This is why you should challenge a Chase foreclosure

Another useful tidbit from a great Chase-related blog post.

Quite often, when a big bank like Chase (and it seems especially Chase) forecloses on someone, chances are they have not dotted all ‘i’s and crossed all the ‘t’s.  In fact, there is a good chance they might not actually be able to prove that they have the right to foreclose upon you, and you could quite possibly get your foreclosure dismissed, and perhaps even get your loan forgiven.  Take for instance this deposition of Beth Ann Cottrell, Operations Manager of Chase Home Finance LLC:

Q.  So if you did not review any books or records or electronic records before signing this affidavit of payments default, how is it that you had personal knowledge of all of the matters stated in this sworn document?

A.  Well, it is pretty simple, I have personal knowledge that my staff has personal knowledge of what is in the affidavit on personal knowledge.  That is how our process works.

Q.  So, when signing an affidavit, you stated you have personal knowledge of the matters contained therein of Chase’s business records yet you never looked at the data bases or anything else that would contain those records; is that correct?

A.  That is correct.  I rely on my staff to do that part.

Q.  And can you tell me in a given week how many of these affidavits you might sing?

A.  Amongst all the management on my team we sign about 18,000 a month.

Q.  And how many folks are on what you call the management?

A.  Let’s see, eight.

Chase advertising

Driving home today, I saw something that struck me as funny.  Right in front of a Chase Bank branch was a bus stop.  As many bus stops do, this one had a large advertising wall on one side of it.  The particular ad happened to be for, you guessed it, Chase Bank.  Now, it seems to me that Chase could put the exact same advertisement in their window just a few feet away, and save themselves for having to pay for a bus stop ad.

Dear Chase, you *did* receive our last payment!

Have you just persevered through 12 months of trying to get a loan modification or short sale or ANYTHING at all to happen with Chase and still have nothing to show for it?  I found this cute little story from this blog, which make a pretty good argument for strategically defaulting on your mortgage, if the circumstances are right.

Well, I know a homeowner who lives in Scottsdale, Arizona… lovely couple… wouldn’t want to embarrass them by using their real names, so I’ll just refer to them as the Campbell’s.

So, just the other evening Mr. Campbell calls me to say hello, and to tell me that he and his wife decided to strategically default on their mortgage.  Have you heard about this… this strategic default thing that’s become so hip this past year?

It’s when a homeowner who could probably pay the mortgage payment, decides that watching any further incompetence on the part of the government and the banks, along with more home equity, is just more than he or she can bear.  They called you guys at Chase about a hundred times to talk to you about modifying their loan, but you know how you guys are, so nothing went anywhere.

Then one day someone sent Mr. Campbell a link to an article on my blog, and I happened to be going on about the topic of strategic default.  So… funny story… they had been thinking about strategically defaulting anyway and wouldn’t you know it… after reading my column, they decided to go ahead and commence defaulting strategically.

So, after about 30 years as a homeowner, and making plenty of money to handle the mortgage payment, he and his wife stop making their mortgage payment… they toast the decision with champagne.

You see, they owe $865,000 on their home, which was just appraised at $310,000, and interestingly enough, also from reading my column, they came to understand the fact that they hadn’t done anything to cause this situation, nothing at all.  It was the banks that caused this mess, and now they were expecting homeowners like he and his wife, to pick up the tab.  So, they finally said… no, no thank you.

Luckily, she’s not on the loan, so she already went out and bought their new place, right across the street from the old one, as it turns out, and they figure they’ve got at least a year to move, since they plan to do everything possible to delay you guys from foreclosing.  They’re my heroes…

Okay, so here’s the message I promised I’d pass on to as many JPMorgan Chase people as possible… so, Mr. Campbell calls me one evening, and tells me he’s sorry to bother… knows I’m busy… I tell him it’s no problem and ask how he’s been holding up…

He says just fine, and he sounds truly happy… strategic defaulters are always happy, in fact they’re the only happy people that ever call me… everyone else is about to pop cyanide pills, or pop a cap in Jamie Dimon’s ass… one or the other… okay, sorry… I’m getting to my message…

He tells me, “Martin, we just wanted to tell you that we stopped making our payments, and couldn’t be happier.  Like a giant burden has been lifted.”

I said, “Glad to hear it, you sound great!”

And he said, “I just wanted to call you because Chase called me this evening, and I wanted to know if you could pass a message along to them on your blog.”

I said, “Sure thing, what would you like me to tell them?”

He said, “Well, like I was saying, we stopped making our payments as of April…”

“Right…” I said.

“So, Chase called me this evening after dinner.”

“Yes…” I replied.

He went on… “The woman said: Mr. Campbell, we haven’t received your last payment.  So, I said… OH YES YOU HAVE!”

When talking with Chase, be precise, and ask several times

Here is a great story that outlines exactly the tendency of Chase’s customer service to give incomplete or simply bad information.

How Chase Bank Almost Helped a Teenager Get Scammed

by Jeff Sovern

A teenager I know responded to a listing for a summer job on Craig’s List.  The employer claimed he was opening an art gallery and would pay $400 a week for twelve hours of work running errands and the like.  Because he was out of the country, he was unable to meet her, but emailed her a list of questions.  Upon receiving her answers, he hired her.  She was thrilled.

