Like many of you, I was a WaMu customer and was happy with their services and rates. Always made my payments on time and always paid much more than the minimum, credit limit kept going up and so did my credit scores. Life was good... Until the rapists at JP Morgan Chase came along.
I got the notifications from WaMu telling me that Chase had bought them out. I read them over and over to make sure that there were not any hidden surprises. Not once in any of these notices did anyone mention an arbitrary surprise rate hike or a change from my fixed rates to variable rates. I was at 9.9 fixed on one card and 12.99 fixed on the other, and I was comfortable with those rates.
Immediately after the Chase take-over, I am forced to make a rather large purchase on one of the cards because money is getting kind of tight. Hey, that is why I have the darn credit cards, right? If I make substantial payments I can have this thing paid of in a year or two... I thought.
About two or three billing cycles later. Wham. My interest rate jumps. Keep in mind that I NEVER made a late payment and always paid substantially more than the minimum. Last month I get another mailing from Chase and this time they are telling me that my rate is jumping again. At least this time they are giving me an option, but the option will adversely effect my credit score. If I do not want to pay their new and improved rate increase, all I have to do is cancel my cards and screw up my credit score and any possibility that I have of a mortgage re-finance.
I guess the most frustrating part of this is that Chase is doing all of this on my dime (and yours.) Chase took the bailout money (TARP) from the feds and instead of using it as it was intended, to EXTEND CREDIT and STIMULATE THE ECONOMY, they decided to just steal WaMu with the help of the FDIC and stick it to all the WaMu customers to line their fat-cat pockets. Is there no oversight from the government regarding what is being done with TARP funds? Isn't there something criminal in the actions of Chase? At the very least, isn't this unethical and deserving of congressional review?
You can bet that my elected officials are hearing about this, and if they do not take some type of action against Chase they will hear about it again during the next election.
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