210-520-6400 is a San Antonio-based collections hotline for Chase Bank. The number is used by the bank’s collections department to call people who are believed to owe debts on Chase credit cards, auto loans, and bank accounts.
If you are getting calls from this number, you probably already know how harassing they can be. You might not know, however, that you have specific rights under federal law that make it much easier to deal with this kind of thing than you think.
Who is Chase Bank?
Here are the details you need to know about the company calling you from 210-520-6400:
Company Name: Chase Bank (subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase & Co.)
Company Type: First-party creditor (Chase is collecting its own debt, not debt purchased from another company)
Industry: Banking, credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, home equity lines of credit
Headquarters: 270 Park Avenue, New York, NY
Company Size: Largest bank in the United States with approximately 317,000 employees and $4.4 trillion in total assets
BBB Rating: A-minus (not accredited), with 4,691 complaints filed in the last 3 years
Call Center Location: The 210 area code indicates the call center is in San Antonio, TX, where Chase employs about 2,000 people in credit card operations and collections
Their History of Harassment
Chase is not new to issues over its calling practices. In fact, the company has already paid out about $57 million in five different class action settlements for violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). These cases involved autodialed calls without consent on credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, and bank accounts, and affected millions of consumers.
In 2015, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and 47 state attorneys general jointly penalized Chase for robo-signing court documents and selling bad credit card debt. The resulting $136 million penalty forced Chase to permanently stop collections on more than 528,000 accounts.
If the calls you are getting from 210-520-6400 seem predatory, it’s because this is a company with a history of pushing its luck.
Why is Chase Bank calling me?
The Top 5 Reasons
Calls from 210-520-6400 are originating from Chase’s internal collections department. This means the calls probably started because one of your accounts is at least 30 days past due. You will likely get another round of calls at the 60-day mark, and again at 90 and 120 days past due.
At around 180 days past due, the account will be charged off and may be sold to a third-party debt buyer like Midland Credit Management or Portfolio Recovery Associates.
The debt in question could be a credit card debt, an auto loan through Chase Auto Finance, a mortgage, or a home equity line of credit. In some cases, people are getting calls from 210-520-6400 about an overdrawn bank account. You have the right to request written verification of the debt.
What if I don’t owe Chase anything?
There are a lot of people getting calls from 210-520-6400 who claim to have never been Chase customers.
One consumer on WhoCallsMe reported that she got calls twice a day for over a week. “No message left,” she wrote. Another consumer on EveryCaller said the caller claimed to be from Chase and gave an account number that turned out to be fictional.
There are a lot of wrong-number calls going out from this line. In fact, Chase paid $3.75 million in 2017 to settle a TCPA lawsuit over autodialed calls to some 675,000 cell phones that had been reassigned from former Chase customers to new owners. If you don’t owe Chase any money, there may be something on your credit report that works to your advantage if you dispute it.
What are people saying?
Call Volume
The volume of calls from 210-520-6400 is staggering. RoboKiller has recorded more than 686,000 total calls from this number, with nearly 3,700 user reports. EveryCaller has logged 232 complaints and more than 10,400 blocked calls. There are more than 13 pages of complaints about this number on 800notes.
The frequency of calls people are describing is almost unbelievable. “After missing 1 payment I experienced telephone terrorism, with calls starting at 8 AM until 9 PM every day, even Sundays,” wrote one 800notes user.
A consumer on Tellows reported that Chase was calling every 30 minutes throughout the day. Another 800notes user described getting more than a dozen calls in a little over 2.5 hours, all for a payment that was less than a day late.
These aren’t isolated incidents. They represent a calling pattern that has been consistent across platforms for more than a decade.
Legitimacy
One thing that stands out about consumer complaints is the disagreement over whether 210-520-6400 is a legitimate Chase number. One commenter on 800notes said she confirmed the number with her local Chase branch. In the same thread, however, another consumer said a Chase representative told her the number was not legitimate and that the bank must be using a third-party collection agency.
