How to make customers hate you

June 1, 2008 in Places, problems | 5 comments

So my main credit card, a United Mileage Plus one, issued by Chase, got rejected on my last attempted purchase, just before I got on a plane at Logan headed for Frankfurt, where I am now, between flights.

Now here I sit, paying $.18 per minute to T-Mobile to “roam” on their system, to which I pay ~$30/month already for wi-fi access, trying to use the Chase website to see what’s up with the card.

I type in my login and password, then get

404: File Not Found. Could not find file

I try again and get,

Your User ID is Locked

You’ve exceeded the maximum number of logon attempts allowed. As a result, we’ve disabled your User ID and Password to protect your confidential financial information. Please click “Unlock User ID” to unlock your User ID and create a new Password. (Error Code AA398).

I’m not going to try. I know my old password. I probably won’t remember the new one.

Grrr.

5 comments

Tim Jarrett on June 1, 2008 at 7:13 am

Chase is the worst for this–very aggressive about expiring/locking UIDs. And they power dozens of loyalty program cards, so it’s kind of hard to get away from them.
Bob Boynton on June 1, 2008 at 9:28 am

If you ask they will undoubtedly tell you that they are protecting you from card theft. My credit card company does the same thing at least half of my uses out of my hometown. But they usually call my home phone as part of the ‘protection.’
Andrew Leyden on June 1, 2008 at 11:01 am

Chase drives me nuts with rejections of charges, especially when I’m traveling overseas. In fact, just Friday I called them on the ‘collect’ number on the back of the card, told them I was going to make a several thousand pound purchase in London, that it was coming in a few hours, would be this amount, from this company, and they said ‘ok, we’ll note that.’

And then they rejected the charge. I spent 30 minutes on the phone trying to get them to fix things.

The only reason I’m with Chase is the mileage program for my airline (British Air). I’ll switch immediately if BA moves to another card company.
Carter Rabasa on June 1, 2008 at 3:39 pm

I had the same issue with Citibank the other day. Except that they didn’t tell me my UID was locked, my log-ins and attempts to reset my password just cryptically failed over and over and over again.
Jason on June 4, 2008 at 12:00 pm

Sounds like Chase merely trying to protect you from yourself -except you don’t need the protection.