I'm one of the few people left on Earth who manually pays my monthly bill rather than have it automatically withdrawn... so I attempted to sign on today to pay before I leave on a trip tomorrow only to find the website down. I either couldn't get the website to load, and the few times I actually saw a page pop up it would say my account was inactive.
When I called the 800 number to see if I could pay over the phone, I casually asked the woman when the site would be back up. "Sometime between January 1st and the 2nd," she tells me. Oh well, technology sucks. That's a strangely long time for a major financial website to be down but that's beside the point. When I ask to make my payment over the phone she informs me it will cost me $14.95 to make the payment through her, or $9.95 to make the payment through the phone's computer menus.
WTF? Why in the hell would I pay that much to make a payment when it can be done free online? I ask her why I should have to pay... in order to make a payment... when I have no power over the website being down beyond the 1st of the month when my payment is due. She grudgingly puts me on hold for 5 minutes and finally tells me that they can "waive the fee, but just this one time."
Oh gee, thank you.
Just a heads up to anyone else who may need to make a payment tonight... don't listen to their bullshit about charging you, ask nicely and you can get them to waive the fee. They probably make a good bit of money through the people who are too dumb/too scared to speak up about it. :|
And I really hope the entire Chase site isn't down until January 2nd. That's insane.
