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Chase Won’t Close Your Card Account if You Reject Arbitration

Submitted by jhartgen@abi.org on

JPMorgan Chase & Co. said that it won’t shut the accounts of credit card customers who reject a new policy of using arbitration instead of the courts to resolve payment disputes, Bloomberg News reported. Some customers, on online forums including Reddit and Twitter, expressed confusion about whether they’d be able to keep their accounts if they rejected an arbitration clause in the bank’s updated credit card agreements, saying they received mixed signals from the company. “We will not close someone’s account because they’re opting out of arbitration,” said Trish Wexler, a spokeswoman for the bank. JPMorgan hasn’t directed call-center representatives to tell people their accounts would be shut, she said. The bank’s new policy has drawn scrutiny from Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), who said in a June 4 tweet that she planned to contact JPMorgan Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon about “the legality of Chase closing the accounts of individuals who reject the arbitration clause.”