( PB) sees and everything the teller sees shows available funds

How could they not ( Cynthias would not) at the very LEAST release the funds on the 2 deposits that without question cleared my local bank. I myself told the PB , if they want to hold the FLA check longer go ahead but for gosh sakes release the money that I am showing has cleared so I can at least cover the checks they chose to return.

He also asked as did I , why is that during all the time I was making deposits NOT ONE person at Chase gave me any indication of a problem. In fact 2 days earlier they cleared a 5k Fla check over nite

The answers were ....too bad , we don't have to tell the customer anythingand what is seen on Chase.com or IN THE BRANCH is not necessarily the case as far as available funds
=========================================================
So where we are is this coming Thursday my account is being closed. The funds will be held ANOTHER 10 days to be sure all deposits clear .At this point a check will be mailed to me.

This puts me in a position of needing to
a) cover the 4,555 returned checks to my biz account
b) Find a way to pay my mortgage , my car, my insurance etc as I have ZERO access to close to 10k until Chase decides to release it

What I find most egregious is that at the end of this process Chase will find that NO DEPOSITS wre returned , that all of the money was good and that I was absolutely telling the truth. Despite this I suffer severe financial hardship due to an arbitrary decison by loss prevention and I haven't any recourse whatsoever.

Televin
Phoenix, Arizona
U.S.A.

Click here to read other Rip Off Reports on Chase Bank