Chase Bank
Chase Bank's bad attitude - Chase Home Lending

Thanks so much for trying, Ms. Whitehall. Both Charmaine and I appreciate your effort and for keeping us informed. It was a great try and we're only sorry that management wouldn't agree to the extension you tried to get us.

The assistance you've offered does make us feel that you value and appreciate us as Chase customers. But Chase, not you, let us down. I'm going to expand on this a little in the hope that, perhaps, you can share this e-mail with the committee (s) you interacted with as you worked on our behalf (and, by the way, on Chase's behalf as well, because I think the extension would have been beneficial to both ourselves and Chase). What follows isn't new to you—you know all this. But I hope someone else at Chase will see that what you asked for on our behalf should have been granted—that denying it didn't help Chase, hurt us, and, to be frank, made the very recent full-page ad in The New York Times by Chase stating that Chase was aware of these difficult times and "that it stood ready" to help its customers with mortgage problems—cynically untrue. Again, I'm not writing this to convince you—I think you did a great job and you didn't let us down at all. This is for all the other Chase employees and Chase management that did.

Our Chase loan had a final balloon payment due on December 19th. We applied for a construction rollover to permanent loan from Schwab about 2 years ago, received an approval dependent on the usual qualifications, and began the final approval process with Schwab in early September. Therefore we initially felt we had plenty of time—probably 2 months to spare. We felt, by the way, that we had to be careful not to be too early paying off because there was a prepayment penalty.

But from the radically different responses we were getting from MBS, Schwab's loan processing company, compared to any previous loans I've made (I've had about 15-20 real estate loans in California in the past 40 years), I soon began to worry that we might miss the December 19th deadline to pay off Chase with the new loan. The details of that difference aren't relevant here, but they were extraordinary.

When I saw how slow, detailed and repetitive the underwriting process seemed to be (this would now be late September) I began trying to find someone at Chase to talk to about a 1 month extension. We have (or had) a good credit rating and wanted to keep it that way. This proved frustrating: customer reps told us we didn't qualify for a loan modification because we weren't delinquent. It took us awhile to find Ms. Whitehall, the first (and only) person at Chase who tried to help us.By this time we were in October. She took our concerns seriously and over the following weeks worked toward different solutions. I believe before the final turndown we'd been turned down in two different Chase departments despite Ms. Whitehall's best efforts.

Please consider what it was we were asking for: a 30 day extension on the final balloon payment. I also offered to make an immediate $30,000 prepayment immediately upon approval of the extension, and I'm sure Ms. Whitehall conveyed the offer to the various groups/committees/executives who turned our request down. Please consider, too, that both my wife and I have had Chase credit cards for years and that we were paid in advance on the loan in question—as I say, by more than 10,000, probably close to 15,000.

We were nevertheless turned down three times by Chase over the 30 day loan extension.

What did the turndown accomplish for us? It marred our credit record.

What did this accomplish for Chase? It actually increased their risk of a larger default because we offered to prepay 30,000 for the extension, and having refused it the loan is technically still in default for the full $92K and will be until later this week when the payoff to Chase comes out of escrow.

It decreased our customer satisfaction with Chase. I won't say that I would never do business with Chase again; sensible persons do business with others they don't particularly admire or like all the time. But I wouldn't make any special effort to bring any future business to Chase, the corporation, now or ever.

Sincerely

Patrick

Company: Chase Bank
Country: USA

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