What I am about to tell you is 100% true. I couldn't make this up if tried.
I am going through divorce. My ex-wife and I have had a Chase Preferred Card since 1999 that we have used for our primary method of spending. We put everything on that card and paid it off every month for 27 years. But, since we are going through divorce, I agreed that she could continue to use the card and I would simply get my own card. This is where the insanity begins...
On July 5th, 2026, I logged into the Chase account and had offers for a Sapphire card that showed 175K of Bonus Points (I have good income and excellent credit). I applied for the card and expected to be instantly approved. I heard nothing. After a few days, I called Chase to find out the issue and they said, "oh, you will receive a letter in the mail". Uh, what? I'm being denied? After bouncing around from agent to agent, someone finally told me I was being denied because I didn't "have enough credit history". Excuse me? I have 27 years of credit history with CHASE, not to mention auto loans, home loans, etc. Something was amiss. Chase said call the credit bureaus.
So, I downloaded all of my credit reports and found that the Chase Preferred card info was nowhere to be found. It had disappeared from my credit history. I called the credit agencies and they said, "call Chase". Ugh, so back to Chase I went. After speaking with 4 different people, I finally got to someone who said, "hmm, yeah, we did stop reporting your credit for some reason. give us 30 days to fix it." Oh, great. In the meantime, I was planning to use my "new" card to book a trip as well as make a few other expensive purchases, including lawyers fees for this freaking divorce. But, no such luck with Chase. So, I applied for three other credit cards and was DENIED for all of them. Same reason. Not enough credit history.
I logged into my Chase account about nine days later and found that my first name HAD BEEN CHANGED. It wasn't changed to, like, my middle name or anything. It was changed to a mixture of letters that do not resemble a name in any way. I called Chase immediately and, the first person I spoke to said, "you can fill out a name change form and send it in". I said, WHAT? YOU changed my name. YOU didn't INFORM ME that you changed it and now you want me to go through some sort of byzantine maze of corporate bureaucracy to fix it? They transferred me. Three more times.
Finally, I spoke with someone who said, "it looks like someone here changed your name when they were looking into the credit history issue". She assured me she would look into it within the next 7 days.
I filed an official complaint with the CFPB and emailed their executive office with the same complaint. By law, they had 15 days to respond to the CFPB. On day 15 they responded and said, "we're looking into it" which grants them another 60 days before they have to respond.
At the very least I hoped they could change my name quickly. But, it took them over 3 weeks and countless conversations and emails to fix that. Shortly thereafter, they started reporting my credit history again. But, the random name they gave me still shows as an AKA in my new credit report. Yay.
Since everything was supposedly fixed, I re-applied for the same credit card and was DENIED. No explanation. Then I was told to apply again. So I did. DENIED. And, each time I applied, I had three different people calling me to verify that it was me who was applying. It was borderline harassment getting three calls a day from Chase from different people asking, "did you apply for this card?".
Today, I spoke with my designated case manager and she conferenced me in with their credit department. After two minutes, he approved me for the Sapphire card and said it would be sent out in 5-7 days. Great. I asked how many bonus points I'd be getting and he said "75K". I said, well, when I applied, you were offering 175K. They said, no, we have no record of ever offering more than 75K this year. They told me if I could find proof, send it to them.
In five minutes of googling, I found exactly what I was talking about. Certain Chase customers this year had been offered 125K to 175K through the "just for you' link on your account. That is what I applied for. I took screen shots and sent it to them. I also found something FROM THEIR OWN WEBSITE that referenced 100K bonus points that was being offered to the general public this summer. They weren't even aware of THAT. This is another perfect example of their awful customer service. They required ME to prove something that THEY were offering.
I have a call scheduled with a lawyer tomorrow to determine what legal recourse I have. The fact that someone INTERNALLY broke the law and changed my name is a serious offense and, honestly, having that name in my credit history could potentially be problem in the future.
TL;DR--Chase denied me a credit card in July because they had stopped reporting my 27 years of excellent credit history with them to the credit bureaus, then changed my first name for no reason, then claimed that they were never offering 175K bonus points when I applied in July.