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

"In 2005, WaMu acquired Providian Financial Corporation, which continued to operate as the company's credit card division until the bank collapsed and was acquired by JPMorgan Chase..."

During those years I had accrued a balance of around $7,000 on one and $3,000 on the other. I realized I was paying over $300 per month to two different credit cards, both of which were now Chase. I had very little income, and difficulty finding work. I adopted a strategy of rolling balances back and forth with convenience checks and other lines of credit. This went on until 2008, when the economy started showing damage from the sub-prime mortgage crisis (in which Chase was a key player).

Chase took advantage of many minor clauses they had buried over time in their contracts. They wrote me two separate letters that said my balance-to-something ratio was too high. They were cutting the limits to about $100 over what I owed on each card. I had been snared, like a lazy fox. Over time, Chase had acquired me as a customer and also acquired my Providian debt so I could not borrow from one to pay the other. By lowering my limit I could not borrow any more money for any reason. With my cards maxed out, I had few choices: pay up or face Credit Hell. Paying up meant making payments to Chase that were literally all my income. And by just making those payments, I would never, ever pay down the debt. Chase wanted to wring me like a rag for the rest of my days, and my debt would grow and grow.

"Well, what's Credit Hell like," I began to wonder...

JL

So, here's more tidbits from the SEIU:

"JPMorgan Chase had a hand in the worst of the subprime lending excesses, providing financing to the nation's two largest subprime lenders, Countrywide and Ameriquest... JPMorgan Chase also owned a major subprime lender, Chase Home Finance, and has acquired two banks with large subprime operations: Washington Mutual... and Bear Stearns... Together, these five firms issued over $295.3 billion in subprime loans from 2005-2007.

"Providian targeted subprime credit card customers and has paid more in settlements for unfair and deceptive practices and fraud than any other credit card company in history."

Anyway, I answered the phone yesterday, not sure why. I guess I was feeling good. I agree to send money, and I agree to do it online TODAY. The lady never stops talking the whole time, getting assurances I'll pay, reassurances I'll pay, thanking me over and over, apologizing that I should be unemployed and on the dole. Oops, she got it out of me. Nice. I am on the dole. So like I said, I agreed to pay, TODAY.

So I go online and try to sign on, but I can't remember my password. I only remember how much I hate this website. They get me a new password, some DLZQ something or other so I can get a new new password, and I paste it in, but "for the sake of SECURITY," they need to ask me some personal questions. "Verify," I think they said. These questions creep me out for real, and sometimes they ask me to verify things I don't remember giving them. But because of one particular question, I am starting to believe that my answers are being collected, rather than verified. I have no proof of this. Perhaps in some state of sleep I might answer some of the questions about teachers and friends. I'm not sure why I answered those in the first place. It seemed innocent enough I guess, but this time they asked me "the last name of my first girlfriend," which quite frankly is the creepiest question I've ever been asked, by anyone. It is the cause of this letter. If I were on the street and a representative from CitiBank asked me to verify the last names of women I've known, I tell him to go fuck himself, and then I would look for a cop.

Perhaps this is something that needs to be investigated? What kinds of questions are they asking people? Have other people taken offense as badly as I? Are they in fact collecting responses while fraudulently claiming to be "verifying for security purposes?" Why do they ask these types of questions in the first place? To verify for security purposes they could ask an infinite number of harmless questions. From the "harmless" questions I've answered from Citibank someone could easily write my biography, from where I was born to what cities I've lived in, where I attended school, who my friends were. What my pets names were. How old I was when I lost my virginity. What grade I was in at the time. Who my favorite teachers were!!!! As I am a client, they know my social security number and have free access to my credit records (which they can ruin). They know where my first bank accounts were, who my parents are, how much money they've made and make, how much money I make and how much I've made for the last ten years. How much money I owe and to whom. Where I work, what my phone numbers are (all of them). It goes on like this.

Well, CitiBank, now you know I'm unemployed and on the dole, and you'll get their money, but not online. No, I think the check's in the mail.

Johhny Lick

When first using my cards, I started with the basics like food and gas, and paid off every month. I was always shocked by how low my minimum payment was, usually $15. That made it tempting to start putting a few restaurant meals on the card, or a beer at the bar. I was working, so I was covered. If the balance was too high, I might let a few dollars roll over, and I was still amazed at the low minimum payment, usually only a dollar or two more.

All that stuff is a little foggy in my memory, because it was nothing special. But a very clear memory is one month, when the minimum payment was in the seventies and very soon the hundreds. And working odd jobs for around ten bucks an hour, I worked myself into a hole.

I remember receiving frequent credit card offers in the mail. They offered low rates on balance transfers. I chose to push my debt to different cards, overall accruing more debt while still trying to keep a good record with Chase.

