Reality-Based Engineering: How My Chase Card Screwed My Vacation

Thursday, June 09, 2005

How My Chase Card Screwed My Vacation

My wife and I are planning a weeklong vacation. We wanted to see some ball games, so we decided to go to see the Orioles (heckuva park) and also catch the Nats for the first time in our lives.

I decided - hey, why dont I use my Chase TravelRewards points to stay at our hotels for free! Save a lot of money!

Well, after turning in 10's of thousands of points, they lost my vouchers in the mail. Gone.

They tell me I have no recourse and that they're just lost and that they're sorry. they dont know the half of it. I'm so pissed I can't see straight.

So, I'm going to write the whole board. Here they all are. Quite the who's who of industry, eh?

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Here's the letter:

Dear Sir/Madam:

I have been a loyal credit card user since 1998 and I have never had problems with your company or your services. My wife and I decided to recall our honeymoon and visit some of the great haunts that we found and take in some good baseball games.

I decided to use my Chase TravelRewards account to pay for my hotels for the week. I was able to get the hotels that I wanted and also save a lot of money based on my 7 years of accumulating points by using your credit card - and mind you, we have a choice of cards to use in our wallets.

But the travel voichers never arrived. They were lost. And your customer service people can only tell me 'sorry'. They cannot help me in any way.

This situation is simply unacceptable. As a loyal user for 7 years and as someone who decided to use this service for the first time and get burned while doing it, I can tell you that this is last time that you will have to ruin my vacations. I know that you do not care about a single person that only has a small slice of credit compared to a company that has $1.1 trillion in assets, but I do.

I have no recourse but to cancel my credit card as well as move my mortgage out of your company's hands. As soon as I get back from my vacation I will be shopping both these services to other companies.

Please know that you only had to resend the vouchers and this would not have been necessary.

Goodbye,

(me)