According to this article, when WaMu was alive its fees represented 12 to 15% of the Office of Thrift Supervisions budget, one possible factor in why the OTS didn’t clamp down on WaMu’s lax lending practices.
I wonder what percentage of their budget Chase represents now?
Legal & regulatory, WaMu failure | admin April 16, 2010 | 
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Three former Chase executives have formed an investment entity to target the purchase of US based banks. Encore Financial Partners Inc will “seek to acquire an manage banks with a focus on consumer lending and technology-driven, back-office functions because of its founders experience.”
Does anyone else find that incredibly funny? Here at the front lines of Chase complaint central, it sure doesn’t look like Chase has their act together with handling the day-t0-day banking functions that should just work.
Customer service, Ineptitude | admin April 15, 2010 | Comments (0)
The Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act provides guidelines that must be followed in the settlement of a real estate transaction, including and especially loans. If you feel that you have been mistreated by Chase with respect to the closing of your loan with them, you can read about RESPA here and read about how to file a RESPA violation complaint here.
Now even Amazon.com is a place where people are saying bad things about Chase: Amazon.com customer discussions. The gist of the discussion is that people are not happy with the Amazon.com Chase credit card. Here is one comment from the discussion:
“I opened an Amazon Visa through Chase. It is a huge scam. I have had credit cards for 30 years, never once a late charge, anything. On this card, I had a less than $500 balance. I mailed the payment 9 days before due date. The due date happened to be Sunday. Chase posted my payment on Monday, but said it was late. Charged $49 late fee, and $8 interest fee for two months, even though I paid in full. There are much better credit card companies out there. BEWARE!”
As this article points out, despite claiming to have hired 16,000 people to staff their home ownership centers and help people with loan modifications, it clearly isn’t enough if you believe the many posts every day/week/month from people struggling through the process.
Loan modification | admin April 14, 2010 | Comments (0)
Chase easily brought home a hefty profit of $3.3 billion in the 1st quarter 2010, mostly from its investment banking division and trading arm. It is amazing what you can do when the government will give you money for almost nothing. Their loan portfolio is of course still performing poorly, a little more poorly in the 1st quarter 2010 than the previous quarter, as they have added to their loan reserves.
What is interesting though is information in this article about Chase’s 2nd lien loan portfolio, a not insubstantial $131 billion in size. While only 5% of the outstanding loans are delinquent, about 50% of those loans are underwater. Is it just me or does that sound like a HUGE time bomb waiting to go off.
If you want to read Chase’s David Lowman’s full recent testimony before Congress here it is.
Wouldn’t you know it, a major loophole in the new law. According to this article by Business Week, business credit cards are COMPLETELY exempt from the new rules.
Here is a recent analysis of Chase’s efforts to confuse customers into opting-in to overdraft protection, which provides no real benefit but makes them billions each year. The bottom line is that Chase is purposefully using confusing language, alternating positive/negative language, and scare tactics to get consumers to either opt-in explicitly or by accident. These tactics are a new low for a bank like Chase.
DON’T DO IT. Debit overdraft protection provides you no benefit. If you are out of money in your checking account every purchase will cost you an overdraft fee of $33 or more. Use your credit card instead. For comparison, if you made a $5 charge (a latte) on your credit card and carried it for 5 years at a 30% interest rate, it would still be less than 20 bucks, which is WAY less than a single overdraft fee.
