So, our financial situation for a number of reasons took a turn for the worst a while back. We kept building debt, and some of our credit cards went over their limits. Granted it was not an ideal situation, but we are now in the process of paying down our debt considerably. My the end of next month we will have between 65-80% of all our credit card debt paid off.

Now, here is what is upsetting me so very much at the moment…

First, I will need to explain a little more of the back story. We got one credit card about 6 years ago. It wasn’t exactly the best card in the world. It had an $89 annual fee right from the start, and the interest rate was in the neighborhood of 17% or so. We got this card from Providian. As I said we have had the account for about 6 years.

Thanks to the whole banking crisis fiasco some of you might know that Providian was taken over by Washington Mutual (Wamu). Wamu was then taken over by Chase. Ahh, good old Chase. I had a previous issue with then many, many years ago too. So, I never really liked them. Of course we didn’t have any choice as to which company absorbed what other companies.

Now as I said, this card was a little over the limit for quite some time. The credit limit was $871. the card usually carried a balance of about $1000-$1100. The reason it first went above the credit limit was because of that annoying yearly fee of $89. So, we were close to the limit, got hit with the yearly fee which put us over the limit. This meant they tacked on an additional over the limit fee of like $39.95. We were living on a pretty tight budget for a number of reason I won’t get into. This meant we wound up paying just the regular monthly bill. Can you see where this is going? It remained over the credit limit, and each month they charged an addition $39.95. Meanwhile the monthly payment was somewhere between $25 and $40. So each month there was a finance charge, and principal payment of $25-$40, while every month the was the $39.95 penalty.

It worked out that we could pay a little extra here and there over time. This meant that we would usually get very close to being at the credit limit again. The problem was, oh look it took just about 12 months to get to that point… so here is the $89 annual fee, thanks for doing business with us. The cycle would continue.

Along the way through the three companies the interest rate kept going up and up. The current rate is a ridiculous 31.99%!

As I said we are paying down our credit cards right now. The balance on this card was actually down to $904, so was about to be under the limit anyway. Instead though we just paid $600 on this card, leaving a balance of $304.

At this point I emailed the “wonderful” people over at Chase. You always see those stories about people just having to ask to have their percentage rates lowered and having a bit of success. So, my email basically requested that they lower the percentage rate to something a bit more reasonable, and perhaps somehow do away with the $89 annual fee.

I get a brief response saying that they cannot fulfill my request because the account is closed. When I say brief I mean it basically said, “Sorry we cannot fulfill your request because that account is closed.”

Oh, really? The account is closed? Nice of Prov-Wamu-Chase to notify us that the account was closed. At this point I got a bit pissed of.  I sent back another email to them congratulating them on their stellar customer service, and communication skills. I also asked why we were not informed of the account closing in any way. I got back a somewhat longer email response. It explained how the credit reporting companies were notified of the account being closed within 60 of it being closed. It went on to explain how the remaining $304 balance would continue being charged interest and that there would be a monthly bill until the balance was paid off in full.

So, now the company with the brilliant customer relations that couldn’t take 5 minutes to send an email or snail mail notification that the account was being closed feels the need to explain to me in full detail how a credit account works.

Regardless, if they said no to the percentage reduction we planned to pay off the remaining $304 and then let the account site there until September (the month before the $89 annual fee is usually charged) before closing it. So, we will indeed be paying the Prov-Wamu-Chase card off in full by the end of next month.

Maybe Chase should have been absorbed by some other company so they could maybe have their customer relations staff retrained or something.

Anyway, I would like to give my rating of the Chase Bank (Now JPMorgan Chase Bank I guess). I give them two great big thumbs down…or perhaps two other digits pointing straight up.

[ Report Post ]