Happy New Years…Miami’s Melting Pot Style (Part 3)

I’ve told you about the amount of cultural mixes before midnight (see Part 1). Gave you short taste of how dependent to ATMs city life has become (Part 2), more about this in this entry. As I mentioned yesterday I thought that I didn’t want to continue writing about NYE when there are so many other things that I could write about. But there are a few things I’d like to write about; why the Matinée Party didn’t live up to expectations and what was the response from Chase as to why my card wasn’t working that evening.

So after hitting all the ATMs at two different Chase locations I decided to go to the 24 hour Walgreen’s next door to Chase on Alton Road. I know they have Chase ATMs inside and for sure this one should have cash. Besides worst case I can do cash back from the register and at the very least have a few extra bucks, yet no luck in either case. My card was once again DECINED. But when I called the automated system told me there was plenty of money available in the account according to their phone system and online. (More about their response to the issue below…and what great response it was?)

With no luck getting cash we decided to make the best of it and just head to the party. Hoping they will accept credit cards at the bar which would be great. So we are driving around looking for a street parking spot to avoid giving up our little cash, just in case. After about 10 minutes, we got a spot right on Washington Avenue just south of 5th Street, a few steps away from China Grille, and walked to the Paris Theater. Arriving a little after 1:30am we thought we would still have 3.5 hours of great time. As soon as we walked in the door I didn’t get the feeling of a Matinée event, but surely once I enter the dance area it will change. No such luck. It was quit disappointing to find that everything was so bare. I expected the Paris Theater to look like I walked into Tron Legacy because that was the theme of the promoting flyer and that’s been the case with the parties that I attended in Spain. This was something I could over see being that it was their first event in SoBe and I understand you can’t go all out on the first event because you risk too large a lose. But if you are selling the Matinée experience then that is expected. It’s like if you are buying a Mercedes you expect leather interior to be included because it’s part of what the brand represents.

So what did I find, the place was all over light everywhere, nothing special on stage either just a DJ setup (no décor or anything else). Finally about an hour later there was about 6-8 lame male dancers that came out for about 15 minutes or so. What happened to the great dancers and choreography that Matinée is known for?!? There was no feeling that I was at a Matinée party or event in the least bit, except for the few small posters on a wall or by the bar or on the flyer both which had the logo. I don’t even recall seeing anyone wearing any Matinée gear, except for Hector on stage (because even Javier was in regular cloth). If this would have been my first experience with Matinée Group I would have never gone to any other of their events because it felt like a poorly put together event. Maybe we just got there too late? Maybe the whole Matinée thing happened before we arrived and decided to leave. But in fairness after looking at the photos of the event on Miami Gay News (Thanks Jon for the great job you do… click here if you want to see more… http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=51828&id=180221448661430) the photos do look like at some point in the night the lights were much darker and some sort of show was put on (the single guy hanging from the ceiling). I wonder what happened that they ended up leaving those lights on so much brighter.

After being there a little over an hour we decided to just leave since we weren’t having a good time. The sound system was poor (and I don’t blame Matinée for that as that’s more of a venue issue), my nephew didn’t care too much for the music albeit I thought Hector was doing a good job. The fact we had no cash for drinks thanks to Chase was also partly to blame. And to top things off my back was still acting up quite a bit but I was trying to be a trooper. But just couldn’t deal with all the bad stuff and we headed back to the main land. I dropped my nephew off and headed home for the night which did help a bit with the back pain.

The following day I tried to call Chase to find out what the deal was and why I was unable to get my cash; the call center was still closed. On Sunday morning I decided to try speaking with them and got someone on the phone. I asked them to please explain why my card had been declined everywhere. The guy tells me he couldn’t “understand why (the) system was reading the card as not having the funds because the system shows the funds were available the whole time. But (he) could see that I tried in six different locations multiple times at some.” At this point I wanted to know what I could do to prevent something like this from happening again; or what to do if it did happen again. He couldn’t tell me and I asked then to speak to a supervisor that could explain it.

A few minutes later I’m on the phone with the supervisor and he tells me that “what did I not understand? The system just read (my) card wrong.” Apparently he thought this was an acceptable situation. I should not be upset that I was unable to access my money when the funds were available and I needed it. The situation was getting to me and I could hear the word vomit creepy its nasty head up & out my throat but was able to hold it off long enough to ask “so what do you recommend I do to prevent this from happening to me again?” He replies in the most matter of fact condescending tone, “Sir if you are going to be going out for the night then you should go into a branch prior to that and get your cash before going out instead of waiting to use the ATM.”

“WHAT?!?! You are telling me the solution is for me to have cash I need to access to MY MONEY is to preplan for the event that your ATM system will not be working?” I replied. “That I need to go out of my way to make sure that I can get MY MONEY before you close your location because I should not expect that the ATM to be working 24 hours like you advertise?”

“Sir I’ve explained to you how you can avoid this in the future. Is there anything else that I can help you with today?” he replied, with the most diva of tones. “Nope, thanks for making me understand that the solution is for me to close my accounts with you guys and place my money with a bank that actually has working ATMs. You have a great day.” CLICK!

He could not tell me why the issue happened or what I could do about it if I found myself in that situation again. Was I being irrational? Am I expecting too much from Chase? I would have understood if he had told me, “we had a glitch in the system that night and we apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused you.” Then it’s an isolated situation and there is no big issue. It would be great to get some feedback on this.