As Washington State was ground zero for the WaMu seizure and sale to JPMorgan Chase because WaMu was based in Seattle, the Puget Sound Journal has been particularly diligent in tracking down information about the process and the aftermath and reported several stories last year about how the sale of WaMu to JPMorgan Chase wasn’t actually closed, leading to speculation that JPMorgan Chase might be made to pay more for what they bought.
But not, in a strange and fishy twist, the FDIC now says that at least some of the reports of the sale closing being extended are wrong, and the sale was closed last September.
The sale of Washington Mutual to JPMorgan Chase & Co. closed Sept. 1, 2010, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., who said today a previous statement that the sale had been extended through October 2010 was incorrect. The Seattle thrift was closed by regulators on Sept. 25, 2008.
Last August, a document surfaced that revealed the two-year-old sale was still pending because of an extension, supposedly one of many. The last time I checked with the FDIC about the status of the sale was early October 2010, and at that time spokesman Andrew Gray said the final closure date had been pushed out another 30 days.
However, that information was incorrect, he told me this week. The last extension had a Sept. 30, 2010 deadline, not Oct. 30, 2010 like he thought. The sale was closed on Sept. 1, 2010, said Gray.
“For some reason I was told that there was a second extension and that was not the case,” said Gray in an email.
The terms of the deal remain the same, he said. JPMorgan purchased WaMu’s assets for $1.88 billion from the FDIC. Some shareholders held out hope the extension of the sale would mean the purchase price may increase, especially since JPMorgan bought the thrift for a small fraction of its $307 billion in assets at the time it was closed.
However, Gray confirmed the details of the purchase and assumption agreement, which are available on the FDIC website, have not changed. I have submitted a request through the Freedom of Information Act for all the extension documents, and have been told that request will be expedited. I’ll post them on our website as soon as I receive them.
Read more …
We’ve documented lots of examples where Chase doesn’t bother informing customers of important things happening with their accounts, but this story has to be the worst. After reading this entire story, I am struck how the root of the problem was that Chase didn’t adequately inform a customer who was doing their best to stay current on their loan, despite some hardships, of their true obligations. It’s almost as if the people at Chase simply didn’t care what hassle and inconvenience their lackadaisical approach to banking causes people.
Financed a brand new Subaru Outback from Chase Auto Finance in September, 2005. Had to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy in May, 2009, due to infant son’s medical and hospital bills. Payments were current at time of bankruptcy discharge. Did not reaffirm the loan, as we had equity in the car at that point. Continued to make monthly payments on the car to Chase via Moneygram. Paid almost $8,000 in the almost two years since the bankruptcy. Had calculated that I owed about $1,400 in March. On March 25, a tow truck showed up to repossess the car. I couldn’t believe that Chase would repossess the car for such a small amount owed and the fact that we had so much equity in it. I called the Chase bankruptcy department while the tow truck driver waited. I was told that the $1,400 was a balloon payment from when I had deferred a couple payments years earlier when my son was hospitalized. With everything that has happened since then, I had completely forgotten that the last payment would be a balloon payment. There was no notice or reminder of this from Chase. They refused to make any payment arrangements and insisted that I had to let the tow truck take the car unless I had $1,400 in cash at that very moment. The tow truck driver couldn’t even believe that they were taking it either. This is our only car.
Without it my husband could not get to work, my daughter to school, or my son to his multiple therapy appointments. Even after requesting a supervisor, they still refused to work with me. Keep in mind that I would not be responsible for any of the cost and fees associated with repossessing the car, as it was included in bankruptcy and not reaffirmed. Chase would be responsible for all of that. So the car was repossessed and towed away. We had to rent a car to the tune of $234 for the week. I called Chase again first thing Monday morning. I informed them that I would be redeeming the car on that Friday morning when my husband got paid. I was given specific instructions on what to do when I made the payment in cash at the Chase branch. I then called the towing company who took the car and informed them that I would be getting the car on Friday morning. I was told to call Chase back and ask for a redemption hold. I called Chase back and they refused. I called them multiple times that week. At one point I was told a completely different person was now in charge of my account. I was given a completely different set of instructions on making the payment at the bank. I kept in contact with both Chase and the towing company throughout the week.
