Chase admits its their fault, but won’t refund fees

Found this recently in response to a post about Chase:

Had an acct with chase and they even put a 4 day hold on payroll and a state tax checks. i totally stopped banking there after they sent my elec bill back even though i had the money there. they admitted their mistake, but only covered the fee for that check there was 2 other small checks their fee caused to bounce and they wouldnt fix it. so i closed my acct there, ive dealt with numerous banks and by far they are the worst.

So let me get this straight, Chase bounces a check they shouldn’t have, and the customer gets assessed a fee.  That fee drags the account negative so that two two other small checks bounce and he is assessed two more fees.  Chase admits their mistake and refunds the first fee but refuses to refund the other fees even though it is clearly their fault.

Perhaps I have just seen so many stories like this about Chase that I am not outraged or even surprised.  Yes, Chase does stuff like this all the time.

Chase’s own catch-22

This came from a comment to one of our posts, but it is much to interesting to leave burried there.

Chase has been reading a lot of Kafka lately. Especially, the Castle, and they’re inspired!: There are lots of people caught in a terrible loop of Chase “losing Documentation” and making people continually re-send in forms for an MHA even after they are appoved for one by the gov’t. So we had a Chase bank mortgage specialist at a Chase bank fax all our forms for us but Chase still claims they didn’t receive all the required information and then demanded even more information not asked for on the application. Since we own and live in a duplex we must now send them proof we do not have not formed a homeowners association with our housemates, for example. But the real test of their devious cleverness is a scam based on their own bank statement paperwork. Please admire its Kafka-esque brilliance. On Chase bank statements they leave the last page “left intentionally blank” but they do not number this last page. For example, a Chase account may have 6 pages and all the pages say, i.e., 1 of 6, 2 of 6, but page 6, the blank one, is not numbered 6 of 6. we have been continually turned down for an MHA because we are not sending them, Chase- holder of our mortgage and the bank where we have our accounts- complete bank statements even though we do send them that 6th page. Since it doesn’t say 6 of 6 they claim our application isn’t complete and make us start over from the very beginning. Going on Month 7. Evidently that’s nothing, most people who have tried have been trying for twice this long. There is one recorded incidence of Chase approving an MHA but it was too late and the house was already in foreclosure…

Anyone see the movie Brazil?  That is just brilliant, don’t number your statements properly so that anyone sending them in as proof of a bank statement will have an incomplete statement.  Brilliant!

Chase has man jailed for trying to cash valid cashiers check

This is probably the most horrible thing I have heard come out of Chase’s inept culture.

When they purchased a home in 2006, Perez and Vargas obtained two loans from Chase’s predecessor, Washington Mutual Bank, including one loan in the amount of $312,000 secured by a first trust deed, and a second, home equity line of credit for $38,610 (the loan transactions). On February 6, 2008, Perez and Vargas withdrew $38,000 from the home equity line of credit, receiving a cashier’s check.

On November 6, 2008, Perez and Vargas presented the cashier’s check for payment at Chase’s National City branch. A branch employee informed Perez and Vargas that because the cashier’s check exceeded $10,000, cashing it in full would “require the bank to generate substantial paperwork” and cause a delay in receiving the funds which “could be avoided if the bank paid out $10,000 in cash and the balance in another bank check for $28,000.” Vargas and Perez were informed that to cash the $28,000 check that day, they “would have to go to three other banks and cash out each subsequent bank check in amounts of $10,000.00 or less at each bank.” Following the direction of the bank branch employee, Perez and Vargas cashed the $38,000 cashier’s check, receiving $10,000 in cash and a second cashier’s check in the amount of $28,000. Perez and Vargas proceeded to Chase’s Chula Vista branch, where they were given another $10,000 in cash and a third cashier’s check in the amount of $18,000.

