Chase Rep: Deaf People "Probably Can't" Have a Credit Card

Yikes:

A little over a month ago, my father and I decided to respond to an offer from Chase for their Ink Business MasterCard. We're both principals in the business I own. He's deaf; I'm not. (These details will be relevant shortly.)

...[W]e were approved, and both our cards arrived shortly. I activated mine and was able to make some purchases. After a while, I wanted to set up my account for online access at chase.com. My attempts to register online failed, so I called Chase, which is when the nightmare began.

We were soon sidetracked because my father's card hadn't been activated (though mine had been). Fair enough; I can see why they want both cards to be acknowledged and activated, even if my father isn't very likely to use his card. (As I mentioned, he isn't involved in the day-to-day affairs of the business.) So I tried to work with them to activate his card over the phone, with me being the interpreter. Even though my parents have always been able to do this in my past — with my mother (who can hear) serving as interpreter whenever activating a card — the customer service agent immediately shot down this option. Annoying, but, OK, how about a customer service number for the deaf and hearing impaired? He put me on hold for a bit, but came back and said he couldn't find any information on that.

Hmmm. I see. Is there some sort of procedure for processing card activations for cardmembers who can't hear? This is where it gets good. The customer service agent suggested that the hearing impaired "probably can't" have a card. I informed him that this is probably very illegal, and that it'd be news to American Express, the Charles Schwab Visa people, PNC Bank, and the various other companies that my father has credit with currently. He still seemed to think that Chase probably wouldn't be able to offer him a card.

"I'm quite sure there are laws against that," I pointed out, which seemed to unnerve him enough to put me on hold, this time for a little longer.

There has been more back-and-forth, but the issue has yet to be resolved, and the cards "are effectively frozen until Chase feels everything's been resolved to their satisfaction. But as long as they continue to shoot down anything we try to do to help resolve this issue, we're stuck."

Unless Chase just added this information today, they've got a customer service number for the deaf and hearing impaired listed here, but part of accessibility is making sure the people representing your company know about alternative options and how to direct customers to use them. That means meaningful and practical diversity training, not pointing it out once and expecting employees to figure it out.

[H/T to Shaker FWM.]