Then I went back to school. To pay for it, I took out all the student loans I could. Two Stafford Loans and a third, a Student Loan Corporation (CitiBank) loan. I used much of the third loan to pay my cards down, and went back to accruing rolling balances. I used still more of the loans to pay monthly minimums for a few years. I was in good standing with Chase.

Then one day it was different. Everything felt the same, but something had changed.

JL

So, I was swimming around Princeton.edu and stumbled on this:

(n) adhesion contract, contract of adhesion (a contract that heavily restricts one party while leaving the other free (as some standard form printed contracts); implies inequality in bargaining power).

Then I went snorkeling in the Answers.com Law Encyclopedia, and I found this. But I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know what it means:

There is nothing unenforceable or even wrong about adhesion contracts. In fact, most businesses would never conclude their volume of transactions if it were necessary to negotiate all the terms of every consumer credit contract. Insurance contracts and residential leases are other kinds of adhesion contracts. This does not mean, however, that all adhesion contracts are valid. Many adhesion contracts are unconscionable; they are so unfair to the weaker party that a court will refuse to enforce them. An example would be severe penalty provisions for failure to pay loan installments promptly that are physically hidden by small print located in the middle of an obscure paragraph of a lengthy loan agreement. In such a case a court can find that there is no meeting of the minds of the parties to the contract and that the weaker party has not accepted the terms of the contract.

My bands are both taking some time off right now, to kick off again in September, but both have been pretty busy this summer.

With Lions of Batucada, we played a great gig opening for a Brazilian funk band known as Curumin. It was different from other shows, in that we played several songs with a cavaquinho player and a singer, and I will be starting to play cavaquinho (like a ukulele) with the band instead of surdo so we can continue in that format. I will miss hitting that big-ass drum tho.

With Takohachi, my Taiko group, we played a four-hour show for the Bridge Pedal, an annual festival where the city shuts down all of its bridges for a day and thousands of cyclists from all over the country ride zig-zagging back and forth across the Willamette. I was figuring we'd do it slow... play a song here, rest, play another... but the folks at Takohachi don't work like that, so we pretty much played a solid four-hour set, with one festival piece lasting half-an-hour and us getting soaked with sweat under the sun. Portland is actually pretty dry in the summer, the sun is powerful, and Portlanders soak up as much of it as they can, saving up vitamin D for the fall... which is just around the corner.

I have begun my second stint of work on Swan Island, a big strip of land that pokes into the Willamette River just North of downtown. Swan Island was Portland's first airport, dedicated by Charles Lindberg in 1927 and in use until 1941, when Henry J. Kaiser, the "father of American shipbuilding," turned the airport into a shipyard to build T-2 Tankers for WWII and make a little moolah. Kaiser was a Big Business bad-ass: he built roads in Cuba, he built Hoover dam on the Colorado river, Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams on the Columbia, and he started Kaiser-Permanente HMO to care for his growing army of workers. The City of Portland owned Swan Island when he got here, but after the war he sold it to them anyway for $23 millions, and galumphed away to play with cars. Now a super-fund site and ship repair yard, Swan Island is where you'll find me early most mornings, sitting atop a ream or two of legal paper as a booster seat. I am Charon, the ferryman porting paperwork back and forth from the US Navy to the banks of the private sector, in keeping with this island's great tradition.

Now despite the oily fumes that waft daily across the yard, this is a really neat place to hang out. Everything here is really big-- deceptively so-- and when it looks like an easy jaunt from one building to another in fact it might be a ten minute walk because everything is just so big. The huge Whirley cranes look like AT-AT walkers lumbering up and down the docks, and they're so strong I saw one employ its medium-sized hook to move a 65-foot crane. The biggest hook they've got says "120Lt," and it's the size and shape of Hulk Hogan flexing his 40-inch guns. Whenever they move things overhead there's a rigger who walks along blowing a bright orange whistle, and I get to wear a hard hat with my name on it and goggles everywhere I go. The ships they fix here are 700 feet long and eight stories high, and there's a ship here, a 5-stories-tall, shiny, aluminum catamaran (a double-hulled canoe) with giant jet-ski jets that, when complete, will hurl thousands of men and tons of equipment over the seas at 60-70 mph.

At the far end of the yard there lives a small flock of Canada geese that stay here year-round, and the men leave little piles of seeds scattered here and there so that I have to navigate a mind-field of Goose poops on my way to and from work each morning. Not the smartest of birds, Canada geese certainly are beautiful, their poops are bounteous, and their feet make a rubbery-leathery piff-paff sound when they walk. Last Spring some of these gooscouples hatched little clutches of lemony-gray fluffy fluff balls that would go for training swims in the water beneath our windows, and take naps where we park.

With love,

Kirin

Feel free to look at some pictures at my photoblog, Pics Knows. Be sure to check the older entries too.

--
Kirin Kapin

http://kirinkapin.com

"If the King loves music, it is well with the land."
~Mencius