Shortly afterwards, he overnighted her two money orders totaling $1,700. He instructed her to deposit them and take $200 for half of her first week’s salary; she was to wire the remaining $1,500 to an artist that day.  When she mentioned this to me, I became concerned.  What if she wired the money and the money orders later came back dishonored?  And why hadn’t he wired the money himself rather than trusting a teenager he had never met?

So she called her bank–JPMorgan Chase–to find out how long it would take before the money orders cleared.  The answer she received was one day.  That didn’t sound right to me, so I got on the phone.  I explained my concern that this was a scam and that I didn’t want to know when she could draw on the funds, but rather when the funds would clear so that she was assured that the bank would not charge back her account when the money orders came back dishonored.  Once again, I was told one day.  I was still unconvinced, so we called again.  Again we were told one day.  I haven’t looked at check clearing for ages; had things changed so much in the interval?  I tried a third call to Chase, and this time the representative told me what I had expected to hear the first time: while Chase would make the funds available in one business day, it could take much longer than that to determine if the money order was legitimate and that if it were dishonored, Chase would charge back the account.  I instructed the teenager to text the employer that she would not wire the funds until the money orders had cleared, on the theory that if he’s legitimate, he will get in touch with her.  So far, she hasn’t heard back.  I don’t think she will.

The teenager is disappointed at the loss of her seeming summer job and simultaneously relieved at not having lost her savings.  But there’s a bigger issue here than just what happened to her.  Most teenagers–and probably most adults–would have stopped at the first phone call.  Many would have wired the money.  Maybe they could later persuade Chase that it should not charge their account back for the dishonored money order because of the information provided by its customer service agent, but more likely they wouldn’t be able to.  Chase was in a position to prevent this fraud–and it didn’t.

First of all, I am simply shocked that Chase would make any deposited funds available that quickly.  Their tendency has been to stretch out the hold period longer and longer where now it is often 7-10 days.  Second, the customer asked, how long until the check clears, not how long until funds are available.  When talking with Chase, you may find it valuable to ask questions in two or three different ways, and perhaps with at least two different people, just to make sure you get the same answer each time.

Chase goes cheesy with its promotions

Like a rug store perpetually going out of business, Chase keeps running these “Hurry and sign up for a new checking account because the offer expires soon” promotions.  The last one expired on June 30th, and surprise surprise, they now have another one that expires August 14th.

News flash:  Washington Mutual ran a constant $100 for a new checking account promotion and Chase has pretty much run the same promotion for years now.  Chase, we’ll get excited when you are actually doing something interesting.

Now Chase lacking for credit card customers too

We all know how much Chase beat up even its good credit card customers in response to growing worries about the health of its credit card portfolio.  But what we didn’t know was just how many people went for the exits.  Looks like their treatment of customers has purged the ranks to the extent that, now that the health of their credit portfolio has improved somewhat, they have a serious problem with revenue growth, according to the Wall Street Journal.

But the question about whether their credit card portfolio has really improved is in question as evidenced by conflicting information in the Wall Street Journal story:

• They reduced their reserves for losses by $1.5 billion
• Their write offs went from 11.75% in the 2nd quarter to 10.2% in the 3rd quarter

But this is directly contradicted by the fact that the percentage of customers that were delinquent by at least 30 days went up from 4.96% t0 5.62%.

So it seems that Chase may be doubly screwed here, they still have a fairly sick portfolio and are not that attractive to existing good customers and new customers.  Oh yea, and there is our mounting evidence that they are losing retail banking customers.

Mainstream news doens’t like Chase either

Yup, another article in a major metropolitan newspaper (the Los Angeles Times and reprinted in the Columbia Daily Tribune) about people getting fed up with their bank and leaving it.  As often seems the case, the bank in this example is Washington Mutual Chase.  Seems they were very happy with Washington Mutual and feel that customer service has gone downhill and the ridiculous fees have gone up since Chase took over.

Yup, you guessed it, they moved to a credit union.

BY E. SCOTT RECKARD Los Angeles Times

Adding insult to injury, Roberta said, they had to pay a fee for depositing more than $5,000 in cash to their small-business account in a month — something they might do again because Mark, a saxophone player, earns much of his living selling his CDs at street fairs. “I thought banks were supposed to want you to put more money in,” Roberta said.

Mark and Roberta Maxwell had been zapped by fees for overdrawing funds and using the wrong ATM, and they felt their bank, once Washington Mutual, had lost its personal touch since a takeover by Chase.

Read more …

The part that kills me is that Chase is actually charging someone for depositing TOO MUCH money in their account in one month.  Are you kidding?  Aren’t banks supposed to want more deposits?  Especially Chase, who it seems has been drastically losing deposits and customers for a year or more, as far as we can tell.

Jamie Dimon gets personal “It’s just Jamie”

Jamie Dimon, aka, Jamie, did a big interview with the New York Times entitled “After Crisis, Show of Power from JP Morgan” and calls Jamie Dimon Obama’s banker.  This is puzzling given Chase’s abysmal standing in the ranks of big banks offering loan modifications.

Another article, which discusses how he wants to be called just Jamie, claims everyone loves Jamie.  Yea, everyone but Chase’s customers.

Hey Jamie, how about getting more personal with your customers?