Frustrated with Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, a Philadelphia homeowner took the bank to court under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act and won a $1,000 default judgment because it wouldn’t answer his formal questions about a dispute. The bank blew him off, so the man got the sheriff to schedule a sale of contents of a Wells Fargo Home Mortgage location to pay for the judgment and $200 in court and sheriff’s fees. [More]
banks
Wells Fargo ATMs Crash Across The Country
By 2.8.11
Most of Wells Fargo’s 12,000 ATMs crashed starting Monday afternoon and lasting several hours, reports the Star Tribune, and no one knows why. [More]
The 79.99% APR Credit Card
By 2.7.11
It sounds ridiculous. First Premiere Bank launched a new credit card with a 79.99% interest rate. It targeted consumers who couldn’t get a credit card anywhere else, and it was popular. Too popular, in fact. “A lot of the people ran up the card, defaulted and went directly to charge off,” First Premiere’s Bank told CNN Money. Since then they’ve dropped it to 59.99% and that’s just low enough to keep enough people paying off interest to make it profitable. But wait, wasn’t the CARD act supposed to prevent these really hight rates and stuff? [More]
Updated: Buy Gas From Shell Last Weekend? Check Your Card For Double Billing
By 2.3.11
If you filled up with gas from Shell on Saturday, January 29 2011, (update: readers report double-billing throughout the whole weekend and Shell says they’re looking to expand the affected time period) and paid with plastic, you should check your card statement to see if you got double-billed. StorefrontBacktalk got hold of a confidential memo which said that a telco outage resulted in 401,120 double-billed transactions having to be reversed for a total of $12,135,608.19 in refunds. While the reversals should be automatic, some people with low balances did get charged overdraft and other fees because of the mistake, fees they should not have to pay [More]
Send Your Ideas To The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's New Website
By 2.3.11
ConsumerFinance.gov, the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s new website, is live and in full effect. So is their Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. They want your suggestions and ideas so send ’em in! As they announced on their website their central role is “to make markets for consumer financial products and services work for America…The CFPB belongs to the people it serves. If you have suggestions, we want to hear them.” [More]
Chase Sends You New Credit Card, Then Cancels It Before It Arrives
By 2.2.11
Reader Danny writes in that he was approved for a new Chase Ink credit card, but by the time it showed up in his mailbox, it was already canceled. [More]
Wachovia Settles "Pick-a-Payment" Mortgage Loan Class Action
By 2.1.11
If you got a “Pick-a-Payment” mortgage from Wachovia between Aug 1 2003 and Dec 31 2008, you might be up for claiming some cash in a $50 million settlement. [More]
Skimmer Uses Bank Door Swipe, Crooks Don't Even Touch ATM
By 1.31.11
In a twist to the usual ATM skimmer scam, there’s a new report from Krebs on Security about crooks who put the skimmer inside the bank door-lock. When you swipe your card to get inside, they grab your digits. A camera hidden behind a mirror above the ATM and pointed down at the keypad records your PIN code when you punch it in. [More]
Assange Tells 60 Minutes He Likes Watching Banks Squirm As They Prep For His Next Leak
By 1.31.11
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange played coy in his 60 Minutes interview last night as reporter Steve Kroft tried to press him about the identity of the big bank he supposedly has a 5GB hard drive of secrets on. [More]
Chase Chokes Off Enrollment In Debit Rewards
By 1.28.11
After February 8th, Chase isn’t letting any more people into the debit rewards program. Citing shrinking margins due to recent legislation, Chase is closing off all new enrollment. [More]
The 8 Least Evil Banks In America
By 1.27.11
Banks that aren’t evil? Really? CNN Money rounded up eight American banks that might not be consumer paradises, but offer free checking, no ATM fees, and comparatively high interest rates for savings accounts. [More]
Chase Overcharged Over 4,000 Military Families On Mortgages, Improperly Foreclosed On 14
By 1.19.11
Chase has admitted that it overcharged over 4,000 military families on their home mortgages, as well as wrongly foreclosed on 14 of them. Some of these are families of troops that are fighting in Afghanistan. [More]
Citigroup Still Selling Mortgages That Violate Quality Standards
By 1.18.11
15% of the mortgages Citigroup sold to government-owned Freddie Mac from the second half of 2009 and the first part of 2010 were riddled with flaws, according to an internal report obtained by Bloomberg. The error rate should be about 5%. The mistakes included missing insurance docs, missing appraisals and income miscalculations. [More]
Now Banks Are Also Walking Away From Foreclosures, Just Leaving Them To Rot
By 1.14.11
It’s not just underwater homeowners just flat out walking away from their houses. Now some mortgage servicers, having decided certain properties would be too expensive to try to foreclose, secure, maintain and market, are just abandoning the properties entirely, to let nature, and whatever else, take its course. [More]
Apocryphal And Hilarious "Letter A 98-Year Old Woman Wrote To Her Bank" Makes The Rounds Again
By 1.10.11
An amazing letter that a 98-year old woman wrote to her bank to protest a bounced check is making the rounds. She complains about a check getting bounced from her account because it occurred “three nanoseconds” before her pension got direct-deposited. She then says that going forward the bank will have to appoint a special rep to open her mortgage and loan payments, he has to use a 28-digit PIN to talk to her, and will have to go through a lengthy phone tree. It’s quite clever, but it’s not real. Not exactly. [More]
What You Get If You Start Saving Today
By 1.7.11
A lot of people probably made “save more money” one of their New Year’s Resolutions. It’s true, the best day to start saving is right now. Based off of what the average American spends annually, if you set a goal for next January and save $157 a month, you can have all your clothes paid for for the year. [More]
Chase Closes Couple's Bank Account Because They Deposited Checks Written With Red Ink
By 1.7.11
A California couple lost their Chase checking account because the bank’s system couldn’t read the red ink on a pair of $100 checks from one of their grandmothers. [More]
BofA Tests New Checking Accounts With New Fees
By 1.6.11
Bank of America is trying out a new system of checking accounts with new rules—and new fees for breaking them. [More]
