Why I Fired Washington Mutual (Chase)

We all know how bad the use of tax payer dollars has been by the banks.  We have not seen the easing of lending in the system that is required to start a strong recover.  In addition, we have all heard the stories of new fees charged by banks to consumers.

It pained me to right this post.  I am not a fan of flaming companies or using public forums to highlight personal customer service issues.  I find them self centered but since I write about lots of different types of business issues on the Startup Whisperer^TM, I thought that I would use a personal plight of mine to reflect on how company acquisitions are often botched causing customer defection and negative synergies for the acquirer.

I have been a Washington Mutual customer for many years and they have lost me as a customer.  It pains me to do so.  But, the acquisition by Chase has severely impacted the manner in which customers are valued at the now mega bank.  We've seen a bunch of posts recently about bad acquisition planning and behavior cause major problems for customers and enterprise value for all involved (like this recent post from a Seattle-based company).  There are some obvious things that big and small companies need to remember during phasing in new processes, infrastructure, and communication during an acquisition.  Namely:

• Remember that customers are not robots - Robots are robots.  Customers typically have an emotional connection to a brand or service.  If you try to move too rapidly to change certain behaviors, you (the acquirer) will run into resistance and/or customer defection.  Its easy to make a financial decision but planning for that change needs to be thoughtful and consistent over a well thought out timeline.

• Customers have choices - customer service has to be one of the hardest jobs.  You can win or lose a customer based on the manner in which you deal with a customer service problem.  As customers, we all know that their is a spaghetti landscape of phone systems, call center locations (yes, some are international-based), and customer service levels.  You can tell which company has invested in customer service as a strategic weapon to engender customer loyalty.  A great example is Zappos (here is a post from the SW).  My own proxy was Washington Mutual versus Wells Fargo.  Night and day.  Wells Fargo was far more efficient in dealing with issues and concerns than Washington Mutual.  If you are running a low margin, commoditized business like banking, don't forget where your asset value comes from -- your customers.

• Don't fire your good customers - you read a lot about how its wise to fire your unprofitable customers.  That makes sense to me.  It doesn't make sense to fire your best customers.  Banks are doing this by increasing fees and changing their products on their best customers.  As we all have heard countless times over the intercom when we land on any flight these days, "..we know you have a choice of airlines and we appreciated your business."  Unlike some air routes where you might have 3 really good choices in terms of service and pricing advantage in the airlines for any given route, there are a lot more choices for banks as consumers. 

So, why am I firing Washington Mutual.  Using the template above, here are the mistakes made by WAMU over the last several months:

1. Increase fees without notification to their customers - I am a high valued customer and where in the past fees were low or waived, that is not happening now. 
2. Arbitrary increases in APR without notification
3. Go green and get f@#$*! - Moving to paperless statements means you don't get email alerts when bills are due.  I guess you are a troglodyte if you don't know to setup alerts for paperless bill notification.  Of course, its not automatic.  The attitude (from the bank) is that we as customers should spend a bunch of time in their online credit card system configuring those types of features.  Of course, that’s not automatic. 
4. Changes to the online payment product - you can't do certain types of payment methods (e.g., payment to the same payee 2x month).  There are a bunch of changes to the Washington Mutual online product that have made my life more of a hassle.
5. Fraud?  Don't worry about it. - I caught a fraudulent transaction and the bank didn't think to offer up canceling my debit card.  That floored me.  Of course, it is now going to take me 14 days to get a new one.  It wont matter now since by then I will have ported over to a new bank.

The individuals at the bank are phenomenal (at WAMU).  At one point many of my family and friends have worked at Washington Mutual.  But, as we all know the values of an acquirer set the mood from the back office to the front office.  Chase has certainly set the mood for their entity.  It is not a good one.  Take note if you are an acquirer or acquiree.  Treat acquistions almost like a product launch.  Build a roadmap.  Make it an operational product launch.  Make it operational bulletproof and be careful on not powering consumer defection. 

Comments

[x]

Even worse, Chase appears to have auctioned off the old WaMu toll-free numbers to the highest bidder. I got a new WaMu card about a month before the switch and it worked fine for a little while and then physically broke. When I called the toll free number on the back I got a dating hotline! Schmucks.

[Guy Bertram]

Friends don't let Friends use Chase Bank.

[glttrgrl8]

I am also very disappointed with Chase since they've taken over WaMu. Chase customer service is terrible. I've had my WaMu card for years (since it was a Providian card!). I don't have late payments, and I don't carry large balances. First, Chase changed the payment due dates on both my and my husband's cards without any prior notice. They set it back over a week! So when I went to pay the bills for the month, they were already late, and Chase had collected their $39 apiece! The next month, every charge I tried to make, Chase declined because of "possible fraud." They called me, and I verified that all of the "suspicious" activity was indeed mine and there was no fraud. They said the card was OK to use again.

That very evening, I tried to make a purchase, and it was again declined! I called to straighten it out, and the call center employee ("John" but obviously that was his "American name"—it seems that Chase outsources its customer service to a clearinghouse) told me they were missing vital personal information in their database. I "updated" my full name and birth date (um, this info. WAS in my profile when I was with Providian and then WaMu—did it disappear?).

I asked what I needed to do to be able to use may card again. John said he had to ask me security questions based on my SSN (which he did NOT get from me); it was apparently already "in the system." He starts asking the multiple-choice questions based on the public record that we've all heard before—except none of these questions had to do with ME! Two questions in, I told John that these questions had nothing to do with me and asked him to verify they had my correct SSN, which he said he could not! I asked for a supervisor ("Liz") who told me I'd failed the security check (the questions) and thus my account was now locked under “fraud review” until a fraud specialist could determine that I wasn't an identity thief.

I explained that perhaps, just perhaps, seeing as they had other info. missing/incorrect in my profile, that they had my SSN incorrect in the profile (maybe a sloppy data import from WaMu's database into Chase's?). I asked Liz to open my file and check my SSN to see if it was correct. She said she could not. Seriously?! She said, "You could be anyone who happens to know some info. about A----- H----- just saying the questions weren't about you. You failed the questions, so I can't verify you are who you say you are."

Liz, you were missing my entire point that the QUESTIONS were perhaps based on flawed data (possible incorrect SSN in their system), and refusing to check the system because I had "failed" the questions (I said the questions weren't about me after I heard the second one—I did NOT answer them incorrectly) is the very definition of a Catch 22! All she could say was that the fraud specialist (read: ACTUAL Chase employee) would review my case and "get back to me" in "the next few days or so." Her demeanor was as if she was reading from a script and could care less. I suspect she'd have repeated the same phrases over and over even if I hung up the phone and left her speaking to silence. I told her to note my dissatisfaction in their system and to expedite my review (I am leaving the country on vacation, so I need access to my card!). Her response: "I'll note it." Thanks for the commitment to quality customer service there, Liz. I’m all for fraud protection, but my other credit card providers do just as good a job protecting my accounts with better (more “empowered” to check info. in the database!) service representatives while still managing to avoid the nonsensical, Catch 22, I-can’t-think-for-myself-so-I-just-repeat-my-script, frustrating customer “service.”