Shitty shitty bank bank

Thanks to chasehomefinancesucks.com for turning us on to this one.

Banking should be about relationships

As a small business owner, from time to time the business needs to borrow money. Because we have worked wit the same business focused bank for 5 years, and they know us well, and maintain our accounts in good standing with them, when it comes time to borrow money, it doesn’t take them too long to say yes.  This is called having a relationship with a bank.

Similarly, with my present bank, a smaller bank that prides itself on service, I know the people in the branch I bank at and have very little trouble getting things done.

Now compare those experiences with this one:

Chase gives me the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Went into a branch this afternoon to cash a birthday check (yay HB to me)!

They say it exceeds my current balance (payday is today friday…) and they can’t cash it for an amount that exceeds my existing balance.

HURR.

WaMu didn’t do that to me (member since ’95, so i know this). His reasoning: “you could write a check to yourself, cash it for more than you have, then bounce it and we are out the money.”

Uhm dude. yeah. That can happen. But this is a birthday check from my mother. WTF Make the policy you can’t write checks to yourself…? Thanks for calling me a potential criminal TO MY FACE.

So I said never mind, took my check back, and walked over to FirstTech where I recently reopened a new account and she was nice, friendly, and cashed it without question. I left some money in the account for fun, but honestly: starting this week I’m moving all my accounts totally over to the CU. I’m so done with banks.

See the difference?  Chase could have easily looked at the customers history with the bank and seen that they are a good risk.  They could have run the check and verified that the account it was coming from had sufficient funds.  Instead, they simply played by a hard rule and relationship didn’t figure into the picture at all.

Even the new credit union the customer recently opened was willing to accommodate the customers request.  Chase isn’t a customer service organization, it is a fee generating machine.  That’s it.

What it’s like to work for Chase

I’ve often been critical of Chase employees as giving bad advice, not knowing what they are talking about, or otherwise inept behavior.  When I came upon this job search forum discussing Chase, I began to understand some of the reasons why Chase employees might be this way.

The overwhelming majority of comments on the JP Morgan Chase forum are negative.  Chase is accused by many people of running a sweatshop and for having high turnover.

Those two along could account for the majority of deficiencies in ability in professionalism Chase staff often exhibit.  If Chase refuses to hire enough staff, customers won’t get the help they need, staff is overworked and stressed, doesn’t last long, and there are frequently fresh faces who probably aren’t going to stick around long enough to get properly trained.

Is Chase getting desperate about losing its overdraft fee income?

Buried in a comment to this post about Chase’s letters asking customers to opt-in to overdraft protection (now that they have to have customers opt in) is an interesting comment:

Either way, Hubby and I have been inundated with mail from them about this. I’m not joking when I say we’ve received over 10 separate letters from Chase about it. Talk about killing trees. We are likely switching banks soon.

Ten separate letters?  Now if that doesn’t sound like desperation …

Accessories to show off your displeasure of Chase

Bumper sticker, available here.

I dare someone to walk into a Chase branch to make a deposit with this t-shirt:

This t-shirt just says it all”

Chase (still) sucks

An oldie and a goodie from back in 2005 reminds us that Chase hasn’t changed much in the last 5 years:

I noticed that after complaining about Banknorth sending me snail mail spam on this blog, googling for “Banknorth Sucks” now puts my website at the number one spot. So after my interaction with Chase today (who I have a credit card with), let’s see how high I can rank for “Chase Sucks”.

I use my Chase Mastercard occasionally and always pay the balance off in full well before the payment due date. As I went to pay the card on-line, there was a vague “fee” for 35 dollars. I called Chase to see what it was as I never pay late. I always pay on-line, and I always have the payment come directly out of my bank account, which has more than enough funds to cover my small charges.

The woman informed me that they attempted to withdraw funds and the withdrawal fee failed. She didn’t know why. I confirmed the routing and account number with her. Both were correct.

I then asked why I was being charged if they couldn’t get the transaction to work. “Because it failed.” she said. So apparently, if they fail to get something to work, it is my fault and I don’t get a chance to fix it.

“Uh, so why didn’t you inform me before charging me a fee?”

“How would we do that?” she asked.

“You have my email address and my phone number.”

“We can’t do that.”

This went around and around while I tried to express the insanity of this system. With other fun accusations like my payment was late even though I haven’t even received this month’s statement yet, and that my previous payments were made by phone, even though I’ve never called in a payment in my life.

After all this, I said, “Look, this is ridiculous, the failed transaction is your problem, I’ve never payed via phone, your records are crap, please just waive the fee.”

“I’d be glad to waive the fee this one time for you sir.”

So apparently this woman just enjoys arguing, and I could have saved myself 15 minutes if I had just begun with, “Please waive stupid fees from my account.”. “Yes sir right away sir.”

Unsolicited loan modification – what is Chase up to?

David reports:

we received a Loan Modification Agreement from chase dated June 10, 2010.  the property is 4 rental units, and payments are current.  we DID NOT request a Loan Modification.  this came FedEx with a cover letter urging us to hurry up and return the signed agreement by 6/24/2010.

we have been ‘pre-qualified’ for a ‘special program’.  monthly payment remains essentially the same, mortgage balance to be reduced by $110,481 (from $330,481) to $220,000, term to be reduced by 119 months, and the current adjustable rate (3.03%) to become fixed @ 5%.

there may be tax consequences! on the reduced principal, and this could have an undesirable on our credit rating.

what is chase up to?  we smell a rat!

This seems way too generous for Chase to offer to someone that isn’t behind on their mortgage payments and has NOT requested a loan modification.  Are they soliciting this to get them to sign up for a trial modification with lower payments, then deny them, demand a baloon payment, and foreclose?  Could Chase really be THAT predatory?

The credit card roller coaster

This story is truly a product of the times we are in right now, with most credit card issuers desperately trying to put a stop loss on the massive credit liability they created in the last decade or two.  Unfortunately, many good customers are getting caught in the cross hairs.

Like this one.

First his Capital One credit card was closed due to not being used enough.  This caused his credit rating to drop such that Chase decided he was a greater credit risk and they gave his credit limit a severe haircut and raise his interest rate.