Does Chase only do the right thing when the media gets involved?

This story follows a very typical pattern with Chase:

1. Borrower is mistreated in some way
2. Borrower exhausts all attempts to resolve the issue with Chase
3. Borrower complains to the media which does a story
4. Chase does an about face

JPMorgan Chase, which already is under fire for overcharging troops on active duty, decided two months ago to end a program which has helped hundreds of service men and women by allowing them to defer student loan payments while on active duty, NBC News has learned.

Chase’s decision to end the voluntary program came to light when the bank was contacted by the wife of a soldier serving in Afghanistan, and she was told the bank decided in December to stop allowing active-duty troops to delay paying their student loans.

“They informed me that they are no longer deferring private student loans for active duty military personnel,” said Kerri Napoli, whose husband, Army Pfc. Andrew Napoli, is now serving near Kandahar.

“The first words out of my mouth were, ‘How could you do that during a war?'” said Kerri Napoli.

After repeated conversations with Chase, Napoli says she told the bank last month that she had contacted NBC News. The next day, she says, the bank told her it would grant her husband an exception to the new policy and defer his loan.

The bank also has had second thoughts about ending a program aimed at helping U.S. troops with their family finances.

And here it is …

After NBC News contacted the bank about why it had stopped allowing deferred payments, a Chase official said that decision was being reversed and the program would be reinstated.

“Upon review, we have decided to reinstitute the loan deferment for all active-duty service members who request it,” said Kristin Lemkau, a Chase spokeswoman.

Read the entire story …

Banks before people

You are a bank, and have a client that makes you quite a bit of money, but you suspect or know that client may substantially involved in fraud.  What do you do?

If you are JPMorgan Chase, according to a suit filed by Madoff trustee Irving Picard, you sweep aside your concerns and continue business as usual.

Lawsuit Charges JPMorgan Suspected But Ignored Madoff Fraud

Bernie Madoff was not a criminal mastermind who single-handedly made fools of the world’s sophisticated investors.

An explosive lawsuit charges he got help from his friendly bankers at Chase — who had serious suspicions but coldly decided not to make waves while they were raking in a half-billion dollars in fees and profits from the Ponzi schemer’s victims.

The suit, filed by Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee for those victims, seeks $6.4 billion from JPMorgan Chase for the investors who took paper losses totaling $65 billion.

“Incredibly, the bank’s top executives were warned in blunt terms about speculation that Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme — yet the bank appears to have been concerned only with protecting its own investments,” said Deborah Renner, a lawyer on Picard’s team.

Read more …

The ethical bad-news didn’t stop at taking fees from Madoff; Chase is also accused of taking its own money to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, that were invested with Madoff out of his funds because they suspected his operations and returns were not above board.

Closing your account with Chase? Download all your statements first!

One customer, after having switch to online only estatements, and some time later having become disillusioned with Chase, closed his account, found that he couldn’t access old statements online anymore.  So he called Chase, and they informed him that his account was closed and they couldn’t help him.  So he mentioned that he could go in to any branch and pay $5 per statement.  Shouldn’t they have mentioned this?  No, the replied, it’s $6 per statement.

Oh bother.

Chase’s compassion department

To characterize just how far Chase has come from being personal as a banking institution (you know, what banks used to be like), they are trying to foreclose on the home of a woman whose husband was killed trying to sell jewelry over Craigslist to be able to make their mortgage payments.

Nice going Chase.

CNN’s list of the 8 least evil banks

CNN recently named the 8 least evil banks.  Guess who didn’t make the list?  Yup, Chase.

Holding payment makes customer late

I surely would not what happened in this story past Chase:  The customer claims that they made a payment two weeks early but Chase held the payment and then claimed it was late, as a way to jack up the customers rates, possibly because they customer had a high balance.

For example, our Chase Visa which they changed over to Chase “Slate” Visa went from 14%, to 16% to 18% finally all the way in one fell swoop in Jan ‘09 to 29.99%, the maximum allowable by law. Their reason? We were late on our payment, we called our bank to ask how a payment made 2 weeks in advance was somehow late? Their response, Chase held the payment until after the due date, then processed it.

This is illegal right? Not at the time it wasn’t, Chase claims they did no such thing and basically said prove it. Anyway fast forward to Jan ‘11 and I’m still fighting to get our rate lowered since we are NEVER late and they know it. Their response and this is a direct quote “It is not Chase Bank policy to adjust interest rates at customer request”

Congratulations Chase, Florida hates you!

This is great.  Chase is not very popular in Florida to begin with, as it has only 3% of that states deposits, and yet it accounts for 9% of complaints filed against banks in Florida.  The study’s author concludes the results like this:

Even the strongest banks, however, can have many complaints if they are not serving their customers well.

To compare Chase’s ranking in the study to that of other top ranking financial institutions:

Among other findings, a credit union cracked the Top 5 complaint list: Space Coast Credit Union, which assumed assets of the failed Eastern Financial Florida FCU. Saxon Mortgage Services, which assumed part of the mortgage portfolio of the failed Taylor, Bean & Whitaker operation, also ranked high for its size.

Yes, Chase is in the same class as banks that FAILED!

Chase overcharges troops on mortgages

This story makes me wonder if this practice was deliberate because they felt as if they would never be caught?  And here is even more evidence that Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s statement that no-one is getting foreclosed upon that shouldn’t be is complete crap.  Here are more than a dozen families that WERE incorrectly foreclosed upon.

NBC News

updated 1/17/2011 5:22:50 PM ET 2011-01-17T22:22:50

One of the nation’s biggest banks — JP Morgan Chase — admits it has overcharged several thousand military families for their mortgages, including families of troops fighting in Afghanistan. The bank also tells NBC News that it improperly foreclosed on more than a dozen military families.

The admissions are an outgrowth of a lawsuit filed by Marine Capt. Jonathan Rowles. Rowles is the backseat pilot of an F/A 18 Delta fighter jet and has served the nation as a Marine for five years. He and his wife, Julia, say they’ve been battling Chase almost that long.

The dispute apparently caused the bank to review its handling of all mortgages involving active-duty military personnel. Under a law known as the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA), active-duty troops generally get their mortgage interest rates lowered to 6 percent and are protected from foreclosure. Chase now appears to have repeatedly violated that law, which is designed to protect troops and their families from financial stress while they’re in harm’s way.

A Chase official told NBC News that some 4,000 troops may have been overcharged. What’s more, the bank discovered it improperly foreclosed on the homes of 14 military families.

“We are deeply appreciative of those who fight to protect our country and Chase funds a number of programs that provide benefits to military personnel and veterans, and while any customer mistake is regrettable, we feel particularly badly about the mistakes we made here,” Chase chief communications officer Kristin Lemkau said in a statement to NBC News.

She said that beginning this week Chase will be mailing a total of about $2 million in refunds to families that may have been overcharged. She says most of the families improperly foreclosed on have gotten or will get their homes back. A bank official described what happened here as “grim,” but emphasized the mistakes were inadvertent, not malicious.

The news comes as millions of Americans are struggling to keep their homes. Banks have come under fire for allegedly improperly foreclosing on homes across the country.

This wasn’t brought to light by Chase’s own internal investigation UNTIL they were sued by one of the wrongly charged customers.

Update:  Chase has agreed to refund $2,000,000 to the customers involved, which pegs the amount of overcharge at $500 per customer.