With so many folks roasting on the banking companies, I figured I might as well get a load off.
My brand-new JPMorganInvest account has been swallowed by Chase. I dislike Chase because their practices in a credit card fraud matter were absolutely abhorrent. It took a year to get one charge for less than $100 completely removed. Much interest accrued. Nasty letters followed. Lots of telephone exchanges with promises of “No, this time it really is fixed” that were untrue because the person calling the next time was completely unaware of ANY contact having been already made. Idiots. Left hand wash right, you know?
After that debacle, I swore that I’d never use Chase again. Then they ate my AOL Visa. So I paid that down, stopped using it, and funded my AOL subscription thru 2007 with my accumulated points.
Imagine my distress upon receiving the dreaded letter, that my freaking retirement investment account will be eaten by Chase. I wasn’t aware that Chase was attached to the JP Morgan division (gosh they’re so darn many stinkin’ divisions, and none of them know about any other account so there’s no consolidation). I’m now faced with having to find another investment company for my savings. That sucks. Fuckers. STOP EATING EVERYONE OUT!
Boy Howdy do I hear you on that one! I, too, experienced their abhorrent credit card policies when they pulled a bait and switch game on me, then refused to back down even when I proved they were wrong – all over a little more than eleven freaking dollars. I had paid my principal balance in full and was disputing the erroneous finance charges and they treated me like I was a complete deadbeat. Over Eleven - Freaking - Dollars.
Like you, I cut up that card (though I didn’t cancel it) and haven’t used it since. And like you, I flat out refuse to do business with them ever again under any circumstances. This summer when we were shopping around our mortgages to consolidate them and add some home improvement funding, we passed up working with one particular broker because they would only offer financing through Chase. Nope, sorry, not giving them a bleeding dime, let alone two-thirds of a million dollars.
Chase managed to raise the interest rate on my credit cards from under 10% to (I swear to God) 29.97%, even though I never missed a payment. I immediately transferred all my balances, which are quite high, over to non-Chase cards. Here’s a pop quiz, Chase: How much interest are you collecting now on my zero balance?
I had a savings account at Chase I wanted to close. The bank manager I had to deal with would not close the account until I told her a reason I wanted it closed other than I no longer needed the account. I told her to either close the account or I would call the police and file theft charges
Chase sold a 16-year-old credit card debt to some piece-of-shit collection agency that tried to squeeze us for $6000 on a $300-limit card. It took a lawyer to clean it up.
I’ve never had any accounts, credit, or loans from Chase bank. I should have no reason to dislike them. However, there was a time when these bastards sent me a credit card solicitation at least once per week. If they had decent rates, I might have considered them. Now it doesn’t matter if they offer me a prime rate, I won’t take their card on principle, even if it could save a tree from all the paper they keep sending me.
Frostillicus, excuse me if this sounds stupid, but you are aware of introductory APRs, right? They are usually a low percentage for 6 to 12 months, after which it skyrockets. If this is not the case here, then continue the pitting.
I don’t really hate Chase, but I might as well take this opportunity to grumble.
Way back before the Earth had cooled, I had my bank accounts at Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company. As these things happen, Manny Hanny merged into Chemical Bank. That was slightly irritating, but basically the services and procedures were the same.
A couple of years pass, and Chemical merges with Chase Manhattan Bank (itself the product of multiple mergers dating back to the Bank of the Manhattan Company in post-Colonial New York). The Chase/Chemical merger wasn’t bad because in actuality Chemical swallowed up Chase, kept the Chase name and left things in retail banking virtually unchanged.
Once more, merger fever hits, and the new Chase gets merged into J.P. Morgan, with the Chase name still surving on the retail branch network (though the official name is the awkward JPMorgan Chase Bank). Since Morgan didn’t have retail banking at the time of the merger, the retail side once more stayed pretty much unchanged.
Most recently, however, was Chase’s acquisition of BankOne. I initially wasn’t concerned about this because my bank was taking over a smaller bank with a branch network spread around elsewhere in the country.
Unfortunately, someone decided that it would be a good idea to throw out all of the old retail policies, procedures and systems that served this old money center bank so well over the decades (indeed centuries) and import the practices of BankOne, a regional upstart. From the deposit slips to the bank machine software to the phone banking to making the goddamn retail branch personnel dress in uniforms of blue shirts and black suits they’ve made it less professional and harder to manage and keep track of my money.
Ahhh, yes, my wife had the same experience. The funniest part is that Chase called her about the fraudulent charges! They called her about odd charges from far away, she verified that they were wrong, canceled the card, got a new card, and they couldn’t manage to get the charges reversed for months and months and months. Eventually, we walked into a Chase branch near our new home, and one of the managers was nice enough to spend a half hour on the phone to get it straightened out, it still took a full extra billing cycle to get all the screwups settled out.
A few years ago one of Chase’s careless blitz of credit card apps went astray and somebody promptly got a card in my name. Fortunately they ran up less than a $1000 on it but I went through pure hell over it.
I notified them promptly when I got the bill, cancelled the card and filled out all their required paperwork for identity theft. Of course they assured me that would take care of it. Right. They kept billing me, no matter how often I called to explain the problem over and over and over again. Each time one idiot would assure me there was no problem, then within the week some idiot from their collection department called to hassle me for payment. (“You owe all the charges since you didn’t report the card missing.” “I didn’t know the damned card existed. IT WASN’T MY CARD!”) Ad nauseum.
It took my lawyer another two months to finally back them down.