April 18, 2020, 8:28 p.m. by Steven
My small business has been a customer of Chase (or banks it has acquired) since 1976. Chase has completely bungled implementation of the SBA PPP loam program.
1. Chase, unlike competitors, was not prepared to accept loan applications on April 3. (They sent an email on April 2 promising to inform me when they are ready to start accepting applications.
2. Chase did not send tje promised email. On April 5, I happened to log in to my personal checking account (linked to my corporate account), and I saw that Chase was asking business customers to show interest in the program (pre-application). This was supposed to be a "time-stamp" to determine the priority of processing subsequent applications. They apparently didn't use it for that purpose! Chase said that would CALL when they were open to accepting PPP loan applications. They NEVER called me.
3. On April 7, Chase send an email saying they were accepting applications. I was waiting for the promised phone call that never came. I happened to log into email on April 9 and saw this email. I filed an application shortly thereafter.
4. On April 10, Chase sent an email acknowledged that they had receive my application.
5. I heard nothing from Chase on April 16. I called my local branch office to ask how I could find out the status of my PPP loan application. I was told that I could not obtain that information. I needed to wait to hear. THAT IS ABSURD! A professionally operated bank would have all PPP loan applications in a relational database would should be able to answer that query online. Not Chase, because it behaved unprofessionally. The branch manager said that she would forward a complaint. I heard month.
6. Then I heard to the PPP loan amount funded by the CARES Act had been exhausted. I have heard nothing on the status of my application NOTHING. I also have heard nothing as to whether Chase will continue to process PPP loan application up to the point of funding so that Chase would be prepared to proceed if/when Congress appropriates additional funds.
Chase has opted to keep its supposedly valued business customers in the dark rather than allow PPP applications to know where their loan application stands in the process and how things will be handled if additional funds are appropriated.
The way Chase is handling this is unprofessional, inconsiderable, disrespectful, and incompetent.
In 2008, Chase (too big to fail) was given a diamond by the federal government: Bear Stearns and Company at a bargain basement price. Chase made a fortune on that purchase.
In 2020, Chase is clearly too big to succeed. It has processed a very small percentage of the PPP loan requests it received, at every stage of the process over the past two weeks Chase has been professionally incompetent in preparing for and processing PPP loan applications, and Chase has passively failed and actively refused to provide any information the PPP loan applicants other than those whose applications were approved and funded.
Since Chase has shown that -- as the largest bank in the US -- it cannot meet the needs required to reasonably and responsively service its business customers, I will be asking its regulators to investigate Chase Bank and institute penalties such as fining CHase Bank and prohibiting it from taking on any new business accounts until it has demonstrated that it has the capacity to match the performance of its competitors.
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