PSA – Double check your Chase autopay if you have multiple checking accounts linked

Introduction

Well this one’s a doozie.  I just got a letter from Chase saying my autopay failed on my wife’s Hyatt card and I was slapped with a late fee and charges.  I thought this was odd since this account had been hit with an autopay failure once already.  I knew I couldn’t resolve this over SM, so I called up Chase to figure out what happened.

First line

The first line rep happily waived the finance charges, but couldn’t refund the late fee (since I had used up my one-time get out of jail card already.)  I then asked him why the autopay failed.  He said it’s because it was trying to pull from my closed Chase checking account.  I asked him when my last successful autopay was and he said August.  I then rationalized with him, “Now why would I change my autopay settings to a CLOSED checking account in September when it was working fine in August?  That makes no sense.  I wouldn’t do that so it’s either a system issue or something fraudulent happened.”  I should not have said that last phrase because that led me down the wrong path.

Transferring me around

He put me on hold for a bit and then he 3-wayed me, but when the 3-way happened, he wasn’t on the phone and it sounded like an international female rep now.  The rep had 3-wayed me to what sounded like the Chase banking group because they asked me for my Chase checking account number.  I told her that that wasn’t relevant since I no longer have the Chase checking account.  She then tried to transfer me to fraud protection which got us nowhere.  Fraud protection then transferred me to the autopay group, which sounded like I was back with an American first line rep.  I once again told this rep the same thing and he was able to waiver the late fee.  He said it must have been due to the web site update.  That’s what I had initially guessed too.  This call took 30 minutes and I used up a good number of Wifemiles since my wife was the one who called in.

Lessons Learned

First off, if you have multiple checking accounts linked to your Chase card, double check your Autopay in case it changed with the latest Chase site update.   I should have also deleted the closed account when I had re-enabled the Autopay in July.  There was ZERO reason to keep the closed account in my profile.  Also, I should have asked the first rep to escalate to a supervisor because at the end of the day, the problem was fixed already and I just wanted the $25 late fee waived due to their system issue.