In the first six months of 2010, Chase spend about $3 million on lobbying Congress and various federal agencies, more than any of the other 10 top TARP recipient banks. More on this story here.
Legal & regulatory | admin August 31, 2010 | 
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Many sites, including ours, have made it to the first Google results page for search terms like “chase sucks”, but to really spread the word about Chase’s horrible business practices, it is important to get high page ranking on more common search terms.
Chase Bank protest site chase-sucks.com (we are chase-sucks.org) has managed to make it to the second results page for the organic search term “chase bank”.
I am happy to announce that our site has pretty well dominated the searches for Chase’s leisure rewards credit cards, nabbing the first page second result for “leisure rewards” and first page third results for “chase leisure rewards”.
Chase-sucks.com recently posted a letter sent to them regarding a Chase customer that had a very strange experience when buying New York State Lottery tickets on their credit card. Instead of a normal charge, Chase, under the guise of classifying the purchase as for illegal gambling, classified the purchase under a cash advance and added a $10 fee an an interest charge. when contacted, Chase claimed that the mistake was the fault of the New York State Lottery, but when the customer contacted the Lottery, the Lottery confirmed that it was Chase that was responsible, and was using a loophole created by a new law in effect in June 2010 that allowed them to do this.
So basically they are using this loophole to bilk customers out of extra fees.
This would be the first time I have heard anyone say they had an easy time getting a loan modification with Chase. I am guessing either:
For the rest of us, it is still slogging it out in the trenches.
Jim and Alexis Bellino, last season’s newest cast members of “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” recently defaulted on a $4.6 million loan for their stately home on Circle Drive in Newport Beach.
According to documents obtained exclusively by The Orange County Register, the Bellinos failed to pay $83,856.92 as of April 26 on their home loan, and faced the threat of foreclosure, plus having their home sold at public auction to the highest bidder.
The original loan amount was for $4.5 million. Because the Bellinos missed all mortgage payments since the first of the year, the debt — with fees and penalties — swelled up to $4.62 million, the documents indicate.
However, the auction (or trustee sale), scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 25, never happened. The Bellinos modified the loan on their home, a foreclosure did not occur, and the family never had to move.
“Chase Bank has been great to work with on my modification,” Jim Bellino said in an interview Friday. “The trustee sale has been canceled, and the modification has been agreed upon.”
Loan modification | admin August 29, 2010 | Comments (0)
I recently came across a blog post from about three years ago, which has racked up more comments than any other I have seen, and has people still commenting today, three years later.
How Chase Bank Has Forgotten About the Customer
I had a call into Chase about an issue with my credit card the other night and couldn’t believe what I heard. My discussion with a customer service representative was not going where I wanted it to, so I asked to talk to a supervisor. I was told that there was no supervisor to talk to, but if I wanted to, I could just give her my number and she’d have someone call me back. I found this to be quite interesting (no supervisor? come on!) and tried to reason with the rep to have someone with any authority get on the phone, but got the same thing . . . nothing.
From there, I went on to tell her that I was a loyal customer for around 13 years and was just not happy with the service I was getting. Want to hear the response?
“If you’re not happy, then I’ll close your account for you right now”
Really?!?
“I just told you I was a loyal customer for 13 years and you’re telling me to close my account if I’m not happy?”
“Yes, sir. Do you want me to close it?”
(I took notes, because I was so surprised by this response)
I don’t know about you, but I don’t think companies are in business to chase away their customers, do you? Somewhat stunned, I got off the phone and waited for morning to call back and talk to a supervisor. When I got on the phone with a supervisor (after telling the customer service rep I was calling about bad service), it happened again! I explained that I was not happy with the service I recevied and was almost instantly told that if I wasn’t happy then she would close my account . . . she almost begged me to do so.In a daze, I laughed and asked if this was a big joke. It was not. Not only was it surprising in content, but in tone as well; she was simply nasty to me. I was told that the company now had a policy which requires customer service and their supervisors to close someone’s account if they don’t like the service they are getting.
Apparently, Chase has established a policy where they send away people who aren’t happy with their service. There is no attempt to rectify the situation. They just want you, the problem, to get lost.
Why waste their time keeping someone happy? There are plenty of other customers to rip off on both ends of banking (low savings interest rates and high borrowing interest rates).
With this situation in mind, I’m asking you to boycott Chase. It is the customer that comes first, and if they are too lazy to give good service, then they don’t deserve to have any customers, plain and simple.
What Can We Learn From This Situation?
Customer service is Paramount! If you treat your customers like crap, there will be a backlash against you, especially in the days of the internet. If you treat them well, they will tell their friends and you will only see positive results! With so much choice (except when it comes to cable TV & telephone providers), we, the consumer, have the power to not only choose another, better, option, but also to tell the rest of the world of our experiences.
Three years later and Chase still hasn’t learned this lesson.
