Not sure if it's poor character writing or just bad story telling but Chad is about as useless as Orihime.

I don't hate Chad or Orihime, I like that Ichigo surrounds himself with good friends and Chad brings alot to the table in terms of having a strong personality particularly in the face of constant bullying, I just wish Tite Kubo would give him a win.
There was also a case of dub actor Jamieson Price not coming back to voice Chad due to some pretentious bull shit about not wanting to take on non white roles but is totally fine dubbing Japanese characters, kinda dug your own grave there mate, we live in a world where an 86 year old woman can voice Goku and characters like Samurai Jack, Donald Duck and Sonic the Hedgehog have or had black actors, only the voice matters, not the person behind it.
Just to get to the point, you could take away Chad's voice and he'd contribute exactly the same to the Bleach story as a mute, in fact making him mute gives more weight to his body language which in some cases works better in story telling.