Chase Bank is a bank issuer of many travel cards, from its own Chase Sapphire Preferred to affinity branded cards like British Airways and Marriott, IHG, Hyatt and Ritz Carlton. By all accounts, Chase’s offerings should appeal to anyone who loves travel. I still remembered how excited I was when they came out with a great offer for British Airways many years ago.
Given that, some people may be surprised to learn that I only have one card with Chase. They’ve lost me for some time now.
The “Compromised Cards” Conundrum
I haven’t bothered with Chase mostly due to the frequency of “compromised cards” with them. I suspect the breaches were not at the transaction level (i.e. card skimmers), but upstream at a network level. It seemed too coincidental to have compromises happen with some regularity.
As a result, I typically set up alert monitoring to notify me whenever a charge is made. It still doesn’t make it any less annoying when an account is compromised. I remembered the time I was traveling elsewhere in the states when I got an alert for for a charge in Mexico. I didn’t have the card with me and it hadn’t been used for months, and I had to call in the middle of my trip to close out the account.
The saving grace for Chase is that they seemed to have a strong fraudulent activity system. They take care of the fraudulent charges and issue replacement cards quickly.
In Summary
I have no issues with any other card issuers to the extent that I had with Chase. The number of “compromised” cards I had with Chase was frustrating enough that I decided that I’ll just keep one card with them. It had not been compromised — not yet anyway.
That is not to say that I won’t ever get another Chase card. It’s just that I am far more selective about which ones I want to get.
I believe it must be you. I have had between my wife and I 12-14 cards for several years with no issues. You are losing by not dealing with Chase.
I’ve had several cards compromised in the last few years. Usually Chase is pretty good regarding the fraud charges. However, there has been several times where I called Chase to report the fraud charges. I wish they would have caught it but again, they are massive and have heaps of cards and users…
I have about 7 cards with chase, and haven’t had any issues with any of them being compromised. My main issue that I have with Chase is their 5/24 rule. They have great cards but tend to make approvals for new cards very difficult.