Part three can be found here:

Part 2 can be found here: http://kirinkapin.com/FerretTails/?p=34&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

I have been miserably entangled with Chase Credit Cards for a few years now. When I realized that my minimum payments would drain my funds forever without paying down the debt, I decided credit hell can't be worse than a leech on my wallet, and I did some research.

In my deliberations, two things would weigh on how I dealt with Chase: 1) The government was issuing bailout after bailout to what I saw as mismanaged and/or crooked banks. According to the SEIU, "JPMorgan Chase accepted bailouts and backstops totaling $94.7 billion, with taxpayers still on the hook for $69.7 billion." As the bailouts grew and grew, I became angrier and angrier. Further, when asked about the money, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase told the Associated Press, "we've not given any accounting of, 'here's how we're doing it.' ...we have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to [do so]." Now, I did not understand why so much taxpayer money, my money, was being used to help these banks, and if they were using it in any way that could alleviate the strain millions were feeling, surely they would say so.

Then, 2) on reading about the Enron scandal of 2001, I found out that Chase had been in on the fraud, which cinched my decision. An SEC headline says it all: "J.P. Morgan Chase Agrees to Pay $135 Million to Settle SEC Allegations that It Helped Enron Commit Fraud." And Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the sub-committee on investigations, said "Chase and Citicorp knew what Enron was doing, assisted Enron in the deceptions, and profited from their actions..."(quoted from the BBC). I could not believe that we were giving billions to admitted criminals who then absconded with bailout funds. So, fuck it. I stopped paying them. They did not, and do not, deserve any more of my money.

Now, whenever Chase decided to change my contract terms, which it did many times over the years (whenever its greed outgrew its earnings), it always said I could opt out of these changes by closing my account. Of course closing meant paying off my balance, which I could not nearly afford. When they cut my credit limits to just above what I owed, I called and tried to close anyway, but the operator would not do this for me. It could only be done in writing. Then, when they raised my APR to near 30%, I did write the letter to close my account, but the debt continued to grow. Finally, I had arrived in Credit Hell, and my story is the same as everyone else's. Phone calls started trickling in, first from Chase, then from collectors. I started getting letters about delinquency, collections, etc. At the height of it I was getting 6-8 calls a day from about 3 different phone numbers. I assigned all those numbers a special ring tone: silent. At least the incessant ringing would not bother me.

That's when Chase finally sold my debt to a real collector, who sent me a letter saying that I had 30 days to dispute the debt or it would be "assumed" to be valid. So I wrote them, denying the entire debt, and ordering them to stop calling me, which they did. I expected to see mail, which they were required to send, proving the debt was real, but instead they resold my debt to yet another collector - a weasly legal firm called Bishop, White and Marshall. BWM sent me a similar letter, and I again denied the entire debt on both cards. I demanded to see proof, and so far have heard nothing back. We'll see where this goes.

The more I think about the ways banks have been screwing people of late, the less likely it becomes that they'll ever see anything from me, and soon I will examine some ways I may have been robbed over the years by these unscrupulous bastards.

Cheers,

JL