Is Chase killing off Leisure Rewards program

Our post some time ago on the points changes (read, devaluation) for the Chase Leisure Rewards program has generated quite a few comments, including one containing this helpful information:

Ok, here’s the really important thing: He said the program is ending in July. I asked if I needed to cash out my points before them. He said no. I didn’t believe him; I’m going to redeem them before July. He told me that if I want to keep earning points I should use my Chase Freedom Mastercard. I told him that I’m not going to go further into debt just to win points. He didn’t know what to say to that.

More clarification is necessary on whether they are killing off the entire program or just for some cards (i.e. debit cards).

Use those points or lose them.

JPMorgan Chase gets nailed for fraud in bond case

This story clearly shows that Chase has a history defrauding its customers to benefit itself.

NEW YORK, March 7 (Reuters) – JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) has settled a lawsuit accusing it of defrauding bond investors out of at least $1.2 billion through bad record keeping, court records show.

The settlement of the five-year-old case comes as banks’ ability to handle paperwork faces intense scrutiny, especially over their mortgage operations.

Investors had accused JPMorgan of deleting records on $46.8 billion of bonds from roughly 6,500 bond issues that had not been cashed in, and then covering up its mistakes.

They said the second-largest U.S. bank did this so it could retain for itself unclaimed bond proceeds that belonged to thousands of investors.

JPMorgan “stole the trust funds and concealed the theft long enough to try to run out the statute of limitations,” an amended complaint filed in 2009 said.

If that wasn’t clear enough, Chase is accused of deleting records so that it would be harder for people to claim bond proceeds so Chase could keep any of the proceeds that went unclaimed.

Chase: The squeaky wheel gets the grease

I came across a slightly bizarre review posted on a Better Business Bureau clone called TrustLink

Ref: KELLY WITZEL, Consumer Banking, 1705 E Capitol Expressway, San Jose, CA 95121 (408-528-7301) kelly.witzel@chase.com

I am writing this letter to let you know how appreciative I am of the great job that Kelly has been doing for my company.

I own a telecom cabling business here in San Jose. For six months, I had a problem with Chase getting me the correct Business checks. Every order I received, I got the wrong checks. I placed at least 4 orders for business checks. Each time, I would receive the wrong checks. Each time I took a copy of the check that I wanted printed to the bank and showed them! I still received the wrong checks each time.

I became so angry that I wrote a letter to chase advising them if this happens one more time, I would take my business elsewhere. I was so angry; I decided to writer this letter to each branch in San Jose.

As soon as Kelly heard about this letter, she called me. She was very apologetic and wanted very much to make things right for me. I was very impressed with her eagerness to help me. She made me feel like I did matter with Chase, that I am not just a number!

Kelly was able to get me the checks that I ordered. I was very impressed with hear desire to help me and to keep me as a personal and business customer.

Any issues I have, I just call Kelly now and she always returns my calls and assists me with what I need.

I am satisfied with the excellent service that Kelly offers every time I call.

If it were not for Kelly, I would have closed all four of my accounts with Chase. Thanks to Kelly, she was able to convince me to stay with Chase.

Please let her know how grateful I am to be able to rely on her expertise to handle my accounts.

Sincerely,

I’m sure this customer intended for the review to be a positive one (he gave Chase five stars) but when you consider how they completely failed at the simplest bank-type-stuff (getting checks right) and the fact that he had to go to extraordinary measures (mailing every single branch in a rather large town) to get someones attention, it doesn’t look all the great for Chase.

Yet another example that sometimes you have to complain incredibly loudly for Chase to assign someone competent to help you.

Also, if you are in the San Jose area and are having problems with Chase, you might give Kelly a call. 🙂

Chase testing higher fees in select markets

According to the Wall Street Journal (Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Experiment With Higher Checking Fees, 2/19/11) Chase is testing new and higher fee regimes in select markets. These test are being done on new accounts only

We can only presume they are trying to find the point at which customers push back too much.

The nation’s largest banks are testing how much their customers are willing to pay for checking-account services that used to be free.

