Does Chase move credit card due dates forward to maximize late fees?

Here is an accusation from someone that appears to have researched what happened to him and found plenty of others that had the same thing happen; Chase moved up his credit card due date by just a few days without any noticed, in an apparent attempt to make payments late and charge late fees.

The scam was fairly obvious to me. This particular tactic by JP Morgan Chase was to jump their customer’s due dates back in order to force a huge influx of late fees. Since only a small percentage of customers ever bothered to call in to complain (as I did), then even if they refunded the late fee in those particular cases, they were still left with a huge population of customers who simply caved in to the abuse and didn’t bother, or didn’t care enough, to complain.

It seems their strategy was to move the dates forward just enough so people were more likely to barely miss the due date.

Chase closes long-time customer account for no reason

Another story that attests to the mysterious and often backwards ways of Chase.  The story calls the seemingly random closing of good standing customers accounts for no reason (that Chase will give) a mistake, but I can’t help but wonder if Chase just determined the customers weren’t profitable and decided to cut them loose.

MONROE, Wash. – Mike and Meagan Farrell have been customers at their neighborhood bank on Highway 2 in Monroe for six years. First, when it was Washington Mutual and later, when it became Chase.

They’re on a first name basis with the tellers and managers.

“It was our personal banking place, you know, one stop banking,” said Mike Farrell.

The Farrells not only had their checking and savings accounts at Chase; they had individual retirement accounts there, even a savings account for their 10-year-old daughter.

They had tens of thousands of dollars in the bank. And they were happy customers.

“We were considered platinum, premium customers,” said Meagan Farrell.

Then on Saturday, August 27, Meagan walked to the mailbox.

“I went and got the mail, and I opened it up, and I was mortified by what I read,” she said.

Account closing

It was a letter from Chase.

“It says here [in the letter], ‘We are writing to notify you that we are closing your deposit accounts in accordance with your Chase deposit agreement terms and conditions,’” said Mike Farrell.

It was a one-page form letter that said, “Your account will be closed 10 business days from the date of this letter.”

The letter set off a cascade of problems the Farrells are still recovering from. It instructed them to stop using their ATM debit cards and destroy them. Missing among all of the fine print and instructions was any reason for Chase’s drastic actions.

So the Farrells called the phone number on the letter and talked to customer service.

“They just told us, ‘We’re closing your account,’ and they said that they could not give us a reason why,” said Mike.

It was a weekend. So the Farrells figured their friends at the local branch in Monroe would be able to sort it all out on Monday. Yet when they arrived at the bank they’d always counted on, they were in for another shock.

“Our accounts were already frozen and they had already bounced all of our outstanding checks. Even though there was sufficient funds to cover everything,” Meagan Farrell said.

The Farrells say the bankers were sympathetic but said that the decision had been made at the corporate level.

“They also seemed confused. The manager said they usually only see this sort of thing in cases of check fraud, which they knew that we weren’t committing any check fraud,” said Meagan.

Read more …

Artist paints how he feels about Chase

A picture is worth 1000 words.

Are there any laws Chase won’t break?

Another week, another settlement between Chase and some arm of the government for laws that Chase has violated.  The latest $83.3 million settlement is for “violating regulations that prohibit lending money for entities linked to countries engaged in illicit nuclear trade and that cover dealings with Cuba and Sudan.”

Yet another Chase blog

As our visitor traffic continues to consistently climb upward, I find two more blogs against Chase:

http://victoryoverchase.blogspot.com/

http://wchaa.blogspot.com

This seems to point to more people mad at Chase, not less.

When 60 year-olds are posting Chase-Sucks videos to YouTube

You would expect disenchanted hipsters to use YouTube to complain about the businesses they don’t like.  But when 60+ year old customers, not the typical users of social media, are posting Chase Sucks! videos to YouTube, Chase must really have taken a turn for the worse.

JPMorgan Chase guilty (again) of fraud

There are quite a few cases of alleged or admitted fraud that JPMorgan Chase has been involved in recently I’m losing count.  Well here is another one (Wall Street Journal, JPMorgan Settles Muni-Bid Case, 7/8/11).  Does this bank have an ethical bone in its body?

