JP Morgan Chase Bank Bullying Kratom Vendors

I've never sent a message like this and I hope I never have to again. If you have time to read and do this, I'd greatly appreciate 2 min of your time today. If not, we still love you all! :-)

We have banked with J.P. Morgan Chase for years. They know what we sell and have never had any issues. Last Friday I got a notice that my payroll direct deposits all bounced. We have 14 employees and adding 4 more this month and we certainly had plenty of money to cover the deposits. Then in rapid succession I started receiving bounce or payment declined notifications from everywhere. After talking to 4 different departments at Chase I was informed that Chase had decided to end our banking relationship but can't tell me why... and I quote, "It's nothing you did, but the Bank has decided to terminate our banking relationship with you."

Now, they are a business and they have as much right as any business to decide not to work with a particular person or business. I have no issue with that. What I take issue with is that they never sent us a letter, an email, a phone call, or ANYTHING to let us know they were terminating our accounts! That means I had absolutely no time to move payments to a new bank, wire our money instead of having to pull it out in checks which will take 7-10 days to clear to our new bank, etc. NO NOTICE AT ALL!

So now, I am unable to pay my staff and only got it done because one of my employees was kind enough to pay them out of personal funds to cover until our funds are cleared in the new bank! Not to mention they also caused us to bounce payments to the State of Colorado and city of Colorado Springs for sales tax payments, caused our health insurance, auto insurance, general liability insurance, and even our workmans comp insurance to all suspend our policies because they were all due that same day! THEN I had paid for the construction project in building out our new retail store in the city of Castle Rock, CO and THAT bounced as well!

Chase's decision to note even provide a 1 week notice has caused a chain-reaction of epic proportions that has crippled our ability to function (Don't worry, I'm using my personal money to ship orders out so it won't directly affect our customers)

We have attempted multiple times to reach out to Chase and they are refusing to do ANYTHING about it. I've been spending countless hours trying to sooth over our vendors who think we are trying to skip without paying etc and trying to stop the perception that we are flaky financially. They undermined the ONE thing that I value more than anything else in business, our integrity. I cannot stand by and let some pencil pusher destroy all that I've created in the last 5 years!

We don't know if we have a legal leg to stand on but our team of lawyers is trying to see if we can take legal action against them. But in the meantime, I want to send them a clear message that they cannot bully small businesses and ESPECIALLY not the Kratom community!

If you are willing, would you tweet or retweet our tweets that we've been sending today? If you know anyone in the media also send it to them too? We just feel like this is one more thing that is a form of bullying against kratom!

Our twitter account is: LaughingLionHerbs

ALSO, Please post in forums and Reddit and anywhere in social media! We will not be ignored!