Chase Bank, "Lack of care policy", BEWARE

Today's blog post is a bit off topic but I have to share anyway because this is so outrageous and it could happen to anyone who has a checkbook. In other words: consumer beware.

This blog post was originally written by my friend Liz, I am reposting her post.

My friend William was once married to Mary. Just weeks prior to separation when they were wrapping up their marriage and planning who was moving and where, Mary took a stack of checks from William's business account. She was not an account owner or signator and had no access to the account whatsoever. She then wrote out a series of three checks to herself totaling $12,000, signed the checks, walked into Chase Bank and cashed them all. Seriously, that's pretty ballsy of anyone. Mary didn't even try to forge William's name or anything-- she wrote the checks to herself and signed her own name. Wow!

It took William several weeks before he realized that the business account was missing $12,000 (not exactly chump change) and when he did, he immediately went to Chase Bank in Cedar Hills, Utah, discovered what happened and filed a claim with Chase for the theft.

First, Chase refused to give William an answer one way or the other if they felt they had any responsibility whatsoever for erroneously cashing large checks when the signer wasn't an account owner at all. After letters and calls and more calls and letters went unanswered, I sent out a Tweet. Chase bank contacted me right away (dang, I love Twitter!). I put Chase in touch with William and they promised to look into the matter and get back to him within 48 hours.

Chase contacted William yesterday and denied his claim, saying that Chase bore no responsibility whatsoever because the checks weren't locked in a safe and he "allowed" someone to steal his checks. So, in other words, "too bad so sad." So, the employee who didn't even look up who was allowed to sign the checks, nor did she check to see if signatures matched, did absolutely nothing wrong at all! Each of the three checks were several thousand dollars (one was $6,000). I think a reasonable employee or account owner would think one should look that up for larger checks at a minimum, right? Not if you work at Chase!

So, if you need money, I suppose the lesson here is: Just find anyone with a Chase account, take a check, write it out to yourself, sign your name, walk into a Chase bank and cash the check. No need doing pesky things like trying to forge a signature-- just use your own driver's license and name, simple as that.

Now if you're an account owner at Chase, it sucks for us because Chase thinks that we must lock up all our checks in a safe and take only one out at a time. If, by chance, we have some checks in a handbag or a pocket and somehow someone takes them and decides to cash a check to themselves for a few thousand dollars, then guess who pays for that? Us, the account holder! What The HELL?!? What's the point of that signature card? Apparently none! 

So, my word of warning to all you Chase customers. Either: 1) Buy a safe and lock up every single one of your checks, or 2) Get a new bank.