Perez and Vargas then sought to cash the $18,000 cashier’s check at Chase’s Imperial Beach branch. According to declarations submitted by Chase, Perez presented the $18,000 cashier’s check to an operations supervisor, Nena Gelacio, who reviewed information on Chase’s computer system indicating that Perez’s account required investigation for “excess activity.” Gelacio became suspicious and asked Perez why he was attempting to cash a check that had been issued earlier in the day. Perez told Gelacio that he had cashed similar checks that day at Chase’s National City and Chula Vista branches. After receiving this information, Gelacio, the branch manager and assistant branch manager conducted an investigation and learned that in February 2008, Perez and Vargas had received a $38,000 check from the home equity line of credit account, which had not been cashed as of November 5, 2008, and that the account was closed in May 2008 and put “on collection.” The assistant branch manager called the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department (Sheriff’s Department) and requested that the department “investigate a possible fraud committed against the Bank by Perez and Vargas.”

Sheriff’s Department deputies arrived, and the assistant branch manager told them that the bank believed that the $18,000 check Perez was attempting to cash was “drawn on funds from a closed account.” The deputies took possession of the cash held by Perez ($20,000) and the $18,000 cashier’s check, and arrested Perez. Perez was jailed for five days. The San Diego District Attorney’s Office later dropped all charges.

Did you get that?  The customer followed Chase’s advice and was ultimately jailed for it.

Chase agrees to reverse fee, if you sign up for additional services

Is this Chase’s new way to force people into signing up for services they don’t need?

This customer went to a Chase branch to complain about an incorrectly levied service charge and was bombarded by offers of every kind.  At one point, the teller told him that they would waive the fee if they could show him how to use online bill payment.

His other observation was that the fact that Chase employees were bombarding customers with a ton of offers in the branch made the wait time longer for those in line.

Nice work Chase.

Chase loan mod – delay, delay, delay, foreclose

Cindy reports:

Trying since April 2009 for home loan mod.. made my payments.. did everything they asked.. and now on June 23, 2010.. my property of 25 plus years will be sold at auction…i’m fighting this.. but after reading your letters.. i think this is what they do.. i also.. submitted paper..after paper.. call after call.. and now no one i’ve spoke with is there.. and they can’t find papers.. or say i didn’t send papers..

What can you do ??

We’ve reported this same exact scenario many times.  What is still an open question is whether Chase is doing this on purpose or because they are inept and just can’t seem to get their act together.

Chase becomes more transparent by becoming less transparent

Sometimes you just have to stand back from all the negative news about Chase and laugh.  It is really quite hilarious what they do at times.

Like this latest letter Chase’s Paymentech subsidiary sent to customers, under the guise of being even more transparent with its customers about its merchant processing fees.  Even one recipient of the letter, a lead plaintiff in the lawsuit against Visa and MasterCard, can’t understand what they are trying to say.

That BankSimple concept we wrote about a few days ago is looking better and better.

Guy tries to pay mortgage in full, Chase refuses

If you can read through all the legal jargon, this is an interesting story.

It is hard to understand all the back story, but what is clear is that at some point, Robert Traversari wanted to write a check to pay his entire mortgage (some $150,000) off in full.  So he wrote Chase a personal check for the full amount.

Chase refused the payment saying that it was their policy that payments over $5,000 needed to be presented as a certified check.  They foreclosed or tried to foreclose and promptly got sued by Mr. Traversari.

The major discrepancy is that the mortgage was acquired by Chase from another bank and the original mortgage said nothing about payments over a certain amount needing to be presented in a certified check.

This has to make us wonder whether Chase really just wanted to take possession of the house and had no interest in following the rules.

I hereby nominate Chase for the asshole of the month club.

BofA settles for overcharging customers; is Chase next?

Bank of America’s Countrywide unit apparently targeted customers facing foreclosure with exorbitant fees for things like appraisals.

Given that Chase seems to be one of the sleaziest banks around, considering they have admitted to doing things like rearranging the order of deposits and debits to maximize overdraft charges, I can’t help but wonder if they will get caught up in this type of scandal.