WaMu 26% interest rate
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
WaMu collector doesn’t care that I’ll kill myself, insists on payment
I just never thought that BANK collectors simply won’t care how many people kill themselves.
She held it AGAINST me that I made all my payments until April. And this is my 2nd WaMu account. They stopped calling on my other account after it was charged off.
She was adamant that they’ll get paid after my death.
Fat chance. I’ll do my homework.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Reader mail: WaMu credit card interest rate increased to 31% despite NO late payments
I was fascinated by your interactions with WaMu. Whatever happened after you refused to pay? I ask this because last month they raised my APR to 31 percent and I had never missed a payment and my FICO score was 680.
After one hour, I finally spoke with a supervisor and told her that if my APR was not reduced I would default or file bankruptcy. She refused to help. What a scam. My balance with WaMu is @ 6,500. I closed the account. I may not pay at all unless they work with me. Comments?
WaMu made daily harassment collection calls until the account was charged off. As of last month, the WaMu bank accounts and credit cards were sold to Chase.
I can’t give any advice to others on whether to pay when I know nothing about their situation. Generally speaking, if you’re near judgment-proof and especially if you have large unsecured debts, don’t pay.
Chase, BofA and Citi are the major beneficiaries of the bank bailout.
They are actually WORSE than WaMu and if everything goes according to their plans, they will buy up many banks and they will finance the deals for the people behind the curtain, takeovers of public utilities and many corporations who are forced into bankruptcy by the banks.
The banks are trying hard to get debtors to pay on delinquent accounts, offering matching payments, waiving fees and interest, etc. Don’t be a sucker and pay UNLESS they will delete all recent derogatory data.
GENERAL comments on credit (there are exceptions):
That they will report the account as “current” once it is current will NOT help with the extremely important RECENT lates.
Even a 60 day late is a MAJOR derogatory for FICO scores. If that’s what’s reported, you might as well let the account charge off.
Unless you can get ALL delinquent accounts reported without recent lates, your credit is SHOT.
IMPORTANT: They will NOT hesitate to LIE to you. Record all calls and agreements.
An interesting article on credit card debt.
UPDATE: I couldn’t send the URL to the reader because his email address on the contact form resulted in a “malformed DNS server reply.” Hopefully he’ll find this post as he continues to research WaMu. If he or anyone else negotiates WaMu accounts with Chase, please let me know how it works out.
Reader mail • WaMu 26% interest rate • (0) Comments • Permalink
Thursday, September 25, 2008
WaMu seized - YES!!!! YES!!!! YES!!!!
And I have no champagne, so I got a glass of wine.
J.P. Morgan to Take Over Faltering WaMu
In what is by far the largest bank failure in U.S. history, federal regulators seized Washington Mutual Inc. and struck a deal to sell the bulk of its operations to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
The closing represents the demise of what once was the largest U.S. thrift but came to symbolize many of the worst excesses of the mortgage boom. The Seattle-based thrift expanded at a break-neck pace, not only in mortgages but also in credit cards and retail-banking, opening a slew of new branches in places like New York City and Chicago.
While the exact structure of the transaction wasn’t immediately known, J.P. Morgan is expected to acquire Washington Mutual’s deposits and branches, as well as other operations. The deal isn’t expected to result in any hit to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s bank-insurance fund, according to a person familiar with the arrangement. But it’s likely that another arm of government would have to pick up the tab. Some analysts have worried that a WaMu failure could cost more than $20 billion.
Federal regulators have been heavily involved in orchestrating the transaction, which comes as WaMu grapples with its bad mortgage loans. Regulators were hoping to fend off a collapse of WaMu, which, with more than $300 billion in assets, would mark by far the largest banking failure in U.S. history.
Under the deal, New York-based J.P. Morgan, which has long coveted WaMu as a way to secure a footprint on the West Coast and Florida, will assume most of the thrift’s deposits and branches, as well as some other operations.
Unlike many of the 12 bank failures that the FDIC has overseen this year, the J.P. Morgan-WaMu transaction isn’t expected to impact the agency’s national deposit-insurance fund. It wasn’t immediately clear how the transaction would be structured to avoid the insurance fund taking a hit. J.P. Morgan was set Thursday to unveil more details of the transaction on a 9:15 p.m. conference call with investors. The FDIC scheduled a conference call for 9:30 p.m.
With mortgage losses mounting, and its stock price plunging, WaMu has been scrambling over the past month to find a solution; last week it put itself on the auction block. A number of banks—including Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Spain’s Banco Santander SA—pored over WaMu’s books, but the bank didn’t receive any offers. This week, WaMu’s outside bankers approached a group of private-equity funds to gauge their interest in a deal, but that was viewed as a last-ditch effort.
Also this week, the FDIC took the step of reaching out to banks, asking them to express interest in taking over some or all of WaMu, according to people familiar with the matter. Those bids were due at 6 p.m. Wednesday.
J.P. Morgan’s takeover of WaMu’s deposits represents a huge blow for private-equity firm TPG, which injected $7 billion into the thrift this spring. The transaction is expected to wipe out WaMu stockholders and holders of the company’s senior debt, one person said. A key unknown: the fate of WaMu’s bad assets, which include mortgage loans that have soured as housing markets tanked.
This is the second time the government has gone to J.P. Morgan as a buyer of last resort. In March, the government agreed to backstop J.P. Morgan’s takeover of Bear Stearns.
