All are not equal, at least as far as Chase and its customer service representatives are concerned. In an interesting article on the Consumerist billed as “10 Confessions of a Chase Customer Service Rep”, a former Chase CSR gives what he considers to be “secrets” of how their customer service works. Most of the article is the usual stuff any CSR would tell you, such as “treat me like a human” and “your situation is not unique”.
The valuable portion of the article was his descriptions of their three classifications of customers. Chase classifies the customers into “Best”, “Valuable” and “Non-Profit”:
“Best”: These are the customers that are treated like gold. For these folks, most every wish is granted, whether it be a waived finance charge or a forgiven late fee. To be in this group, you have to move a lot of money through the bank or have a large loan you are paying a lot of interest on. It is estimated that only 5% of customers are in this group.
“Valuable”: This is your average customer who pays their bills on time and is generally considered a good customer. This customer can get the occasional fee waived, but shouldn’t expect too much.
“Non-Profit”: This is the type of customer everyone should aim to be. This customer is the one who pays their bill in full and on time every month, doesn’t go over credit limit, doesn’t ever pay finance charges, and earns and cashes in rewards. Basically, the bank doesn’t make any money on these customers. If you are one of these customers, any requests for special treatment or fee waivers will probably be refused. And don’t bother to threaten to cancel because they really don’t care if they keep you as a customer.
No one will argue that this is fair, but life isn’t fair. At least now you’ll know what to expect when you call up customer service.