In the first six months of 2010, Chase spend about $3 million on lobbying Congress and various federal agencies, more than any of the other 10 top TARP recipient banks. More on this story here.
Legal & regulatory | admin August 31, 2010 | 
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Many sites, including ours, have made it to the first Google results page for search terms like “chase sucks”, but to really spread the word about Chase’s horrible business practices, it is important to get high page ranking on more common search terms.
Chase Bank protest site chase-sucks.com (we are chase-sucks.org) has managed to make it to the second results page for the organic search term “chase bank”.
I am happy to announce that our site has pretty well dominated the searches for Chase’s leisure rewards credit cards, nabbing the first page second result for “leisure rewards” and first page third results for “chase leisure rewards”.
Chase-sucks.com recently posted a letter sent to them regarding a Chase customer that had a very strange experience when buying New York State Lottery tickets on their credit card. Instead of a normal charge, Chase, under the guise of classifying the purchase as for illegal gambling, classified the purchase under a cash advance and added a $10 fee an an interest charge. when contacted, Chase claimed that the mistake was the fault of the New York State Lottery, but when the customer contacted the Lottery, the Lottery confirmed that it was Chase that was responsible, and was using a loophole created by a new law in effect in June 2010 that allowed them to do this.
So basically they are using this loophole to bilk customers out of extra fees.
This would be the first time I have heard anyone say they had an easy time getting a loan modification with Chase. I am guessing either:
For the rest of us, it is still slogging it out in the trenches.
Jim and Alexis Bellino, last season’s newest cast members of “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” recently defaulted on a $4.6 million loan for their stately home on Circle Drive in Newport Beach.
According to documents obtained exclusively by The Orange County Register, the Bellinos failed to pay $83,856.92 as of April 26 on their home loan, and faced the threat of foreclosure, plus having their home sold at public auction to the highest bidder.
The original loan amount was for $4.5 million. Because the Bellinos missed all mortgage payments since the first of the year, the debt — with fees and penalties — swelled up to $4.62 million, the documents indicate.
However, the auction (or trustee sale), scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 25, never happened. The Bellinos modified the loan on their home, a foreclosure did not occur, and the family never had to move.
“Chase Bank has been great to work with on my modification,” Jim Bellino said in an interview Friday. “The trustee sale has been canceled, and the modification has been agreed upon.”
Loan modification | admin August 29, 2010 | Comments (0)
I recently came across a blog post from about three years ago, which has racked up more comments than any other I have seen, and has people still commenting today, three years later.
How Chase Bank Has Forgotten About the Customer
I had a call into Chase about an issue with my credit card the other night and couldn’t believe what I heard. My discussion with a customer service representative was not going where I wanted it to, so I asked to talk to a supervisor. I was told that there was no supervisor to talk to, but if I wanted to, I could just give her my number and she’d have someone call me back. I found this to be quite interesting (no supervisor? come on!) and tried to reason with the rep to have someone with any authority get on the phone, but got the same thing . . . nothing.
From there, I went on to tell her that I was a loyal customer for around 13 years and was just not happy with the service I was getting. Want to hear the response?
“If you’re not happy, then I’ll close your account for you right now”
Really?!?
“I just told you I was a loyal customer for 13 years and you’re telling me to close my account if I’m not happy?”
“Yes, sir. Do you want me to close it?”
(I took notes, because I was so surprised by this response)
I don’t know about you, but I don’t think companies are in business to chase away their customers, do you? Somewhat stunned, I got off the phone and waited for morning to call back and talk to a supervisor. When I got on the phone with a supervisor (after telling the customer service rep I was calling about bad service), it happened again! I explained that I was not happy with the service I recevied and was almost instantly told that if I wasn’t happy then she would close my account . . . she almost begged me to do so.In a daze, I laughed and asked if this was a big joke. It was not. Not only was it surprising in content, but in tone as well; she was simply nasty to me. I was told that the company now had a policy which requires customer service and their supervisors to close someone’s account if they don’t like the service they are getting.
Apparently, Chase has established a policy where they send away people who aren’t happy with their service. There is no attempt to rectify the situation. They just want you, the problem, to get lost.
Why waste their time keeping someone happy? There are plenty of other customers to rip off on both ends of banking (low savings interest rates and high borrowing interest rates).
With this situation in mind, I’m asking you to boycott Chase. It is the customer that comes first, and if they are too lazy to give good service, then they don’t deserve to have any customers, plain and simple.
What Can We Learn From This Situation?
Customer service is Paramount! If you treat your customers like crap, there will be a backlash against you, especially in the days of the internet. If you treat them well, they will tell their friends and you will only see positive results! With so much choice (except when it comes to cable TV & telephone providers), we, the consumer, have the power to not only choose another, better, option, but also to tell the rest of the world of our experiences.
Three years later and Chase still hasn’t learned this lesson.
Interesting | admin August 28, 2010 | Comments (1)
A Wall Street Journal article this morning reminded me to warn everyone about one of the banks’ newest tricks to sidestep the new rules from the Credit Card Act of 2009: professional cards.
These cards, also known as small-business or corporate credit cards, are not subject to the limits on interest rate changes, shortened payment cycles, inactivity fees, applying payments to the lowest interest balance first, large over limit fees and changing card agreements without any advanced notice. Banks have been inundating ordinary consumers with offers for these cards, about 2 1/2 times as many as they used to, offers that often don’t adequately distinguish these as a different class of card that is not subject to the new laws.
Chase is, of course, among the banks using this tactic heavily. Chase’s Ink card is one of these so called professional cards that is immune to the new laws. Being late on your new Ink card by only one day would allow Chase to raise the rate to 29.99%. Chase’s website for the Ink card touts benefits mostly reminiscent of consumer grade cards, such as rewards and cash back, offering little distinction as to why these cards are better for small businesses, or anyone, than normal credit cards that are subject to the new laws. Perhaps the Chase Ink card should be called the Red Ink card, as it will cost you more.
Don’t be fooled, you don’t need one of these professional cards.
A JP Morgan Chase bank teller is accused of stealing nearly $40,000 from customers at the Boca Raton branch where he worked so he could pay his bills, according to an arrest report.
Israel Conley, 20, was arrested Aug. 19 on more than a dozen charges of fraud and larceny.
The Boca Raton man had been working at the branch at 240 East Palmetto Park Road for about two months when he allegedly started withdrawing thousands of dollars from customer accounts in July, the report said.
His victims were mostly elderly customers, ranging from 57-years-old to 99-years-old, police said.
On August 16, the branch manager alerted a corporate investigator about some suspicious transactions she came across during an audit. Conley had processed $36,800 in withdrawls, but the customer withdrawl slips were written in the same handwriting, according to the report.
It turns out he forged customer signatures to withdraw large lumps of money from at least six accounts, including a hair extension business, according to the report. He then deposited the stolen cash into his own account at the bank.
Ineptitude | admin August 27, 2010 | Comments (0)
