ABC News reports on a rather curious incident.
Officials at JP Morgan Chase have apologized and promised to improve their screening policies, after a credit card solicitation letter sent to a 54-year-old naturalized American citizen came addressed to “Palestinian Bomber.”The form letter for a Visa Platinum card arrived earlier this month at the home of Sami Habbas, a grocery store manager from Corona, Calif. The words “Palestinian Bomber” appear above his address and the salutation reads, “Dear Palestinian Bomber.” The document included the signature of Carter Franke, chief marketing officer for Chase Card Services.Habbas is a naturalized U.S. citizen of Palestinian heritage. He told ABC News he is “extremely upset” at receiving the letter, pointing out that he has lived in the United States for 51 years and also served in the U.S. Army, receiving an honorable discharge in 1969.“It’s upsetting, derogatory and slanderous,” Habbas told ABC News (sounds like Jackie Chiles – ed.).“I have no idea how this sort of thing happened.”
The head of the Chase documentation department, Shimon Barak, stated that he also had no idea how this happened.
It gets even worse.
Habbas was even more shocked when, on several occasions, he said he called an 800-number for JP Morgan Chase and spoke to operators in an effort to complain. Each time, he says the operators called up his information on a computer but apparently didn’t catch on. According to Habbas, “The operators always said, ‘Yes, Mr. Palestinian Bomber, how can we help you?’ “
And would you like fries with that?
But seriously, I do feel for Mr Habbas, who by all accounts is a decent US citizen. I even agree with CAIR in this matter.
After receiving the letter and his experiences with the operators, Habbas contacted the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C., a Muslim civil liberties group. CAIR denounced the Chase letter as “racist” and asked JP Morgan Chase to launch an investigation, conduct sensitivity training and issue a formal apology to Habbas.
And Mr Habbas is not alone. It seems like customer service is just not what it used to be.
The incident comes on the heels of last week’s announcement by Comcast that two customer service representatives in Chicago were fired after they changed a woman’s name to “Bitch Dog” on her bill. She had repeatedly complained about bad service.
