Whatever You Do, Never Get a Chase MasterCard

Last night, I finally got my refund check from Chase Mastercard.

I closed my account with them a few weeks ago, but they owed me a refund. Why did they owe me refund? (I know my readers love this style of rhetoric.) Because last summer, on July 31st , they supposedly received my authorization to start a payment protector plan. I never noticed the fees they were charging me because I pay my bill online and so it went on like this for several months. And, as you may know, they’re bastards and if you only pay your minimum payment, you’re really only paying like $5 of your balance. The rest is finance charges and interest.

After college, I was barely making enough to scrape by and somehow, my balance went over the limit (I might have had a payment that was a day late). So then I was being charged for being over the limit, on top of my finance charges and interest and everything. It ballooned. I would pay the amount that was over the limit, but that wouldn’t cover it because of the finance charges and interest. So I never got ahead. I was drowning.

I hate the bastards. No, no, hate is the wrong word. Not strong enough. Something stronger. I loathe them.

And you know, I accept responsibility for the portion that was mine, I’m not blaming them for what I spent. And even the interest is okay because that’s how it works. That’s how they make their money. I understand that. It was the day-late charges and the over the limit fees and finance charges. They weren’t taking care of me as a client. They were at war with me. Jerks.

Finally, I had to borrow an exorbitant, absurd amount of money from my mom to recover from these over-the-limit fees and that whole b.s. Then I figured out the payment protector plan b.s. They said I authorized it on July 31st, as I mentioned. Which was a complete, blazing lie. On July 31st, I was on my way to Omaha to see my sister and I was about to start a job the following Monday, so I wouldn’t have even worried about the payment protector plan and whatever it does. Chase would have called my mother’s house because that’s the number they had as my permanent residence, and no one would have answered.

So Chase owed me a refund. It should have been taken care of in March. But they don’t respect MY rights to MY money (and what about interest on the money they took? I could have been earning interest with it). They took their time, dawdled, waited a few months. While I was closing my account, the girl I spoke to said I’d receive the check in 3 to 5 days. It never came. So last week I got an account statement that said I had a credit return on my card for $109.86. It was supposed to be $110.00. Where was the fourteen cents. They stole fourteen cents from me! I looked around on the statement some more, searching for the fourteen cents. There it was, in a finance charge. A finance charge for a balance that they owed me.

Okay, okay, so I don’t understand the whole pack of lies credit card companies have established in order to screw their clients (who reads the miles of fine print anyway? It’s in annoying lawyer language, irritating and confusing). But I wasn’t budging. They owed me the money, they should have sent it months ago. It’s been war now, for about a year. I mean, I hated them from the beginning, but I always paid my bill on time and when I used to pay in checks, sometimes I enjoyed writing “you bastards” on the memo line. Just to vent and to feel like I was sticking it to the man. I’m the kind of prisoner who hates their captor. None of that Stockholm Syndrome crap for me.

I called Chase again last week and spoke with (again) a girl with a foreign accent -- already annoyed as hell and now you have to deal with a language barrier, and it’s not just people from other countries, it’s also people with thick Southern accents. Already annoyed and you have to communicate with someone very difficult to understand.

“I want my fourteen cents,” I said, or something like that. “Why are you charging me a finance charge on money YOU owe me? This account was supposed to be closed months ago. I don’t want a statement showing that I have credit, I want the damn check and I want this account closed. Why haven’t I received my check? The girl I spoke to when I closed my account said I’d have the check in 5 to 7 working days. What’s going on?” I riddled her with accusations and questions so she couldn't get a word or a protest in edgewise. It's a good tactic. It worked. She relented and gave me everything I wanted.

Apparently no one had “verified” the refund. Whatever that means. She gave me back the fourteen cents and cut the check. I got it last night.

And Stoker teased me about the fourteen cents. But he knows it’s not so much about the fourteen cents as it is about the principle of the thing. He knows you have to fight for every penny from the bastard credit card companies because they are Satan. Or Satan’s minions. And Chase is trying to take over the world. They’re everywhere now, haunting me. Even though I’ve closed this account, every day I get a credit card offer in the mail from some Chase company promising me low interest rates and 0% APR. Lies, I tell you, lies.

The worse part of it was that as soon as I paid off the majority of the balance, they raised my credit limit, so much so that when I had been over the limit, it would have taken care of the problem. They suck. They’d take your soul if was worth money. Since it’s not, we’re all very lucky.