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SDNY COURTHOUSE, May 20 – The world of online payments and subscriptions, with the Consumer Protection Bureau and a new Administration, was supposed to be smoother, at least as to banks and other financial institutions.

But on May 17, at least for Inner City Press, it resulted in a two hour call with JPMorgan Chase customer service, culminating a statement of there is nothing Chase can do, you can write to the Executive Office, Jamie Dimon, if you want.    So this is it.

  Inner City Press, beyond its free website, Substack and Twitter feed, posts paid articles on Patreon.com.

 On May 11 it hit "payout," to a Chase account as it happened. The website immediately said Successful, via Stripe, to JPMorgan.   Only no money arrived, six days later.

Stripe said they couldn't or wouldn't engage with a non-customer. So Inner City Press called Chase. Twice. There was a man named Ali, then a woman named Nashim. Then a Chase representative in the claims department who said he had never heard of Stripe. 

  His supervisor, a woman who said her name was Sharon but refused to give a last name, had also never heard of Stripe. She insisted that unless Inner City Press could get the tracking number from Stripe - which won't give it - nothing can be done.

She said no one else was available, to write to the Executive Office. She said there might be a call from an unnamed manager, during the day when Inner City Press said it could not take the call. 

  On the afternoon of May 18, while Inner City Press was covering a (bank fraud) trial, a Chase claims department manager who said his name was Sean, no last name, called and repeated again and again that without a 15 digit tracking number from Stripe, Chase could or would do nothing. He said Chase wouldn't contact Stripe, even as he was told Stripe wouldn't answer to a non-customer. He hung up.

So, Jamie Dimon, how is this acceptable?  

 Stripe is a fintech, perhaps under-regulated. But JPMorgan Chase is an insured bank, bailed out by the taxpayers, ostensibly regulated by the Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency of Michael Hsu, and overseen by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Mention of the CFPB had no impact. The Federal Reserve is dismissive of the import of consumer complaints. 

  Inner City Press filed a complaint with the CFPB and tweeted out this article. On May 20 during work, a call from JPMorgan Chase. But it was not to help. The woman began, We wrote to the Executive Office --

"No, not yet."

It turned out the call was triggered by the tweet, and it was not to try to do a better a job. In fact, it was akin to a threat. The person from the Chase Executive Office thought that Stripe is a bank, and when Inner City Press asked if Chase calls Elizabeth Warren about her tweets said she didn't know who that is.

  "Well, tell Jamie Dimon to try to make sure his staff don't hang up on customers, before seeking another $53 million."

"I'll write that down," the woman from Chase said. To what end?

And so it has come to this: theft by banks, and writing to Jamie Dimon. Watch this site. 

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