A little over a year ago I broke my leg in an accident. I am a self employed contractor, my income depends on my production. Chase bank was the only credit card account I had a payment protection plan. When I recieved my first bill after the accident I called to activate the protection. I was told that they did not pay for self employed people. When ask why they had charged me a percentage of balance every month on this account for this protection when they never intended to pay, I never got a straight answer.
My balance at the time was a little below $1000, it is now over $2500, due to interest, penalties, and fees. I have been on the phone for so many hours with them, just to be tranferred and re-transfered that if I never have to say my account number, name, address, and last 4 digits of my social security number again I will be thrilled.
After all this time I finally reached a reasonable person, he could not understand how this was happening either so he took my phone number a promised to check in on the problem and call me back. After three days of calls we are now on a first name basis. He was told a different story that still does not make sense to either of us. He was told that my payment protection plan had never been activated. Being that he was also looking at my charge records, he asked why they had been charging me every month if the account had not been activated.
The smoke and mirror reply was confusing enough that he could not even explain it to me.
So he gave me the number to call so I could ask them to send him a letter or call him to verify that I had payment protection but was denied the benefits for whatever reason so that he could take it to his supervisor to try and eliminate the fees and penalties (over $1000's worth). At this point I am more than willing to pay the principle and the ridiculous interest that never should have accrued (being that I was paying for the insurance) just to get my credit straight and this account closed. But I have to stand on principle and will not pay the extortion money. To me this is downright fraud or at the very least deceptive trade.
I have requested copies of the original contract on multiple occasions to take to an attorney but Chase tells me they cannot send it to me because of a privacy issue? Or because I cancelled the payment protection, which I did after I found that they were still charging me knowing full well they would never pay a claim on my part. These two answers alternate depending upon whom you are speaking with at the time.
The oddest fact of this whole deal is that Chase was the only one I thought I was covered with, Capitol One has worked through this whole situation just great and those cards are now paid off. I did not need a protection plan with them, I just had to explain my situation and let them know that I would pay when I could, and I did. Please do not trust the Chase Bank plan, especially if you are self employed.
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