Interesting | admin August 28, 2010 | Comments (1)
A Wall Street Journal article this morning reminded me to warn everyone about one of the banks’ newest tricks to sidestep the new rules from the Credit Card Act of 2009: professional cards.
These cards, also known as small-business or corporate credit cards, are not subject to the limits on interest rate changes, shortened payment cycles, inactivity fees, applying payments to the lowest interest balance first, large over limit fees and changing card agreements without any advanced notice. Banks have been inundating ordinary consumers with offers for these cards, about 2 1/2 times as many as they used to, offers that often don’t adequately distinguish these as a different class of card that is not subject to the new laws.
Chase is, of course, among the banks using this tactic heavily. Chase’s Ink card is one of these so called professional cards that is immune to the new laws. Being late on your new Ink card by only one day would allow Chase to raise the rate to 29.99%. Chase’s website for the Ink card touts benefits mostly reminiscent of consumer grade cards, such as rewards and cash back, offering little distinction as to why these cards are better for small businesses, or anyone, than normal credit cards that are subject to the new laws. Perhaps the Chase Ink card should be called the Red Ink card, as it will cost you more.
Don’t be fooled, you don’t need one of these professional cards.
A JP Morgan Chase bank teller is accused of stealing nearly $40,000 from customers at the Boca Raton branch where he worked so he could pay his bills, according to an arrest report.
Israel Conley, 20, was arrested Aug. 19 on more than a dozen charges of fraud and larceny.
The Boca Raton man had been working at the branch at 240 East Palmetto Park Road for about two months when he allegedly started withdrawing thousands of dollars from customer accounts in July, the report said.
His victims were mostly elderly customers, ranging from 57-years-old to 99-years-old, police said.
On August 16, the branch manager alerted a corporate investigator about some suspicious transactions she came across during an audit. Conley had processed $36,800 in withdrawls, but the customer withdrawl slips were written in the same handwriting, according to the report.
It turns out he forged customer signatures to withdraw large lumps of money from at least six accounts, including a hair extension business, according to the report. He then deposited the stolen cash into his own account at the bank.
Ineptitude | admin August 27, 2010 | Comments (0)
An article in today’s Wall Street Journal provides some interesting insight into the past, present, and future of the credit card industry, including our good friends Chase.
The past can best be described on an industry the indulged in risky practices and bilking customers. I specifically say bilking because the fees and charges that fueled profits mostly on the backs of sub prime borrowers were due to credit card programs designed specifically to do just that – make people break the myriad of small print rules that would cause them to rack up tons of fees. See the Secret History of the Credit Card by Frontline for more information on this.
Of course, we all know what happened, sub prime borrowers crashed, causing huge defaults, and public sentiment against the deceptive and unfair practices of the credit card industry resulted in new rules from the Credit Card Act of 2009 that has cut off a bunch of the industry’s fee income.
So now, companies are scrambling to make up for the list income and trying to find a new model that will allow them to return to the unrealistic profits of days gone by. According to the WSJ article, experts predict that credit card companies will only be able to recoup about 25% of the fee income they have lost due to the new regulation, mostly through various new tricks.
That brings us to the schizophrenic present. Take Chase for instance. On the one hand, it says that it has been pulling back from its riskiest and least profitable customers. Unfortunately, those classifications are not mutually exclusive. The least risky customers are also the least profitable ones, although this mostly holds true in good times.
Take myself for instance; I pay my credit cards off every month in full, making me a classic “least profitable” customer and I’ve been told so in not-so-many words by at least one of my credit card companies. But I am also very cost conscious and will happily dump a bank if I can find a better deal elsewhere. When banks finally realize that they have the best chance of making money over the long term buy finding and keeping reliable, albeit boring, customers, they might find it a strategy that is hard to succeed at, as the WSJ also reports that consumers are showing less loyalty to their credit card companies with just 22% of consumers reporting they definitely wouldn’t change their primary credit card company in the next 12 months. Good luck with that.
So what is Chase’s strategy? The WSJ reports that Chase has been running ads in upscale ski resorts and Hawaiian retreats, and is focusing on affluent consumers with good credit histories. Yes, but these are also among the least profitable customers clearly contradicting their other statements. Meanwhile, Bank of America is focusing on customers it has other (banking) relationships with and Citigroup is wading back into the sub prime market. No-one seems to know exactly what is going to succeed.
I’ll help them out a little. Here is what I think will ultimately work:
If this sounds vaguely familiar, it is a return to what banks used to be, respectable institutions that valued customer relationships enough to treat their customers well. Boring but predictable. If big banks don’t figure this out, small banks and credit unions that DO treat their customers well will continue to siphon off customers.
While this comparison has been published by a credit union and might be considered biased because of that, I think it is a fair representation of why a credit union might be better than a bank.
