Chase part of employee insurance scheme?

A recent lawsuit has accused Chase, among others, of scheming to take out life insurance policies on employees and former employees without their consent or knowledge.  While this sounds unethical, apparently it is also illegal and the people so insured or their heirs can sue the banks for the life insurance proceeds and for misappropriation of their identity.

Many of the world’s largest banks have purchased “bank-owned life insurance” or “BOLI” for years, including Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo and many others.

“We are investigating banks that insure the lives of employees without their knowledge or consent,” says class-action attorney Scott Clearman of The Clearman Law Firm. “These types of policies benefit only the banks, not their employees.”

Chase goes criminal?

This comment one one of our posts was so good it deserves a post of its own.

Yes – JP Morgan Chase and Washington Mutual illegally robbed us of our million dollar horse farm in RI by first ignoring every effort to pay it off, sell it, short sale it, refinance it to us or to our buyers, over a two year period that we paid our full huge gigantic mortgage,  but then our attorney was notified of a foreclosure 90 minutes before the foreclosure sale where no one showed up but me! Instead of letting us sell it – like they said – they grabbed it themselves.  The next day while we were at a wedding, they broke in, stole everything we owned, changed the locks, and lied to the police chief – “No one lived there, the place was empty, and the door was left opened!”

SCUM BAGS TO THE MAX _ WE want to sue them.  Our case is 100% exceptionally well documented.  Anyone know of a class action suit involving RI?

Chase’s technology doesn’t always work

I wouldn’t recommend anyone rely on Chase’s technology for anything that is important, as this story, and many others clearly show.

I am set-up for Chase to e-mail me 7 days before a bill is due. I’ve been a customer for over 15 years without problems. Last month, they didn’t notify me and that caused me to pay late when I suddenly realized that I hadn’t paid a bill in 5-6 weeks. They assessed a finance charge of (based on a whopping 28% interest rate). They (agent and supervisor) are stubborn and refuse to reverse even part of the charge. I carefully searched my email and spam folder and there is nothing there so I know I am right and not just making excuses.

Here is the best suggestion someone had:

Best answer:

Answer by Steve D
You first need to check the terms of the e-mail notification. I would guess that the terms include a statement that non-receipt of a notification/alert does not alleviate you are the requirement that you make your payment on time nor does it imply any warranty on the part of Chase to ensure that you receive the alert.

Yes, of course Chase covered their butts in the fine print.  A bank whose customer service was actually based on maintaining relationships with the customers (i.e. NOT Chase) would probably have made an exception.

Given that Chase has had several failures of its online banking recently, you would think they’d tend to err on the side of it being their fault and let the customer slide.  But that isn’t how Chase works.

WaMu/Chase foreclosure because bank wasn’t diligent enough

Given some of the excessive harassment (which is illegal) that Chase has been accused of for some people in arrears on their loans, it is somewhat surprising that in this case they didn’t exhaustively attempt to get a response from the borrower for a loan months behind in payment.  But of course that is easily explained by the fact that Chase’s overall corporate demeanor seems to be split between being the bad buy and some serious ineptness.

Incidentally, despite the fact that this article starts out talking about Washington Mutual, the time frame puts the ownership solely in Chase’s hands, as this story began more than 8 months after Chase acquired WaMu.

Hans and Marina Oosterveen were in for a rude awakening the summer of 2009 when they arrived at one of the two houses they own in Haines City. Posted was a for sale sign, plus the locks had been changed. What they learned when the spoke to the real estate agent left them in shock. They had been foreclosed.

“There was a property manager who was supposed to pay the bills: utilities, insurance, taxes, mortgage, who decided to pocket the money,” said Stanz.

Yet the couple was says it was totally unaware anything was amiss. That was because they never received any notification from the mortgage holder, Washington Mutual, which was eventually seized by the federal government. Stanz placed the responsibility solely on Washington Mutual. Once monthly mortgage payments ceased being paid, it began sending notices to the Oosterveen. The problem was, the notices were going to the Haines City addresses, not the address in The Netherlands, which Stanz said the bank was fully aware was the permanent residence.

I had this happen with Countrywide Home Loans once. I had just switched to their electronic only bill service and expected it to work like paper bills, where you get an email telling you the bill is ready.  Countrywide however didn’t send such an email and expected you to download the bill on your own volition.  When I didn’t get notification of a bill and as a result didn’t make a mortgage payment, Countrywide called our rarely used home number over and over again for two weeks while we were on vacation, despite the fact that they had my cell phone number and email address.

