I’d wager many! But of course when thing’s go wrong such as outages herein explained, it’s easier for the customer affected to whinge about it rather than to accept they themselves might be at fault.
Everyone I guess handles their finances differently. Personal financial management isn’t exactly difficult or rocket science, or maybe it is and I just can’t see it.
Could you add funds to Chase from an external account during this time?
R.e Amex this is off their site. “May”. I think the DD bouncing is different to cancelling it?
Well there is the question! I personally had no need to transfer any funds into my own Chase account during the problems. Indeed i hadn’t even spent any money out of my Chase account for about 5 days before the problems started.
Is there any reader here who managed to transfer funds into their Chase account whilst their systems were affected?
Personally I feel that if you couldn’t - you can’t blame the customer. If you could then I’d say it’s bad practice to not have recourse to funds from elsewhere.
I have bills that come out a day and half after I’m paid from alternate accounts & if I missed these due to an outage I don’t think I or my budgeting would be to blame!
I am going to assume you’re ignorant rather than attempting to be arrogant here.
I did have the money ready. I just couldn’t log in to move it aside. Chase sent me two reminders telling me I was short - on the day. The day I couldn’t access it.
AmEx obviously charged me the £12 for the returned direct debit, but as you should know (before talking about it, preferably not after):
So now I’m actually unable to pay my statement balance until that credit is removed from my account.
AmEx have agreed to waive the fee as I’ve been a member for three years (always paid in full, never bounced a payment before). I will ask them for a waiver of interest if I’m unable to pay due to the credit not being removed from my account in time, but I thought it’s best to assume the best case scenario and plan for the worst.
I don’t see anything wrong with what I did, namely because I’ve done it for three years without issue. As such, I’d say it’s reasonable for Chase to have the burden of this being their fault.
Because I expected to be able to log in and move the money to the account? It was all in Chase - just not the specific account that the DD was to come from.
No, to be quite honest I forgot. I check the app daily to see what is due to come out and move the money as needed. Besides that it stays in a mixture of my main account and savings accounts.
To also mention they managed to send me texts telling me I didn’t have the money in the account, which is even funnier to me. They can tell me there’s no money but can’t let me log in.
If you’re going to cope about reality may I suggest a forum that’s not a finance one - if your bank are down and you can’t pay a direct debit because of it, it’s not your fault. As I said, money was in Chase.
Don’t know, but I didn’t have any instantly accessible funds outside of Chase. Nor did I even have the account number saved outside of it, because I always transfer to my main account and make a further internal transfer (to avoid having too many payees)
Couldn’t tell you either, but they did.
They do, just not in your experience. It’s on my statement as a “returned payment fee”. They were also very understanding, that it was a bank outage that resulted in the failed payment.
They also froze my card when it bounced, however. Not sure if it’s still frozen or not. Wouldn’t say that in particular is impeccably understanding.
I did think so. But yeah this is why I will always have funds with available access in other accounts (even if it’s a savings account which allow withdrawals to multiple places). Whether it’s your fault or not - you can in some instances require it. I guess you’ll learn the account number now!
Sorry to hear of the trouble you had. Regardless of what’s been said, it’s not acceptable.
Amex do seem to have an unnecessarily complex system than others for paying their card. The fact that they take a direct debit so early, led me to cancelling my direct debit and I just settle my bill by debit card.
While they also prevent payments online/via app when they think nothing is due (like your erroneous credit), it is still possible to make a payment to them via faster payments in these situations.
Your statement will have some text on it like
Please use account name American Express Services Europe Limited, sort code 30-00-00, account number 00200476 and make sure you use your 15 digit American Express Account Number as the reference. Your payment will update your balance displayed on our website, mobile handsets and automated telephone service as soon as they have been received.
[Obviously check your own statement in case the bank details differ - and many banks will have the payment details stored in their systems (you just need to add your card number as the reference in those cases)]
I have to admit, I’ve never paid my Amex card by direct debit, always via faster payment from my Starling account immediately on receipt of the statement notification.
All this swapping money between different accounts to pay various bills just seems like hard work. This is why all of my household direct debits go out of one account on the first working day of every month in a current account which is overfunded to make sure there aren’t any payment failures. To my absolute knowledge, I’ve personally not had a direct debit payment failure in 3 decades with any bank I’ve ever been a customer of.
Same here - until Chase!
I think a lot of people tend to separate joint bills/direct debits from personal ones
This might be new info to some but you can pay direct debits from the Chase savings account which is useful if you have the bulk of your Chase funds sitting there earning interest instead of in the Current account.
I did, funds could still go in, card payments were also going through.
That’s where half dozen of my DDs sit 
Nice timing. 
Has anyone noticed Chase UK customer service getting worse and worse. They are quick to answer the phone but it seems like they all read from scripts now and can’t do anything and have to create cases for everything. Seem to get no where with them.
To be honest, I’ve only ever felt the need to contact them once and that was months ago. They responded very quickly. I guess though with the recent outages they’ve experienced and the fact some customers may have complex banking needs, some customers may well be finding they’re not getting the best of service?
It’s a pretty rare event that I have to contact any of my banks for anything at all so I couldn’t even tell you which bank is the best for customer service.
I’ve had to contact them this week for the first time ever, and boy was it painful:
I had to spend 5-6 hours (!) in the phone queue over 3 attempts (on one occasion I was in the queue from 8pm till after midnight), as they told my problem couldn’t be addressed via chat.
When I finally got through to someone, they were so hesitant, and spoke with such uncertainty in their voice, that I was seriously wondering if I was actually speaking to Chase, and hadn’t accidentally called the wrong number. Additionally they were misunderstanding me multiple times.
Overall the most unpleasant experience I’ve ever had with a bank.
Did they resolve your issue? R-