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. agreed to a $228 million settlement to charges it rigged nearly 100 transactions involving municipal-bond auctions, federal and state authorities said.

It is the third, and largest, settlement reached with a bank in a continuing investigation into an alleged nationwide conspiracy to rig municipal-bond bidding processes. Banks bid for the business to invest the proceeds municipalities raise by selling bonds. Last year, Bank of America Corp. agreed to pay $137 million and in May, UBS AG agreed to pay $160.2 million.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, in a civil lawsuit, alleged that J.P. Morgan, the nation’s second largest by assets, manipulated the bidding process from 1997 to 2005. The SEC said agents handling the auctions gave J.P. Morgan a “last look” at all the bids, thereby allowing J.P. Morgan to win the auctions. The SEC complaint also alleged J.P. Morgan submitted intentionally losing bids to allow other banks to win auctions, and steered business to the agents that rigged the bids. The SEC said the rigging happened on at least 93 transactions in 31 states.

The New York-based bank said in a statement that it does not “tolerate anticompetitive activity or violations of law” and that the investigation focused on “a small desk that was discontinued.” The bank also pointed out that the employees, who are no longer at the bank, hid their actions from management.

J.P. Morgan said the net total it would pay was $211.2 million: $51.2 million to the SEC; $50 million to the Internal Revenue Service; $35 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; and $75 million to the states involved. The bank said the payments wouldn’t materially affect its earnings.

There are concurrent court settlements with the various parties involved and there is some overlap, so while the agreement with the states is actually for $92 million, $17 million of that will go to other agencies, said Susan E. Kinsman, a spokeswoman for Connecticut State Attorney General George Jepsen, who headed the investigations for the states.

It is the second settlement J.P. Morgan has reached with the SEC in just over two weeks. In late June, the bank agreed to pay $153.6 million to settle charges its employees aggressively sold a complex debt security while failing to inform the investors about certain material facts.

The muni-auction settlements also included enforcement actions from the Federal Reserve and the OCC demanding that the bank increase its risk compliance management.

Federal tax laws require proceeds of municipal-bond sales to be invested at fair-market value. Bidding agents typically organize a process in which banks compete on bids for the investment business in order to ensure the fair-market-value test is met.

The Justice Department has identified more than a dozen banks as alleged co-conspirators in the bid-rigging probe.

However, federal and state agencies allege widespread collusion between the bidding agents and big banks corrupted the process across dozens of states during the late 1990s and first half of the 2000s. The Justice Department has identified more than a dozen banks as alleged co-conspirators. To date, 18 people have been charged.

“When powerful financial institutions … conspire with each other to intentionally violate regulations designed to ensure fair investment prices, the integrity of the municipal marketplace becomes corrupted,” said Elaine C. Greenberg, head of the SEC’s Municipal Securities and Public Pensions Unit.

As part of its deal with the Justice Department, J.P. Morgan won’t face a criminal antitrust prosecution if it meets a series of conditions, including cooperating with the investigation. The bank also admitted and accepted responsibility for the illegal conduct of its former employees.

The SEC also said Thursday that it has barred former J.P. Morgan vice president James L. Hertz from the securities industry based on his guilty plea last December in connection with municipal-bond transactions. Mr. Hertz has been cooperating with the probe.

Please just talk to us Chase

A reader sent us this:

We need help on trying to determine what we owe chase on a vehicle.  We were making payments regularly, but business went bad and had to file bankruptcy so the truck had to be included.  While weathering job loss and poor economy we were unable to maintain bankruptcy payments.  I have tried to repeatedly to contact them to make the back payments or work out something.  They would not respond and then sent a wrecker to reposses it, but it wasn’t here.  We want to settle the debt, but don’t know what to do.  We feel that our hands are tied.  We don’t want the truck to go back b/c we feel that we wouldn’t have any way of capping the ceiling of the debt.  We feel that they are crooks and don’t know what is in our best interest in handling this matter.  Has anyone had a similar issue with any results?