American’s credit scores have sunk to a new low.
NEW YORK – The credit scores of millions more Americans are sinking to new lows.
Figures provided by FICO show that 25.5% of consumers – nearly 43.4 million people – now have a credit score of 599 or below, marking them as poor risks for lenders. It’s unlikely they will be able to get credit cards, auto loans or mortgages under the tighter lending standards banks now use.
Because consumers relied so heavily on debt to fuel their spending in recent years, their restricted access to credit is one reason for the slow economic recovery.
Read more …
Perhaps lost in this article is the fact that many people’s credit scores are in fact lower because banks like Chase have gone and significantly reduced credit lines, with no reasoning, explanation, or notification. A reduction in a credit line to the outstanding balance creates a high credit limit to loan balance ratio which is bad for credit scores.
The fact that Chase doesn’t notify customers when it does this also makes it very likely that someone will use their credit card and go over their newly lower limit, thus incurring an over-limit fee. Thanks Chase.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was on The News Hour the other night and was asked about the dismal results for successful loan modifications. Apparently, there are $73 Billion in available funds and only a few hundred million have been spent on HAMP loan modifications to date. I wasn’t aware it was that bad. Pretty pathetic.
Well, things might be about to change for the better according to this article:
July 8, 2010 – Borrowers who have not been having any luck trying to get a loan modification with their mortgage holder will be happy to know about the recently initiated loan modification process.
Due to the low percentage of permanent modifications that are being offered the Treasury Department is now offering struggling homeowners a streamlined procedure with less paperwork and a short turnaround time.
Until recently the success rate of the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) was rather dismal. Over $73 billion dollars that was accessible to fund HAMP was not being used to help homeowners who were facing foreclosure.
However, as of the beginning of this quarter new timelines and guidelines kicked in. It’s hoped that these changes will, at the least, let homeowners know whether they qualify for HAMP is a more reasonable amount of time.
It is now possible to get an answer to a loan modification application within thirty days.
If approved, it will be possible for borrowers who find it difficult to make their existing monthly payments, or those who will probably be delinquent in the foreseeable future, to reduce their net payable monthly payments or increase their mortgage tenure and get a more affordable mortgage loan repayment plan.
A search of the Internet will help those in need discover what the home affordable modification guidelines are – the ones that they need to know in order to qualify for HAMP.
So, it is now possible to get an answer within 30 days. Will those answers mostly be no? Will Chase all-of-a-sudden stop losing paperwork?
As reported today in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, entrepreneuer Josh Reich is moving ahead with his BankSimple idea, which is meant to be an antidote to big banks like Chase and will have features like
- No branches (yes, this is a feature)
- Access to a large network of ATM’s
- Smartphone optimized access
- No overdraft fees
- Earn interest at above average rates
- Smartphone notification system for debit transactions – you get notified of every transaction so you will know the second fraud occurs
The motto for BankSimple is “BankSimple isn’t bank becasue banks suck.”
The plan is to begin serving an initial 10,000 customers this Fall.
Dear Chase,
A lot has happened in the last six months and we figured it is about time we wrote you a note to let you know what is going on. Take a look at the number of daily visits our little site has been getting over the last six months:
What you see is that the number of people visiting our site has tripled in that time period. Now compare that with the number of hits (i.e. how much people are actually looking at when they visit).
What you are seeing is that not only is the number of people visiting our site growing very fast, but the amount of information they are looking at is growing even faster. The average person is reading almost 10 stories when they visit, stories about Chase that are not very flattering.
Now, we know people that work for you are visiting us, and we have a very strong feeling that you’ve been losing customers recently. We hope you will take the convenient opportunity of having all the negative things people are thinking and saying about your bank all in one place and start using that information to improve the way you do business and the way you treat customers. That has been our goal from the start.
Thanks for listening and there is no need to reply. When the number of visits we see from your banks networks increases substantially, we’ll know that you are reading everything and taking the information to heart.
Sincerely,
Your friends at Chase-Sucks.org
I have no idea how I missed this little story a few months ago, but some pissed off Chase customer left them a present in the form of a pile of manure in an ATM vestibule.
Think again. According to a lawsuit filed by a Seattle business owner, a bank error made by Chase during the holidays resulted in Chase freezing his accounts which ultimately forced him out of business.
Whether or not Chase made an error is not in question. Chase has formally admitted to the error and the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates Chase, has also determined that Chase made an error. The business owners account was put on hold incorrectly, and it took a week to get it open again, a week that turned out to be the worst possible time for the business.
I came across this article which names Charlie Scharf as the head retail banking for JPMorgan Chase. That would make him the top dog for Chase Bank, and, if you are getting nowhere with Chase customers service, one more person to try and contact to get some help.
For the record, here is our list of contacts for Chase.
Charlie Scharf CEO Retail Financial Services
Phone: 212-270-5447
Fax: 212-270-5448
E-Mail Address: charlie.scharf@chase.com
While the new Chase iPhone app has been widely reported on by the (mostly tech) media, Chase’s website, and specifically their mobile banking information page, still doesn’t show any information, so it is hard to find information directly from Chase on the capabilities an deficiencies of their new app.
According to this article, Chase has limited the deposits to $1,000 per day through the iPhone app, and a maximum of $3,00o per week. Checks larger than those amounts must still be taken into a branch. The article also reports that the app relies on the same technology used in the envelope-free ATM’s that scan the checks to get the deposit amount. This technology has proven to sometimes fail to read the information properly, in which case Chase simply mails the check back to the customer, which adds many days onto the deposit process.
What will they do when an iPhone picture of a check isn’t able to be properly read? Nothing?
Even their description in the iTunes App Store doesn’t give the full details. App Store reviews list the following problems people have had:
- Unable to activate the app
- Inability to edit payments
- Inability for some customers to find the quick deposit feature (problem with iOS 4?)
- Not upgraded for the current iOS version
- Inability to pay certain bills (mortgage or HELOC)
- Can’t deposit using an iPod Touch
- Difficulty with rebate checks
I could go on. Overall, the rating of the app went down over the previous version.
I appreciate that Chase is trying here, I really do. But perhaps more important than technological bells and whistles, would be more competent customer support and less bilking of customers with ridiculous fees.
Update: A recent report of problems with the app crashing.
Bad bad Chase | admin July 12, 2010 | 
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