This kind of confusion is further complicated by scammers who are using this number to spoof calls from Chase. One report described a caller demanding bank account information and saying it was the consumer’s “last chance” to resolve some unspecified issue.
Whether the call is coming from Chase’s actual collections department or a scammer, the best practice is the same: Don’t give them any information, and respond through your credit report instead.
Your Rights
A Guide to Federal Law
Under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), you have the right to request written validation of a debt within 30 days of initial contact. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), you have the right to dispute any item on your credit report, and the credit bureau has 30 days to investigate.
Under the TCPA, you have the right to prohibit autodialed calls and prerecorded messages to your cell phone unless you have given prior express consent. You also have the right to revoke your consent at any time. One of Chase’s TCPA settlements alone — in the Gehrich case — was worth $34 million and covered a class of more than 7.1 million consumers who got autodialed calls without proper consent.
Why Disputing is the Smart Move
Collection accounts end up on your credit report without any verification. In fact, the credit reporting system basically assumes the negative item is legitimate and puts the onus on consumers to challenge it. That’s what makes disputing your credit report such a powerful tool. It shifts the burden to the creditor, who must respond within 30 days. Any item the creditor cannot verify must be deleted.
Between 2009 and 2013, Chase filed more than 528,000 collection lawsuits. Regulators later found that many of those lawsuits relied on robo-signed affidavits with fabricated information. That history suggests there may still be verification issues, and a good dispute letter will exploit them.
How to Make it Stop
5 Simple Rules
Control the Information
Anything you tell a debt collector can and will be used against you. The sense of urgency, the constant phone calls, the demand to confirm your identity over the phone or give out your bank account number — it’s all a strategy to get you to act before you think. In almost every case, there is no good reason to make an immediate payment, no matter what they are telling you.
Information should only flow one way: from them to you. You have the right to insist all communications be in writing. You don’t have to answer questions. You don’t have to confirm your identity to an incoming caller. You certainly don’t have to give out your bank account number over the phone.
Dispute & Wait
When you dispute something on your credit report, you force the credit bureau to investigate. The creditor has 30 days to respond, and if they cannot provide adequate verification of the disputed item, it must be deleted. For a company that is processing millions of accounts, verifying every single one of them is a major logistical challenge.
It’s also important to understand that most collection accounts are not worth suing over. Collectors make a cost-benefit analysis on every account, and the vast majority of debts are simply not worth the cost of a lawsuit. The threat of a lawsuit is almost always more bluster than anything else.
Patience
Credit repair is a marathon and not a sprint. The Fair Credit Reporting Act says a negative item can only stay on your credit report for 7 years, and every investigation has a timeline that must be met. If you take your time and adopt a systematic approach, you will be a lot more effective than if you’re responding emotionally to threatening phone calls.
Don’t Give In
The worst thing you can do is give in to the harassment and pay something. Once you’ve made a payment, you’ve just reset the statute of limitations on an old debt and confirmed that you owe it, which can make things a lot harder if you need to dispute it later.
Get Help if You Need it
If you’re getting harassing calls from 210-520-6400 or any other collection number, don’t be afraid to reach out for help.
At FightCollections.com, we specialize in helping people fight back against collection accounts by disputing them on their credit reports. Whether it’s Chase or someone else, we can help you understand your rights and make a plan to get things under control.
Conclusion
Calls from 210-520-6400 aren’t going to stop unless you make them. Chase’s San Antonio collections center has one job: to call you until you answer and agree to pay up. That’s the playbook, and it’s already cost the company $57 million in TCPA settlements because of the way it plays the game.
Your playbook is different. Instead of playing along and responding the way the collector wants, you’re going to take control by enforcing the rights you have under federal law. A well-crafted credit report dispute puts the burden of proof back where it belongs — on the company that’s saying you owe it money. If the company can’t verify the debt, it gets removed from your credit report.
Don’t wait any longer for the calls to stop. Take the first step today.