Credit Unions
> Not-for-Profit
> Profits Benefit Members
> Don’t Need a Bail Out
> Don’t Cost Taxpayers Anything
> Locally Owned
> Low Fees
> Surcharge-free ATMs (28,000 to be exact!)
> Approve Loans in Members’ Best Interest
> Still Lending Responsibly
> Most CUs have 3,500+ Branches
> Voluntary Board of Directors
> Member-owned
> Small = Nimble, Can Serve Quickly
> Transparent
Banks
> For Profit
> Profits Benefit Stockholders at Customers’ Expense
> Need a Bail Out
> Cost Taxpayers
> Typically, Not Locally Owned
> High Fees
> ATM Fees
> Approve High-risk Loans
> Slowing Lending Due to Poor Lending Practices
> Limited Number of Branches
> Paid Board of Directors
> Bank-owned
> Large = Bureaucracy, Overhead
> Concealed
Tips | admin | Comments (0)
From a reader this morning:
Was just wondering if you’ve heard of anything weird about this.
I was a Wamu customer before the changeover. Was in my local Chase branch about 2 months ago and the teller told me that my old Wamu debit card was about to stop working. The expiration isn’t until 2011, so I questioned her and she said all Wamu debit cards are about to be turned off and I should order a new Chase debit card.
I didn’t think much about it until I was in the branch again about 2 weeks ago. I asked one of the CSRs about it and he said yes, those “old wamu” cards were scheduled to be turned off “any minute.” He was surprised mine worked at all and said mine was probably one of the last ones still working.
I have never received any official notice from Chase about this, only words from the people in this one branch.
Well, I had him order me a new debit card and I asked if it would be the same card number. He said “no” because they would be switching from Mastercard to Visa.
Fast forward a week or so and my new card arrives. It’s a Mastercard just like my “old” wamu card, but with a new number. The thing is, my old wamu card still works fine. I haven’t activated the new card yet.
I’m wondering why the hard push to get me into a new Chase branded card? Any thoughts?
Anyone had their card stop working without any notification?
Customer service, WaMu failure | admin August 25, 2010 | Comments (1)
This from back in July in reference to new laws that limit fees banks can charge.
“If you’re a restaurant and you can’t charge for the soda, you’re going to charge more for the burger,” James Dimon, the CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase, told analysts in mid-July. “My guess is over time, it will all be repriced into the business.”
Fees & charges | admin August 24, 2010 | Comments (1)
Another win for the opposition. Homeowner Paul Nguyen took Chase to court for violations of the Truth in Lending Act. After a year-long legal battle, the court found in favor of Nguyen and voided his deed of trust with Chase bank, effectively wiping out his mortgage. Furthermore, they awarded Nguyen $4,000 for each TILA violation for a total of $16,000. Here is a link to a lot more information on this case for anyone that might want to use Nguyen experience and research to take Chase to court.
I dont know how many people take it upon themselves to challenge their bank; but I was an experience I will never forget. I challenged Chase on my mortgage based on TILA violations. The bank retained a large law firm in So. CA with 3 lawyers. So much motions and procedures to learn and apply as the case moved along in the last year. Finally, the case went to trial yesterday. The court finally rendered judgment in plaintiffs’ favor in voiding the deed of trust. As far as the outstanding loan, it is forfeited and the bank would have to take that lost. Furthermore, the court imposed statutory damages of $4k for each violations which amounted to about $16k.
I am in the process of preparing the judgment for the court to sign along with tax cost. Believe it or not, I have expended over $10k in cost alone; which includes expert witness cost.
So much research was done and I hate to see it goes to waste. If you have access to PACER, everything is there for public use. Best of luck to all fighting the bank now and keep up your spirit.
The fact that best selling author Naomi Wolf was defrauded out of $300,000 isn’t the most interesting part of this story. The most interesting part is that she is accusing WaMu, and subsequently Chase of a systematic approach of stonewalling fraud investigations so that customers have no recourse and the bank can’t be held accountable. You can read the about this interesting story at the Huffington Post or The Smoking Gun.
Then the same officials who had directed me to keep the accounts open, disappeared — systematically, for just over six months. When I sought to talk to the fraud department, I still could not get records — including my own missing bank statements — even to see the full extent of my losses. The bank officials who had directed me to keep my accounts open were unavailable at the branch — over the course of many attempts to speak with them. The police at the Sixth Precinct needed to see the missing documents, but even they could not force WaMu to hand over their — my — records. (WaMu’s own internal emails cite a $300,000 figure for my loss from fraud — I still did not have enough of my records to identify the loss. It is illegal, by the way, to withhold from an account holder his or her own records).
At eight months after the fraud discovery was confirmed — eight months of trying to communicate with officials and a fraud department who were oddly unavailable or unresponsive — I received a form letter from the WaMu Fraud Department advising me that according to the regulations, I had had a six month window for taking action; and (since WaMu had played out the clock for eight months) the letter asserted that I had waited ‘too long’ and my case was closed.
