Another Chase Bank Story

 Alex Schaefer's painting of a Chase Bank branch on fire. The work measures 22 by 28 inches. (Photo courtesy the artist)

Last time I talked about my dealings with Chase Bank was nearly 6 months ago.  At that time, I was opening up a checking account there to take advantage of their offer of $200 for starting an account.  I told them when I went in that I didn't intend to do anything but deposit the minimum amount in the account to ensure I wouldn't be charged any fees, collect the $200, keep the account open the required 6 months, then withdraw my deposit and their $200. 

More than a month ago I was surprised to look at my statement and see that a deposit of $23.75 had been made in the account.  The statement didn't give any details beyond that $23.75 had been deposited on November 29.  I knew I hadn't put that there, and I couldn't think of any way that something I was supposed to get just ended up there, but I didn't worry about it because I figured they would find whatever mistake they'd made and they would pull the money out of the account and send it wherever it was supposed to go. 

So I was even more surprised this month when I got my statement and saw that the money was still there.  That prompted me to log into the account online to see if I could get any more information about the deposit.  Luckily, the scanned image of the deposited check was available, and I could see that it was from an energy company to some guy named Fidel who resides in New York City.  I figured Fidel probably was wondering where in the hell his $23.75 was, so this morning I called the customer service line to report that somebody else had deposited a check which mistakenly ended up in my account.  The customer service technician had to put me on hold three times while he tried to get the mistake corrected.  After nearly 12 minutes on the line, he told me it was taken care of, and that the money would leave my account in two or three business days. 

Now twelve minutes isn't an extremely large amount of time, but it still seemed like a lot just for them to be able to take care of a very obvious mistake.  I can only imagine how much work Fidel had to go through to try to get the bank to credit him the $23.75 he had coming, and I really would like to know if the bank eventually gave him the money even if they hadn't figured out where it actually had gone.  I'd also like to know that if they hadn't already credited his account, whether they actually will do it in the next couple of days.  That's my latest Chase Bank story, but I'll be going in the next week or so to close my account, so I'll have another interaction with them soon.