Sometimes you just have to stand back from all the negative news about Chase and laugh. It is really quite hilarious what they do at times.
Like this latest letter Chase’s Paymentech subsidiary sent to customers, under the guise of being even more transparent with its customers about its merchant processing fees. Even one recipient of the letter, a lead plaintiff in the lawsuit against Visa and MasterCard, can’t understand what they are trying to say.
That BankSimple concept we wrote about a few days ago is looking better and better.
If you can read through all the legal jargon, this is an interesting story.
It is hard to understand all the back story, but what is clear is that at some point, Robert Traversari wanted to write a check to pay his entire mortgage (some $150,000) off in full. So he wrote Chase a personal check for the full amount.
Chase refused the payment saying that it was their policy that payments over $5,000 needed to be presented as a certified check. They foreclosed or tried to foreclose and promptly got sued by Mr. Traversari.
The major discrepancy is that the mortgage was acquired by Chase from another bank and the original mortgage said nothing about payments over a certain amount needing to be presented in a certified check.
This has to make us wonder whether Chase really just wanted to take possession of the house and had no interest in following the rules.
I hereby nominate Chase for the asshole of the month club.
Bank of America’s Countrywide unit apparently targeted customers facing foreclosure with exorbitant fees for things like appraisals.
Given that Chase seems to be one of the sleaziest banks around, considering they have admitted to doing things like rearranging the order of deposits and debits to maximize overdraft charges, I can’t help but wonder if they will get caught up in this type of scandal.
Tippecanoe County in Indiana decided to dump Chase for a smaller local bank because they receive higher interest at the smaller bank.
Hmm.
I’ve lives in San Francisco, famous for its fog, and now live south of the city on the peninsula, where fog is not an issue. Still Chase puts up billboards in my area touting how you can find a branch even through the fog, clearly showing they don’t have a clue about geography or local climate.
I came across a report of another billboard, this in actually in San Francisco.
China Town is all the way over the hill.
As an exercise, I searched Yelp for Chase in New York City, added up the total number of stars they got and divided by the number of reviews. Chase’s total score for New York city is 2.21 out of 5 stars.
I did the same for the bank I use, First Republic, for New York City. Admittedly, there are far fewer reviews. They scored a 4.67 out of 5 stars. In San Francisco, where First Republic has far more reviews, they still stored about the same on average.
Unlike some of the West Coast cities where Chase is unpopular due to their takeover of WaMu (and many subsequent snafus) Chase has been in NYC for a very long time. They should have gotten it right by now.
From comlaintsboard.com:
Chase froze my husband’s account because of an identity theft alert on his account. Chase never called or alerted my husband about the status of his account. The bank refused to allow him to make a deposit or cash any government checks. Which is apparently against the law in this situation. The bank required for him to prove his identity with social security which he did but the account remained frozen. The bank, however, continued to charge fees for all of the electronic transactions that were preset with online banking. They also considered allowing an electronic debit for 999, 999, 999.00. Over a week has gone by and they remain determined to collect the nsf fees that they tacked on from all of this mess before they will even consider to open a new account. Their policies don’t make sense. The customer service is appalling and I would never trust or recommend any business affiliated with Chase.
Ok, I am heavily paraphrasing with that title, but if you read Consumer Reports article entitled When to bail on your bank, the only conclusion your can come to is that big banks suck and small banks rule. Specifically, they find in big banks favor for:
- More branches
- Better online and mobile banking
But, small banks outshine big ones in many more ways:
- Better service
- Closer community ties
- Better credit cards – much lower rates, lower late fees and over-limit fees
- Higher yields on savings accounts
- Low-rate loans
Update 6/5/10: The Wall Street Journal seems to agree.
Bad bad Chase, Fees & charges, Legal & regulatory | admin June 8, 2010 | 
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