When something as big as foreclosure is at stake, it is simply inexcusable that the bank didn’t exhaust all possible ways to communicate with the borrowers.  Of course the story goes on with Chase being the bad boy and making it really hard for the homeowners to rectify the situation.

“They told my clients they wanted $39,000 within five days, no ifs, ands or buts,” said Stanz, who challenged the deadline. He needed time to review the charges and fees. While there were legitimate fees, there were also “junk fees” that tacked on additional, costs, which he challenged and was successful in getting the majority removed.

He urged his client to err on the side of caution and recommended they overpay which the Oosterveens did to the tune of $41,000. But even doing that did not result in the account being brought current.

“I wrote four to five letters, a letter each week, asking for proof of reinstatement of the loan,” said Stanz. To no avail.

Banking should be about relationships.  Is this really the way you want to related to your bank?

Is Chase devious or inept?

Yet another example that makes us wonder if Chase could really be this inept or are they possibly up to something.  In this case, Chase has a lien on the property but apparently can’t find the loan.

My chapter 7 was discharged in jan 2010, my 1st mortgage (GMAC) & 2nd (WAMU/Chase), was also included. I tried to a loan mod for the past two years with GMAC but finaly they denied. Sadly I decided to do a short sale, I informed both banks about my decision, but chase says that I dont have a account with them. I spoke to about 5 people, all have the same answer. They say that they cant find my loan. Is this possible, they have a lein on the property. What are they upto?, I feel that they trying to do something to us. Anybody has any ideas.

I realize the potential for a Chapter 7 discharge to muddy the waters on a second mortgage, but hey, aren’t banks supposed to be good at all that numbers and legal stuff?  🙂  Perhaps the loan really was discharged and the remaining lien is just Chases way of giving the homeowner the middle finger for discharging the debt through bankruptcy.

How to tell Chase what you really think

People express their frustration with Chase in different ways and today I was pleasantly surprised to find a protester out in front of my local Chase branch.  If we all responded to Chase’s shenanigans like her, perhaps they wouldn’t misbehave so much.

Unsolicited Chase loan modification leads to foreclosure

This story is particular heinous on the part of Chase.  The homeowners were tooling along just fine in the home they owned for 17 years, having never missed a mortgage payment, when out of the blue Chase offered them an unsolicited loan modification and the chance to lower their payment.  Under the various stages of the process of working towards a permanent modification, the homeowners made all required payments.

Chase then dropped a bomb on them and told them they were behind $50,000 and needed to pay up or get foreclosed upon.  Unable to come up with the surprise balloon payment, Chase foreclosed upon them and they are now fighting eviction.

Chase’s behavior essentially amount to entrapment.

This is a new low for Chase.

Chase fraud protection – now you see it, now you don’t

This story pretty much confirms what we’ve seen though other reports, that Chase has little to no interest in helping you avoid fraud on your debit card or in limiting your loss after the fact.  In many cases they seem to blame fraud on the customer for not protecting their card well enough or simply accusing the customer of having performed the fraudulent transactions themselves.

In short, when they are truly on the hook because the law says so (with credit cards) their fraud protection seems to do the job, but when the law doesn’t force them to be responsible (with debit cards) they seem to skirt responsibility whenever possible.

My wife and I formed and S corporation as we are both independent contractors. Me in the environmental industry, she in Property Management. We opened a business account with Chase bank. One of the alluring aspects was their highly touted “Fraud Protection”. Since we already use a Visa Card issued from Chase and they call us with any suspicious activity on the card, it seemed like we would be protected. Sometimes in fact, they do not push through a Visa charge because it’s not consistent with our purchasing patterns. While annoying this was also reassuring as regards FRAUD PROTECTION.

I can tell you that when Chase is “on the hook” for Visa charges to a credit card, their FRAUD Protection is top drawer. On the other hand, when the money is stolen from an individuals account via ATM or Debit card, Chase Bank sings another tune. They just DO NOT care. Essentially…the money is not theirs, why should they?

Our story continues:

Well, starting in April someone must have skimmed my wife’s debit card numbers or something, because money started disappearing from the account. Neither of us were missing a card, and these were debit card charges WITHOUT the use of the pin number, so “Credit charges to our Debit card…I guess? I don’t know, I’m not a banker.

Read the rest of the story at chase-sucks.com