But she got lucky, because a bank official accidentally gave her the wrong file which contained damaging evidence of their policy of stonewalling investigations in the form of several emails.
Inadvertently, subsequent to that, a WaMu bank official handed me the wrong file — wrong from his point of view; illuminating from mine, and from any consumer’s. It contained emails, some of which you can see at TheSmokingGun.com, from WaMu bank officials to one another — and including emails from and to their counsel, PR department and and the fraud department — that take as given that stonewalling a client with a fraud claim on the bank is standard practice; and yet one freaked-out bank official in the emails warns his colleagues that if their mechanisms in this regard became known, their practices would be all over the newspapers.
It is unclear whether this practice was limited to WaMu or also a policy of Chase.
With the passing of the Credit Card Act of 2009, and the new protections it offers customers, some people may think they can rest on their laurels because banks are finally being forced to do the right thing. Not so, says the Seattle times, and common sense.
According to the Seattle Times, some bank customers are already seeing the following:
The point is that banks have increasingly gotten the mentality that customers are endless sources of nickel-and-dime fee income, rather than seeing their business as providing a good service for a reasonable fee.
It is now more important than ever to read over EVERYTHING you receive from your bank very closely and challenge anything they do that you don’t like or may be against the law. If your bank just won’t be reasonable, switch to one that is.
Apparently Chase has a group that constantly monitors the Internet for slanderous (i.e. true) statements about Chase and threatens the people to get them to take the offending content down.
During a very lengthy (6 hours, I am told) conversation, the lawyer from Chase told the lawyer from Keller Williams Realty International that if the videos in question, mentioning Chase, were not removed from Kevin and Fred’s Short Sale Power Hour site, Chase Bank would pull every REO listing from every single Keller Williams agent! There are 80,000 Keller Williams agents. Every REO listing that was a Chase listing from every single KW agent anywhere in the world.
Given that our site posts more negative information about Chase than just about anyone else, this group, like most of the others in Chase must not be very good at their jobs, cause we haven’t heard from them.
Bad bad Chase | admin August 23, 2010 | Comments (0)
Apparently there is an upside to the standard rudeness of Chase Bank tellers. Not once, but twice in the past week the rude attitude of a Chase Bank teller has so frustrated a bank robber that they left without actually robbing the bank.
We’ve published many posts outlining the tedious, redundant, inept, and frustrating process of applying for a loan modification with Chase, but non have been quite so well written as this one, by a former journalist, former because he lost is job.
SOMEWHERE IN AFGHANISTAN–It isn’t surprising, what with the world falling apart and all, that the world scarcely noticed that I lost my job as an editor in April 2009. Why should it? I was one of millions of Americans who lost their job that month.
But it mattered to me.
It wasn’t all bad. No more early morning commutes. And no more Lisa. Lisa was my boss. My mean boss. My mean and crazy boss. In the long run, I stand to save thousands of dollars on therapy.
In the meantime, however, one visit with HR cost more than half my annual income. (My ex-employer, the Scripps media conglomerate, offered just four weeks severance pay–if I agreed not to work as a journalist for the rest of my life. Needless to say, I refused.) Just like that, I was broke.
The bills, of course, kept coming. Including my home mortgage. Unlike many people, I was conservative. When I bought, in 2004, I put down more than 50 percent of the purchase price. Refusing an adjustable-rate mortgage, I took out a vanilla 30-year fixed-rate mortgage from Chase Home Finance LLC.
Probably the best coverage of the WaMu failure has come not surprisingly from Washington Mutual’s home town of Seattle and the Puget Sound Business Journal. Their most recent articles have helped publicize the fact that the JP Morgan Chase purchase of WaMu’s assets isn’t actually closed yet, leaving the door for the FDIC to insist they pay more.
Their latest offering is a poll where they ask people whether JP Morgan Chase should pay more than the $1.9 billion they paid for WaMu. I’d say the results indicate people overwhelmingly say yes, although it is still pretty early in the poll’s results.
Interestingly enough, most of the news the BizJournal prints about WaMu and Chase is not favorable of Chase. It is surprising to me that the banner ads on the BizJournal’s articles are Chase ads. Rather karmic perhaps.
WaMu failure | admin August 21, 2010 | Comments (0)
You can bet the folks over at Chase Home Finance Sucks have poked into every nook and cranny of the loan modification process and are very well informed. Despite that, it took them three years to get a loan modification.
Over 1000 dollars lower. Took three years of tears and fear but we did it and you can do it to.
us at admin@chasehomefinancesucks.com and we will tell you how we did it.
No Government offices
The process is simply broken, or Chase doesn’t really want to do loan modifications.
Loan modification | admin August 19, 2010 | Comments (2)
