I’ve been using the Chase Sapphire Reserve Card, the bank’s $800-a-year premium card, for about nine months and it has essentially paid for itself. But the wild swings in its customer service has left me scratching my head.
I’ve taken advantage of many of the benefits including a $300 travel credit, a $250 rebate for an iPad purchase from its Apple Store, $200 in dining credits, and some smaller credits for Lyft, Apple Music, Door Dash, and other fees. I would call it about break-even.
The best experience was how Chase Travel dealt with a costly mistake that they made. The most exasperating was how they dealt with one of their benefits.
My wife and I bought one-way business class tickets from LAX to South Africa last winter for this use this Spring on Turkish Airlines. Earlier this year my wife decided to try to find new flights that would avoid Istanbul because of its proximity to the Middle East and the mess going on at the time.
She spoke to a travel agent at Chase Travel, where we booked the original tickets. The agent spent quite a bit of time looking for alternative flights and eventually found one on Lufthansa via Frankfurt for $6000 for the two of us, the same cost as the Turkish Airline flight.
The agent said that before booking she would need to cancel the Turkish Airline flights, and we gave her permission to do so. But then, a few minutes later as she was booking the new flights, the agent let out a gasp and realized she made a mistake. She discovered that the new fare was $6000 for each of us, not both. So this new flight would cost $6000 more than our original reservations. She apologized profusely and brought a supervisor onto the line.
The supervisor said the agent had explained the issue to him and admitted to making the error. He said he would find a solution. He looked at other flight options and concluded that the flight the agent found was the best available.
He apologized and said that Chase Travel would absorb the extra $6000 due to their mistake and booked us on the Frankfurt flight for the same cost as our original Turkish Airline flights, plus $400 in cancelation fees to Turkish Airlines. I marveled at the time to my wife how the $800 credit card comes with special consideration and flexibility to do what’s right for their valued customers. It made me feel good about the choice of card.
Yet I recently experienced a different side of Chase, their obstinancy to deal with one of their other benefits, a credit for a trusted travel program such as TSA PreCheck and Global Entry once every four years. TSA PreCheck costs $80, while Global Entry costs $120 and includes TSA PreCheck benefits.
They describe the benefit like this: “Receive one statement credit of up to $120 every four years as reimbursement for the application fee charged to your card.”
Last week my wife and I went to renew our memberships. I renewed my Global Entry membership online, and about 30 minutes later my wife renewed her TSA PreCheck membership at a nearby Staples store. Both charges were placed on the same Chase Sapphire Reserve card. Since my Global Entry renewal cost more than my wife’s TSA renewal, I assumed Chase would apply the benefit to the higher-priced Global Entry charge. I never thought much about the timing. The next month’s bill would show two charges and I assumed they’d credit me the $120.
Instead, a quirk of payment processing produced a different result.
Although my Global Entry application was submitted first, Chase received the TSA PreCheck charge before the Global Entry charge. According to Chase, the TSA transaction hit the account just four minutes earlier than the Global Entry charge.
That timing made all the difference. The system automatically applied the travel benefit to the $80 TSA PreCheck charge. When the $120 Global Entry charge arrived four minutes later, the benefit had already been used. The result: Chase reimbursed $80 and not the Global Entry charge, leaving me $40 short of the maximum benefit.
I contacted Chase, assuming a customer-service representative could easily see what had happened and manually correct the situation. After all, the two transactions occurred within minutes of each other and were clearly related renewals for members of the same household.
But Chase refused to make any adjustment. The computer system had spoken, and the decision was final. There was nothing they could or would do.
Most customers would reasonably assume that a premium travel card carrying a substantial annual fee would provide enough flexibility to resolve an obvious edge case like this one. But neither the customer service agent nor the supervisor would budge.
Now it’s not about the $40, it’s about how the company treated one of their best credit card customers and their unwillingness to make a reasonable accomodation. So when renewal time comes around, I’ll remember the benefits, but I’ll also remember that perhaps we’re not being treated so special for paying that $800 yearly fee.
Ouch! How could the company give so little thrift to customer relations/retention?
From past experience it’s often an event like this that causes people to look at alternatives, being pissed off and trying to “get even,” even when it may be financially irrational.
Ouch! How could the company give so little value to customer relations/retention?
The conclusion seems obvious: the first experience was the outlier (paired with a situationally willing human supervisor) and the second was the customary “by the book” response. My standard question in situations such as these is, “Would you treat Jamie Dimon [insert applicable CEO name/title] the way you are treating me?” When this point has been reached I’m less interested in changing the outcome (which has been known to happen but is unlikely) than I am in the response; if the answer is “Yes” (which happens frequently) then I know they are lying and determined to stay their corporate course and it’s time to look at alternatives. I would absolutely be heartened by the travel agent scenario but would not expect a repeat unless the original supervisor could be re-engaged (and even then the outcome is in question since I’m now a repeat “offender”).
In the end our business is always fungible and rarely valued.
Well we know they would treat Dimon differently, assuming the agent knew who he is. I used their Contact option to send them the essence of this column, asking them to send to their executives. I got a call back a week later acknowledging receipt and saying they sent it on. No response yet.
Meanwhile I contacted their CS once last time and got a male CS agent without an accent – clearly American and in the US- that seemed friendly. I said I was thinking of closing my account and explained why. He immediately asked if a $100 credit would change my mind. So it ended up costing them more and creating ill will.
You’re right — an agent (or worse, supervisor) who doesn’t know who the CEO is is least likely to deviate from the script. I can barely recall a time when Customer Service was about actual service, if ever such a time even existed at all.