Well, this review is partly about the branch, but mostly about Chase Corp in general... and why you should strongly consider going with another bank, or a local bank. The employees at the branch were nice enough, the review has much more to do with the protocol and overall capabilities of the corporation.
There are two things I detest about Chase.
1) Even when payroll is received by my coworkers on the 30th, I won't get mine till the 4th or 5th of the next month via direct deposit. Is Chase floating off of my paycheck for 5 days? Likely so since if they do this with thousands of people, it could equal vast sums of additional lending revenue, without accruing interest payable.
2) I work in finance, and work with dozens of banks. I was optioning a piece of land outside of Austin, and needed to send a wire. I went into the branch at 4:50 pm Friday... after the wire cut off time (it would go out Tuesday), and sent the money. 15 minutes later I got word to cancel the wire. After speaking with 3 different people who said it couldn't be cancelled till the following Tuesday (Monday being a holiday), I found a branch who said they could cancel it locally; I rushed down to the branch before closing, who then said they couldn't after talking to a few more people. I spent Saturday speaking with reps at the bank locally and online, who said they couldn't do it till Tuesday since it had to be manual, but if I call the downtown branch at 9am, they'd stop it manually. So I did, and when I did, they said it was already sent and they couldn't take it back.
For a huge bank with billions of dollars and with banking systems worth significant sums of money, and a staff the size of some countries, I would think 4 days notice would be enough to stop a wire. I work with dozens of local and smaller banks who are able to do this; even on a weekend. But with Chase I spoke with them before closing Friday, as well as the weekend, and on the following weekday before they said the wire would go out. I was reminded of a Kafka novel the entire time.
To summarize, if you want customer service and a bank that isn't too big to do a simple task without dealing with multiple employees consisting of dozens of reps across 5 time zones, then go to a local branch who can just enter a stop payment in the banking system and be done in a few minutes. My savings and checking is being moved as I type this. read more