Category: Annoyances

Yeah i know, I’ve been a little angry lately. I’m trying to get it out of my system and understand why I’m so pissed off.

Let’s just say this, I’ve been dealing with a lot lately and for the foreseeable future things aren’t going to let up.

I’m ignoring my Mother about 2/3 of the time. I feel terrible about it but I really can’t take her asking about people and me having to be the grimm reaper, informing her that they are all dead!

It wouldn’t be so bad once, but having to go through the details every time we talk is a super bummer. She also gets mad because she claims that no one told her…

Uh… Some of the people she’s asking about, have been dead for decades. I’m pretty dang sure it came up at least once between then and today.

She of course refuses to believe she was ever told, preferring to remain the victim.

---

I was thinking to myself perhaps Jesse and I could use a spa day.

He could run around all day with other dogs under a nice trainer’s supervision and then he could go get a bath, nail trim and brushing.

I on the other hand would be in a nice massage, perhaps a salt scrub, and just absolute zen. Perhaps a nice wine or fruity cocktail.

For those old enough to remember the phrase, “Calgon take me away…” I can tell you I’m so far beyond what Calgon could do, I might as well be in another star system.

I need a place where you drop all your tech into a little basket that’s locked up as two burly musclemen open massive golden doors leading out of a reception area and into a place that looks like the garden the Fey played in in “True Blood”

Probably too much to ask… But it’s a nice fantasy…

---

I mention all of this to frame my mindset as I walked into a Chase Bank branch today.

My purpose was to pay off a HELOC that had been rendered completely useless the moment Washington Mutual was purchased by JP Morgan Chase.

This was not too long before the house burnt and honestly, that HELOC line of credit would have been really helpful during the rebuild.

We attempted to get an explanation from JP Morgan Chase, as to why the credit line was frozen, and also tired to get them to unlock the line of credit. Our household income was over 100K per year at the time.

Note I said attempted to get answers. We couldn’t, and no-one at Chase seemed to understand we weren’t trying to get a new loan, we weren’t trying to change the terms of the HELOC or anything else. We just wanted to know why the line of credit was inaccessible.

The equity in our home was well over 200K at the time the place burned. Then the housing bubble popped.

Fortunately, we had full replacement insurance house and contents. That meant the housing bubble really didn’t do much to us.

On the one hand, the line of credit would have been helpful, on the other hand It’s possible that we could have been hurt by it.

That being said when we opened the HELOC the bank wanted to give us 200K as a line of credit. I told them, “No, lets do 60K which allows for us to make realistic improvements to the house and not start drowning in debt.”

The bankers at the time looked at me like I was insane. The other half said nothing and later wondered aloud how I’d done the math. Turns out I was right and the HELOC was just perfect. Or WOULD HAVE BEEN had the line of credit not been locked for no reason.

Oh JP Morgan Chase… you’ve made an enemy in me…

We’d accessed the HELOC to make improvements on the house among other things. Those improvements were underway when the place burned. That left us with a mortgage, a 2nd in the form of the HELOC and a smoldering pile of charcoal. (I’m over stating it a bit.)

During the rebuild, the insurance company was putting the place back together based on the plans for the improvements and the original blueprints for the house. Generally speaking, It worked out okay.

Chase however never explained themselves, and never unfroze the credit line. So essentially it was a payment on a useless line of credit that should have been rolled into the first mortgage when Chase sold my mortgage to some fly by night loan servicing firm. But that would have been far too logical.

Chase had through the years really pissed me off, repeatedly.

---

I constantly had the following problems with Chase.

Web access and their Mobile access only worked about 10% of the time. It was so bad that I’d actually get surprised if I was able to log in and would put off banking because their online access was so shitty.

They’d change passwords on my account for my safety and convenience. Yeah, you read that right, Chase would lock me out of the accounts then change the password then force me to call them to get back in.

They also started asking for some silly assed numeric code or security phrase whenever I called them. Apparently they’d change that one too if I didn’t use it enough. But they wouldn’t tell me they’d made the change.

After 4 consecutive debit card replacements that I couldn’t activate, I gave up. The other half did all the ATM shit with Chase.

Excessive fees improperly charged to the account. Then when we’d call them on those fees they’d say, “Ooops our mistake…” But they never adequately explained why they thought those fees should be billed to our account in the first place.

When Chase sold the mortgage I really questioned why I needed Chase Bank in my life.

I stopped dealing with Chase. The Other half would maintain a balance to pay the mortgage and the 2nd and stash a little money automatically every month in the savings account for Christmas. That was it.

He dealt with them and their bullshit much more than I did.

When he died, I started really looking at all the accounts so nothing went wrong.

---

As I was looking at the Chase account. I realized since Chase no longer held the mortgage I could move the payment to another bank and close the Chase Checking, and Savings. All I needed to do was transfer the balance of the checking and savings account to the HELOC and all three accounts would be out of my hair.

You’d think this would be easy.

Youd be wrong

It took almost 2 hours and 3 different people to work through all of this, at a BRANCH.

The complexities were over the top. You’d think that anyone in that branch could pull up a current payoff, then do simple subtraction… But No, the balance the representative was getting on his screen was different from the balance on their mobile application which praise Jesus, was working and displaying on my phone. Finally, they converted the checking and savings account cash to a cashiers check then placed a call to figure out what the payoff was. The phone call provided another completely different answer. So what the fuck?

I’m sorry, if all this crap is in your computers, then why isn’t it available? And why was a cashier’s check necessary? Chase had all the funds, it was a matter of applying them. You know… debits / credits, accounting processes, basic banking that you learn from playing Monopoly… They were very very concerned about the payoff balance which was less than $2500. Trust me the amount of interest was less than a cup of coffee.

But… and this really pisses me off.

These motherfuckers added a $65.00 fee to cancel the lein the HELOC placed against the house.

Are you shitting me? These fucks, in addition to getting interest for all the years the HELOC had a hefty balance, decided to twist the knife one last time at payoff?

JP Morgan Chase, I swear to God, I’ll do my level best to pay off any other debts to you, as quickly as possible. and I will never darken your door or do business with you again.