As a counter opinion, I hate Chase. Ignoring their deep involvement in illegal activity during the mortgage crisis and manipulations of our economy through revolving door lobbying, and merely speaking from a customer perspective:
1. High fees for international bank wires.
2. Befuddled telephone support when money isn't where it's supposed to be (for whatever reason) with frequent transfers to other departments.
3. Bankers on-site often don't know anything about the more complicated aspects of business accounts.
4. International travel with a Chase card is...an adventure. It took me three or four phone calls to Chase after I was already deep in the rain forest in Chiapas, Mexico in order to free up money to simply buy gas and other stuff. I never got the Chase card working for directly buying gas (while other cards did work, most of my funds were in Chase). I would have to go to an ATM, pay exorbitant fees, and use cash for everything. This was incredibly stressful...being 1000 miles inside Mexico on a visitor visa in a motorhome that gets 10 MPG (so, I needed a pretty big chunk of change to get back home, just on the fuel front, not to mention all the other living expenses).
The online experience has finally gotten better in the past few years, but it used to be pretty awful. One still had to call for almost everything interesting; I used to have to pay them for old statements, to boot!
I didn't choose Chase. My first bank was Texas Commerce. Chase acquired them. I stuck with them for a while after, despite my discontent (it's a lot of trouble to move banks, especially for a business that has incoming credit card payments, and outgoing payroll, among other things). When I moved to California, and formed a new corporation for my company, I opened an account at Washington Mutual. A year later, Chase acquired WaMu as part of the mortgage bailouts. So, Chase has been following me around all my damned adult life. I've given up on getting away from them, though I do have a credit union account for my personal money.
Also, they don't treat their employees very well (an ex-girlfriend worked there for a while in college, before going on to work at Google, and she hated it, especially after uniforms became required).
In short, if I were starting anew, Chase would not be on the list of banks I would consider.
I'm keeping my Chase account on the theory that eventually it will be sold to somebody else anyway, probably Deutsche Bank because the rule seems to be that when my bank is bought, it's from somewhere even further away. Eventually it will be First Bank of Mars, then JP Morgan Proxima Centauri.
Seconding the highway-robbery international bank wire fees - in addition to charging far too much for wires, they also use a bad exchange rate to plunder even more from you, while not telling their employees that this is what's going on.
1. High fees for international bank wires.
2. Befuddled telephone support when money isn't where it's supposed to be (for whatever reason) with frequent transfers to other departments.
3. Bankers on-site often don't know anything about the more complicated aspects of business accounts.
4. International travel with a Chase card is...an adventure. It took me three or four phone calls to Chase after I was already deep in the rain forest in Chiapas, Mexico in order to free up money to simply buy gas and other stuff. I never got the Chase card working for directly buying gas (while other cards did work, most of my funds were in Chase). I would have to go to an ATM, pay exorbitant fees, and use cash for everything. This was incredibly stressful...being 1000 miles inside Mexico on a visitor visa in a motorhome that gets 10 MPG (so, I needed a pretty big chunk of change to get back home, just on the fuel front, not to mention all the other living expenses).
The online experience has finally gotten better in the past few years, but it used to be pretty awful. One still had to call for almost everything interesting; I used to have to pay them for old statements, to boot!
I didn't choose Chase. My first bank was Texas Commerce. Chase acquired them. I stuck with them for a while after, despite my discontent (it's a lot of trouble to move banks, especially for a business that has incoming credit card payments, and outgoing payroll, among other things). When I moved to California, and formed a new corporation for my company, I opened an account at Washington Mutual. A year later, Chase acquired WaMu as part of the mortgage bailouts. So, Chase has been following me around all my damned adult life. I've given up on getting away from them, though I do have a credit union account for my personal money.
Also, they don't treat their employees very well (an ex-girlfriend worked there for a while in college, before going on to work at Google, and she hated it, especially after uniforms became required).
In short, if I were starting anew, Chase would not be on the list of banks I would consider.