Bank of America Corp. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., the two biggest banks as measured by assets, have begun trying new fees in pilot tests from Hayward, Wis., to Newnan, Ga.

They include an account that charges a $3 monthly fee for debit cards. Another account designed for electronic-only banking charges customers a $12 monthly fee if customers go to a teller for assistance. In the test programs, some bare-bones checking accounts also now carry base fees ranging from $6 to $9 a month.

The new fees, which are limited to accounts for new and prospective customers in the pilot programs, can typically be waived if customers meet certain criteria.

The pilot testing is the latest indication of the push to boost fees as banks scramble to make up billions of dollars of revenue expected to be lost from new federal restrictions on debit cards.

Chase seems to gong further than other banks in their test of new fees

Chase, which has launched the tests in some of its smaller markets such as northern Wisconsin and Atlanta, is one of the first banks to explore monthly fees on debit cards.

Until now, debit cards have usually been a free part of a basic checking account. One new account Chase is testing includes a $3 monthly fee if the customer wants a debit card. It is aimed at less-affluent customers who don’t keep a lot of money in the bank.

“My anticipation is that we will change these tests over time and might introduce some others,” said Charles Scharf, who runs J.P. Morgan’s retail operations and describes the law as “a terrible mistake for consumers, small banks and small merchants.”

Chase CEO Dimon to get big bonus

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is getting a $12 million bonus, in case anyone was wondering where their overdraft fees from carefully managed overdraft generating deposit ordering is going.

How Chase plans to get around debit swipe fee limit

Congress is fast working towards approving legislation that will limit fees merchants pay for debit card transactions at 12 cents per transaction.  How does Chase plan to get around this?  ABC News reports that they are considering a cap on how much can be purchased.

While the story doesn’t mention it, I suspect this would be to force people to do multiple transactions where they might previously have done just one, thereby increasing the amount of swipe fees the banks can legally charge the merchants.

Let the lawsuits begin, Chase gets sued over subprime mortgages

Perhaps the $1.8 billion JPMorgan Chase paid for Washington Mutual’s assets wasn’t a bargain after all.  They’ve tried to deny responsibility for any of the toxic assets that were sold to others by WaMu but the FDIC pushed back hard on that one.

Today Allstate filed a $787 million lawsuit against Chase for mortgage-backed securities they bought from WaMu.

Allstate sues JPMorgan over mortgage debt losses

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK, Feb 16 (Reuters) – Allstate Corp (ALL.N) sued JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) on Wednesday to recover losses after the bank allegedly misrepresented the risks on more than $757 million of mortgage securities the insurer bought.

The lawsuit against the second-largest U.S. bank was filed just seven weeks after Allstate filed a similar lawsuit against Bank of America Corp (BAC.N), the largest bank, over losses on more than $700 million of mortgage securities.

Jennifer Zuccarelli, a JPMorgan spokeswoman, declined to comment on the lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday in the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Allstate, the largest publicly-traded U.S. home and auto insurer, is one of many to sue lenders for allegedly misleading them about mortgage securities.

The Northbrook, Illinois-based company said it suffered “significant losses” after JPMorgan and its affiliates misled it into believing it was buying “highly-rated, safe securities” backed by high-quality loans.

“In fact,” Allstate said, “defendants knew the pool was a toxic mix of loans given to borrowers that could not afford the properties, and thus were highly likely to default.”

Read More …

Ouch!

Madoff noose tightens around JPMorgan Chase

Information from the latest article in the Wall Street Journal (What J.P. Morgan Knew about Madoff Fraud, 2/17/11) doesn’t look good for JPMorgan Chase.

The article points to an internal formal report on Madoff that raised suspicions and quotes Bernard Madoff implicating the banks complicity in the fraud:

The question over what the banks knew was rekindled Wednesday when Mr. Madoff, in an interview with the New York Times, asserted that banks and hedge funds, which he declined to name, “were complicit” in his fraud.

“They had to know,” he said.