On Thursday morning, I called the towing company and was informed that my car was in route to Manheim Auto auction almost 4 hours away from my house. I was told that they would bring it back to my city by the next day for $100. On Friday morning, just before going to the bank to redeem the car, the towing company called and told me that my car was at the auto auction and Chase refused to let them bring it back to my city. I called the auto auction and was told that they close early at 3:30 on Fridays and are not open on the weekends at all to pick up the car. I went down to the bank and paid the $1,400 and followed their instructions on having the payment receipt faxed to them. My husband had to leave work early and we drove the 4 hours to pick up the car. It took almost the entire 4 hours and multiple phone calls for Chase to fax the release to the auction in time. I arrived at the auction just before closing, but late for my scheduled appointment. The woman handling this at the auction was quite sympathetic of my situation and effort and happily agreed to let me pick up the car. I was informed that Chase would be billed for over $300 in transport and storage fees from the auction, as well as the repossession and storage costs to the towing company.
So Chase was it worth wasting probably almost $700 to repossess the car? Add on the cost of my rental car and the complete waste of all of my time. And thank you for the wild goose Chase to pick up MY car! And by the way, I still to this day have never received any repossession documents in the mail from your bank and you know where I live. That is against the law! Please remember that according to my state’s laws you must send me notice of release of lienholder within 15 calendar days. It is now day 8. I do expect to receive my title in a timely matter. Chase Bank…I will never forget this experience with you bank and I will never ever do business with you again. I like to remember how much money our government bailed toughie with and this is the thanks you give to hard working families?
60 Minutes did a segment on the forging of documents (that were most likely lost) by banks pursuing foreclosures. This is a huge story and could potentially affect tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of homeowners that have been foreclosed upon or are threatened with foreclosure.
As more and more Americans face mortgage foreclosure, banks’ crucial ownership documents for the properties are often unclear and are sometimes even bogus, a condition that’s causing lawsuits and hampering an already weak housing market. Scott Pelley reports.
You an watch the video here and read the associated CBS story here.
At issue here is that banks, in their brilliant move to electronic system called MERS to record changes in ownership of mortgages as they were sliced, diced, and sold as securities, either lost or destroyed the original mortgage and change of ownership documents. They did this to avoid having to file paperwork with county clerks every time some part of a mortgage changed hands, saving them millions.
But it turns out that filing with county clerks is a legal requirement and courts have begun to reject MERS filings as proof of mortgage ownership. So what did banks do? According to this story, they started to forge the original documents.
If any of the loan documents provided to you by your bank or mortgage servicing company are signed by Linda Green, they are likely fraudulent.
The consumer advocate at your local newspaper or TV station is still the best way to get big organizations like Chase to do the right thing. For some reason, negative publicity still bothers them. Take this exchange for example:
Dear Greg: In 2009, Chase Bank sent me an advertisement stating that, with the opening of a new checking account with a minimum $1,000 deposit, they would give me — yes, give me — $100. My first deposit was $1,064 on Dec. 16, 2009. Then the proverbial other shoe: They deducted $25 of the $100 on Dec. 23 for what they called a “Leisure Rewards” program annual fee, plus another $25 under the same charge code. In plain English, they had taken back $50 of the so-called $100 “incentive” to open an account. I figured it was only a matter of time before they deducted the remaining $50 for something else and went smiling into the sunset. I closed the account to a zero balance on March 26, 2010. On Jan. 1, 2011, they billed me for the last $50 of the account — a difficult transaction since the account had been closed for nine months! This did not stop Chase. They simply charged a “negative” balance to my non-existent account. They added $27 for account overdraw, bringing the total to $77. Their collection people have been calling us morning, noon and night.
Dear Donald: It was so much easier when banks gave new customers a toaster! But let me cut to the chase. I donned a pair of oven mitts and handed off your scorching hot letter to my contact at the bank. According to Chase, the deductions from your account were the result of your enrollment in the Leisure Rewards program — even though you say you never heard of the program until you were charged for it. In the interest of moving on, Chase has applied a $77 credit to your account, marked it “closed,” stopped all collection efforts, and confirmed that your credit record has been muddied.
I suspect that they won’t be enrolling people in Leisure Rewards anymore as that program is going away, at least for debit cards, but this is very similar to how they’ve been enrolling customers in overdraft protection without asking for years, until the government made them stop.
