Somebody at JP Morgan bank’s social media marketing team had the bright idea to set up a Twitter hashtag, #askJPM, and have the internet ask them questions, with the questions being answered today at 1pm, EST, by Executive Vice Chairman Jimmy Lee*.
Well, as you can imagine it didn’t go as well as JPM hoped. The Q&A session was cancelled after just 6 hours of questions like these:
This one will go down as one of the biggest corporate marketing/social media fails of all time.
*Jimmy Lee is worth about $250 million and is not somebody you want pissed at you… not if you want a career at JPM, that is.
**Jimmy Cayne was the pot-smoking bridge-addicted former CEO of Bear Stearns, who JPM bought in March 2008 for $2/share (later amended to $10/share), officially kicking off the Great Recession.
Saw that on the news this morning. Best question: “Does everyone at JP Morgan receive noise-cancelling headphones to block the sound of the crushing poverty you guys create, or are those just for the executives?”
In addition to the interest thing, there have been lots of instances of companies foreclosing on the wrong house or on a house that had been fully paid off, many of which are either initially successful because the receivers of the notices think that they don’t need to fight them because they were misidentified, or are foreclosed on out of the blue with no notice and even sometimes have their stuff thrown out of their fully paid for house.
Of course, its “lots” in absolute terms, rather than relative to the number of houses out there, and I’m not sure if JPMC has done any of it.
To get a 30 year loan to cost 4 times the original amount would take an interest rate of 13%. I know they hit that high in the early 80’s, but you would have to be a fool not to have refinanced. Either way, its not JP Morgan’s fault, but I suppose I am getting a bit off topic.
I don’t think of myself as big bank advocate, but it is funny that the same people who trash banks as the personification of evil are the same ones that use them to get morgages or manage their pensions. I suppose banks should just do all that for free.
Let’s not forget that some people have interest only loans and/or HELOCs on their house so they may have been paying any principal at all for at least some of the time at all. And, probably the biggest thing, people that have their houses foreclosed on probably aren’t the best sources of information when trying to find out how much money they’ve actually paid to the bank vs what their home is worth during the time they’ve lived there. Have you ever talked to someone that has absolutely no idea why their credit card bill won’t go down? “I only spend $150 last month and I made a $175 payment and the bill is still over $6000”. I know some people just hit hard times, but some people that have their houses for closed on (or get over their heads with CC debt do it because they just don’t understand money/interest.
Also, these people probably don’t understand that they can’t count what’s being paid to taxes/escrow. So of that $1000 mortgage payment they made, maybe $700 was interest and principal.
Well it could be that they bought a house for $400,000 and now it’s only worth $100,000, and they’ve paid $400,000 towards the mortgage already but of course not all principle, and “Paid for it 4 times over” is how they are spinning it to their friends and stuff. I think my uncle’s house in Phoenix has had about that much depreciation since the bubble burst.
According to this article from MSNBC, 4 million people were wrongfully foreclosed on between 2009 and 2010. So, maybe not all THAT rare, people.
Here’s a much better article, looks like the actual number is a “mere” 1.2 million, with a widespread practice known as “dual tracking” the likely culprit.
I dare say that most of those wrongful foreclosures weren’t on houses that were already completely paid for, or on the wrong houses, which is what was being discussed.
The article makes it clear that most of the foreclosures are on houses where the homeowners are making lowered payments via an agreement with the bank, with the bank still attempting to foreclose despite their own agreement. In short, it still stinks on ice.
Note that the foreclosures are only one problem that people had with JP Morgan. Today’s news is that they paid a company owned by the daughter of the Chinese prime minister for access to those in power. And the whole Twitter feed is here. (I don’t have a Twitter account but it appears that even though JP Morgan would rather forget the whole PR fiasco, the account remains alive and active.)
The Q&A session was cancelled after just 6 hours of questions like these: