Good Chase news for a change

Chase has apparently decided to bow to all the pressure and stop financing mountaintop removal mining.

Chase loan mod stats

I haven’t found the data to back this up, but according to this post over at chasehomefinancesucks.com, Chase started out approving 106,000 trial modifications in the first four months of the  governments program, and in the eight months since, only 86,000.

Chase rips off yet another customer

I’ve seen TONS of reports whereby Chase simply takes money out of someones account (with a notation like “transferred to another account”) to satisfy an old debt, typically at an organization that Chase has swallowed.  They never give anyone warning and don’t send any kind of letter explaining what happened.  Well, here is another one, with the twist that the “old debt” is due to Chase screwing up.

Here’s the story: In April of 2008, I opened a WAMU account because I
was in San Fran (And they had awesome saving rates of 5%). I was happy
with the account until I was getting ready to move back to Michigan
where there is not a single WAMU around (This was just before the big
banking blow up and Wamu’s takeover by Chase). I went into the WAMU
branch, and closed both of my accounts since dealing with a bank you
have no access to is a pain, and ATM fees are killers.

Fast forward to around October of last year. I hadn’t had a bank
account since I closed up my WAMU account so I decided to go to Chase
since my parents have used them for years and years and have never had
a problem. I hadn’t had any problems either, until today.

So today I go on my online account and notice a rather strange
withdrawal of near a thousand dollars with a description of
“Transfered to another account”. Now, after having had my WoW account
hacked I thought at first that someone got into my account online at
Chase, and moved some money. I looked over all the transfer logs, and
saw nothing of interest.

Call up Chase. Get through to a representative finally, and say “Hey,
I noticed this almost thousand dollar transfer, and wonder what’s up.”
So, first time, they go to check, I get disconnected. Call again get
someone else. They again go off and check on it, and come back saying
“Well, that was money you owed WAMU”. Now that’s odd, a bank account I
closed with a 0 balance and I owed them money. The rep then went on to
tell me the account was closed in April of 09…however I had closed
the account in November/December of 08. Odd.

I finally get them to fax the statement over to prove that I somehow
owed this money. The fees were all overdraft (Up to 3 a week mind you
of 35 bucks a piece) on fees that Chase was charging to the account
labelled “Maintenance Fee”. Apparently, my account came back to life
like some bank account zombie, and ate my lunch…and rent…and cable
payment…and gas and electric as well. To top all that off, despite
having two addresses on file, an email address, and two phone numbers,
they couldn’t be arsed enough to tell me that my account was over
drafted (And no, I didn’t have any access to WAMU’s online system
since the accounts were closed). I went on to call my roommate in San
Fran, since he still lives in the cottage, and he told me nothing had
come for me since I left.

Chase was bad long before it got WaMu

Many of the complaints I come across with Chase have to do with former WaMu customers that have been treated pretty harshly by Chase.  But there are plenty of complaints from customers that started with Chase, and some of them go back quite far.  Chase would be telling quite a yard if it were to claim that problems and complaints were a newer problem.

Like this one, reporting a problem that happened back in 2004.

In 2004 I got divorced. My ex, looking for retaliation, stole my checkbook. I knew he had it, so I called Chase, reported the issue, and closed my account. Three days later, Chase opened my account back up without notifying me or gaining my permission in order to allow a $5 check to come through (the rest I had cancelled, I was not aware of this one), and then proceeded to charge me $775 in overdraft fees while I fought with them about the issue. I had documentation from their bank showing I had closed the account (and why) three days prior to the check coming through, and when I spoke with their legal representative, they told me that the theft of my account was my fault because I left my checkbook in my own house where my ex (who still lived there as well) could gain access to it.

I still owe chase $775.00. I will never pay them. Because of this, I am not eligible to open a bank account ANYWHERE.

Will better banks evolve

It is no secret here at chase-sucks.org that we don’t like Chase.  But the truth is that we have struggled to find ANY bank that we like and treats customers like the valuable asset that we are, rather than the way Chase (and most banks) treats its customers, like a resource from which to repeatedly extract fees and treat with disdain.

Well, a new banking concept called BankSimple, a bank built on simplicity and with no hidden fees, or heck, even non-hidden fees is in the works.  While this concept is still in the planning stages by one of the early Twitter employees, the fact that someone is thinking of this concept is making us think about whether it is the future of banking.

Is it possible that a bank like BankSimple, and perhaps others of the same mold, could decimate the current banks customer base?

According to the lifehacker poll in the above link, a full 40% of respondants are unhappy with their current banks and would consider switching to a bank like BankSimple.

Do you know what a loss of 40%, or even 20% of their customer base would do to big banks like Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo?

More trolling for Chase class actions

Came across this post at chasehomefinancesucks.com in which the National Mortgage Complaint Center is looking for Chase insiders to testify as to the many ways that Chase is ineptly handling mortgages and creating headaches for its customers.  Could class actions be in the works?

Chase not giving good advice?

I am not going to argue that the person who wrote this complaint is the most articulate and logical person in the world, but their point is a frequent one with Chase; Many of the people at Chase simply don’t know what they are talking about and often make up arbitrary rules.

In this case, the customer went into a Chase branch to get $27,000 in cashiers checks, and because he has some concern about the party he was about to do the transaction with, he asked to speak with the branch manager (but was given the assistant branch manager) and specifically asked what needed to be done if he wanted to cancel the cashiers checks.  The (assistant) branch manager told him with authority that he need simply bring in the check stubs and they could invalidate them.

As it turns out, his concern about the other party were correct and he want to the branch to cancel the cashiers checks.  He was told to take a hike.

Now, canceling cashiers checks in the fashion sounds like something that wouldn’t be allowed, but why then would the (assistant) branch manager tell him that?

If Chase harasses you on the phone …

Some Chase customers have reported abusive tactics by Chase employees or by collections agencies hired by Chase to track down delinquent debt.  While the ability of a company like Chase to legitimately go after debt that it owed to it is not in question here, its tactics often are, and they can be abusive, as are the Chase policies, fees, and interest rates that often drive people to stop paying down their debt, because they can’t get ahead.

Well take notice Chase.  A jury recently awarded a man $1.5 million in punitive damages after a debt collector left harassing, abusive, and offensive messages on his voice mail.

It is always a good idea to document everything that happens in your discussions with Chase, including saving any phone messages they might have left for you.