As for the rest of it, like billing the closed account for a $50 fee that no-one at Chase is likely to be able to figure out, well that’s just how Chase is, if you’ll believe the 1,000 or so stories we’ve posted here since 2005.
For any webmasters out there, here is our list of IP addresses that have attempted to create comment SPAM.
We’ve gotten a few scattered reports that Chase again claimed to be offline for an “upgrade” for 24 hours or so.
More information from Computerworld:
Computerworld – Firefox users may have had trouble accessing JPMorgan Chase’s website chase.com today when the bank experienced problems with an outdated security certificate.
According to a Chase spokesman, the Firefox certificate was updated on the bank’s servers in about 45 minutes, resolving the issue.
Almost one year ago, Chase experienced a more severe outage that shut out millions of customers from its online banking site for three days.
That earlier outage stemmed from a failure related to Chase’s user authentication database.
Today’s outage involved a lapsed security certificate. Website servers present certificates to a customer’s browsers to verify identities. This certificate, which has information such as the address of the site, is verified by a third party that is trusted by a user’s computer.
A certificate that is outdated or lapsed would appear as having been revoked by the issuing server.
While short-lived, today’s outage was still a major issue, according to market research firm Celent.
“No bank wants its customers to be presented with the message, “you may be communicating with an attacker,” Celent analyst Jacob Jegher wrote in a blog.
Jegher said if the issue hadn’t been resolved quickly, Chase could have ended up paying out reimbursements to customers unable to pay bills on time.
After reading this story, do you still trust Chase with your own personal info? Chase got her account cross-linked with the wrong persons not once, but twice!
A bad experience has led one Manhattan woman to question Chase Bank’s online security. NY1’s Susan Jhun filed the following report.
Chase Bank’s website reads, “Chase is serious about safeguarding your personal information online.” Yet long-time customer Marie says she personally found that to be untrue.
When the Chase client had a problem viewing her linked checking, savings and business accounts online, she went into a branch to resolve the matter. The bank had accidentally linked Marie’s account to someone else’s.
“I’m linked to their account and they have pending payments about to be taken out of my personal account,” says Marie.
Additionally, she was shocked that she had access to all of this stranger’s private financial information. After much back and forth initiated by Marie, the stranger’s information was finally removed from her account, only to then have her business partner’s personal information link to her account.
“I called the gentleman back and he said, ‘I can’t delete these from your account because it’s from before 2009.’ Their services, their records don’t go back before 2009,” says Marie.
Marie says a Chase representative told her that she should manually delete all her business partner’s information, which to Marie is a ridiculous solution.
“I definitely know I’m not alone, because when I asked, ‘What’s your accountability, what’s your responsibility to this?’ the gentleman in the escalation department was like, ‘Oh actually, this happens all the time,'” says Marie.
NY1 reached out to Chase and a spokesman released a statement that said, “We apologize for the error and are working with the customer to resolve this uncommon issue. We encourage customers to contact the bank whenever they notice any unusual activity with their accounts.”
It is little reassurance to Marie, who says she has lost all faith in Chase.
“I’m definitely changing my account,” she says.
Apparently Chase tacked on a recurring monthly fee on some accounts transitioned from Washington Mutual for additional benefits. The problem is, they appear to have done this without customers actually signing up for the package. Here is how one customer describes it:
This is what they say my Gold account $7 fee is about:
The fee in the amount of $7.00 dated March 14, 2011 is for your Plus Package program in your account. This account feature was applied to your account prior to Chase conversion (from WaMu). This Plus Package program allows you to have non- financial benefits which include the following:
– Accidental death insurance ($10,000.00)
– Card protection service
– $5 discount on Deluxe personal check orders (one box per order)
– Hotel / travel discounts
– Prescription drug program
– Shopping discounts
– Unlimited no fee cashier?s checks, money orders and travelers cheques and fee discount on travelers cheques for two
– Vision plan
Based on another comment we got, some customers may not actually be getting the benefits of this program that they were automatically (and without permission) signed up for.
Is this the new bank profit ethics, making money from signing people up for things they don’t want and didn’t ask for?
WaMu failure | admin April 13, 2011 | 
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