Since it's a financial institution and the accounts were closed by the bank, I wouldn't be surprised if this dinged his credit report in some serious way.
Having Chase cut off five accounts involuntarily probably looks pretty bad to whatever "AI" is used to create the scores.
Wells is notoriously crooked. Bank of America was a primary player in structuring withdrawls to maximize overdraft fines on their customers.
Chase has its own problems, but it would add a lot of inconvenience to your life to eliminate it.
Those three big players have purchased the majority of other banks in the country, leaving a scattered few credit unions and smaller banks around, which will be extra inconvenient when you travel and they absolutely will not offer the same range of credit cards with good rewards programs.
You don't need to touch Wells, Chase, or BoA to have financial infra in the US, although you might be stuck with them if you have a mortgage, auto loan, or other lending they originated or service. My condolences in that case.
[1] https://www.fidelity.com/cash-management/fidelity-cash-manag...
[2] https://www.schwab.com/checking
[3] https://thepointsguy.com/guide/amex-membership-rewards-vs-ch...
[4] https://www.mycreditunion.gov/about-credit-unions/credit-uni...
https://www.usaa.com/inet/wc/why_choose_usaa_main (Control-F “Who can join”)
It is slightly less convenient, but much better for the country.
Examples:
* it's 2020 and my credit union doesn't have autopay for my credit card.
* someone stole my cards and made some unauthorized charges at an unattended parking lot -- they did it almost 40 times in a single day across 3 cards that I rotated between. Chase and Amex took a 5 minute phone call each. My credit union took more than ten hours of work to get my money back, including demanding that I go to a -- remember, unattended -- parking lot that was near a job I hadn't worked at in 6 months to try to get a refund.
The real answer is if you qualify for eg a chase sapphire reserve, you get excellent service and an excellent product.
The balance that I have found works good for me is that I keep liquid assets at credit unions and I will get a debit card from them, but try to avoid using it if at all possible. I also hold credit cards with the major banks (except Wells Fargo, which I refuse to bank with in any capacity). I make all purchases throughout the month on credit cards with the exception of things like mortgage, car payment, etc.. Obviously also paying those cards off each month. There are numerous advantages to using credit cards over debit cards that I won't get into here.
I have a variety of credit cards that use Chase, BofA, AMEX, and Capital One. I also have at least one of each of the three major card brands (Visa, Mastercard, Amex).
Then of course I have a couple investment accounts I use for holding long term assets.
I find that this balance is the best that you can come up with. My liquid assets (money I make from work for example) goes into my primary credit union account. I try to hold mortgage and car loans through the same credit union and those get paid directly from the checking account. I try to avoid any other line items on that account other than payments to pay off credit cards. Then day-to-day expenses (food, amazon, stuff from Target, etc) get paid with credit cards. This way no one has direct access to my liquid assets if a card number gets compromised. I also don't have to deal with the bad online banking experience of the credit unions because I don't really use them for much other than a selected number of major payments each month. Instead my general purchases are on well known credit cards that have really good apps (Like Chase for example) and online experiences and reward programs.
This balance is great. You build a good relationship with a credit union and you keep your primary liquid assets with them instead of the major banks. Credit Unions are particularly good when you want things like Mortgages, construction loans, lines of credit, or car loans. So you can use credit unions for these things and maintain a good relationship with them. But where the credit union is weak, you leverage the strength of the major banks for good credit cards, good rewards programs, good fraud detection, good apps, and so forth. But at the end of the day they don't actually hold any of your money.
Everything takes much longer and major hassles are far more frequent. They have automated little to none of their operations. They are so small that their tiny staff has never had to deal with your particular issue before, and doesn't know what to do about it.
The big banks, on the other hand, deal with other versions of your problem dozens to hundreds of times a day, and have evolved a very high degree of efficiency in handling your case.
It doesn't have to be an either/or proposition.
* I keep my savings, checking, and loan accounts at a local bank, which also issues a debit card.
* I have credit cards from Discover and BoA, so that I get big-bank services for them.
The bulk of my value as a customer is tied to my mortgage, so my local bank, and possibly Fannie Mae, holds onto those profits.
This stuff is just wonderful. No monthly fees. Can use a debit anywhere Mastercard is valid, even overseas.
> The problem is most credit unions suck.
This has not been my experience. Chase is miserable, but if you need a business account, credit unions can't help you there.
A lot of credit unions are members of the CO-OP program, which gives you access to more ATMs than any of the big banks (possibly more than all of the combined). At least for travel within the US, being part of that CO-OP credit union is much more convenient than BoA and their ilk.
I just checked: 50 BoA ATMs within 20 miles of me. Over 100 within the CO-OP network. This is in a decent sized metro area.
I just checked my small undergrad town: 3 in the city, and 2 in the adjacent city. BoA has only 1 - and only in the adjacent city.
In my experience, it's always been able to find a Co-Op ATM than a BoA one.
Others complained about poor services, web sites, etc. I suppose that can be true, but it isn't for mine. In fact, I had to ditch one of the national banks because it couldn't provide simple features that my local credit union does - stuff like limiting which of my checking accounts is tied to my ATM card - without limiting it in their online site. So if I tied my ATM card to only one account, then when I logged in to the account's site, it would not let me transfer money between the accounts that are not on the ATM (although it would let me view transactions, etc).
I've also used my debit card in other countries. It worked just like any other card would (I did have to inform them in advance so it wouldn't trip up fraud detection).
> and they absolutely will not offer the same range of credit cards with good rewards programs.
You do not need to have a bank account with Chase and other companies to get good credit cards with rewards programs.
The reward program through the credit union is not that great, but I'm okay with that.
Your comment would imply a huge gap between this top tier of 3 banks and the rest of FDIC banking; there are quite a large number of large banking institutions available which are not as small as you've positioned them. https://www.mx.com/moneysummit/biggest-banks-by-asset-size-u...
(there are similarly very large Credit Unions such as NavyFederal with lots of asset: https://www.mx.com/moneysummit/biggest-us-credit-unions-by-a... )
FWIW, Citigroup is almost as big as Wells Fargo.
You're probably thinking of employer-paid business travel, passing on "air miles" to an employer. It's 2020, my friend.
You might want to consider fighting it, though. It seems that it was a decision done at a pretty low level, or even automatically. Chase, like most US big banks, are under constant scrutiny and hate bad PR. Write to their top HR, say you are submitting a formal request to <pick a four-letter financial oversight agency> and send a copy to your congressman. What do you have to lose?