This will likely prompt criticism from rivals about preferential treatment. Bank of America Corp., for instance, didn’t receive government assistance in its recently announced purchase of Merrill Lynch. Of course, in the case of WaMu, there were presumably other bidders who simply wouldn’t offer that much for the deposits and branches.
Before the deal, J.P. Morgan ranked as the fourth-largest bank as measured by branches, ranking below Bank of America, Wachovia Corp. and Wells Fargo. Its network of more than 3,100 branches stretches across 17 states with deep penetration in New York, Illinois, Texas, Michigan and Ohio.
Write to Robin Sidel at , David Enrich at and Dan Fitzpatrick at
I’ve waited for a long time to see WaMu die.
That’s not to say that Chase is a better bank, but Home Savings (merged with WaMu) started to foreclose on me in the 90s despite the fact that I had made EVERY payment ON TIME.
I almost killed myself when I was unable to get them to look into what happened to the mortgage payment made at the branch and they demanded over $8,000 which I did not have.
If it hadn’t been for my relative Dorothea who spent OVER 40 hours dealing with those criminals, I probably wouldn’t be here today. Eventually they figured out that they took the over $2,200 mortgage payment out of my account and made a mistake with my mortgage account number.
And then WaMu made the “business decision” last year to raise my credit card interest rate from about 11% to 26% despite my PERFECT payment history with WaMu and PERFECT credit rating.
And those of you who read financial news must have noticed that WaMu continually DENIED being in trouble until last week. It’s all lies.
They should let ALL the banks fail, take them over and continue to operate them until there are a number of common good banks. Let the businesses and investment banks do whatever they want, I couldn’t care less as long as we have banking alternatives.
I’m AGAINST limiting CEO salaries.
What a STUPID move. I don’t care if they make a trillion dollars a year. But when they run a company in the ground, just let it DIE. The investors are mostly institutions getting professional financial advice. Let them SUE the execs or eat their losses. There’s no reason to take care of them from cradle to grave.
Can’t wait to see how they’ll structure the Chase takeover, how much it’ll cost the tax payer and who ends up with my charge-offs.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Nigel Parry’s page on WaMu and IC System collection harassment
This afternoon I read Nigel Parry’s WaMu and IC System experience:
A letter to Washington Mutual and their debt collecting agency, IC System
Update 9/5/08: Nigel’s entire domain disappeared, so here’s the .pdf:
8-24-08--letter-to-washington-mutual.pdf
Be prepared to spend some time reading, it’s incredible what Nigel went through. The long story of WaMu raising rates, Nigel paying and paying, then getting sick, finally not being able to pay, the IC System harassment, Nigel paying, paying, and paying some more whenever he can—despite their abuse and despite suffering serious financial and medical problems.
He knows about the FDCPA. He knows what they do is illegal. But he feels compelled to pay them anyway.
… It was a hard year. I was barely able to work. And I made your payments on time, yet you kept punishing me. By this time, because of other fallout related to my difficulties, I was no longer getting the lower interest rate credit card offers. So I was stuck with you even though things were getting to the point where one church debt counseling service flat-out advised me to file for bankruptcy.
But I do believe in paying back what I have borrowed from people, so that wasn’t a viable option. ...
It is SO frustrating to see obviously well educated and intelligent people like Nigel REWARDING thugs like WaMu and IC System with PAYMENTS!
As long as crime pays you can’t possibly expect the criminals to become law abiding and honest citizens.
What makes people so ... submissive? I don’t know if that’s the right word. What makes people “believe” that they have to pay back money that was created by banks out of thin air through a computer entry?
Why don’t they get MAD?
Why don’t they get ANGRY?
Why do they PAY these thugs?
So I took the time to read a lot more on Nigel’s site. He is a peace activist.
What kind of PEACE do you get when you strive to meet your oppressors’ demands?
From About Nigel Parry”
…
In 1996, Nigel launched the first alternative news website published by residents of a warzone.
In 1997, he was invited to an NGO symposium at the United Nations in Geneva to speak about the development of the Internet in the Middle East.
In 2003, Nigel and the co-founders of Electronic Iraq and The Electronic Intifada received ADC’s “Voices of Peace” Award in recognition of the sites’ “commitment to bringing the concerns, voices, and experiences of the Iraqi and Palestinian peoples to audiences the world over via the Internet.” During the Iraq ground war, he coordinated reporting from peace activists on the ground in Baghdad.
In 2006, Nigel and the Electronic Intifada team launched Electronic Lebanon to present voices from on the ground in Lebanon during Israel’s summer war against the country. ...
Nigel is NOT your average clueless idiot. He’s been out there.
What is the point of bringing the concerns, voices, and experiences of the Iraqi and Palestinian peoples to the world over the Internet???
What are their concerns and experiences? They LIKE having their countries destroyed for western profits?
They want to be slaves to the bankers?
I just don’t get it.
Yesterday I watched a new documentary on 9/11 and the Israeli involvement. I’m sure you remember the white van with the “middle eastern” young men celebrating and filming the burning WTC towers. It turned out they were Israelis. I’m not linking to the video because it is very hateful towards Jews, similar to many Americans’ attitude towards Muslims.
However, it is certainly true that there is this Mossad / Israeli influence throughout the American government and military, CFR and Trilateral Commission. The MONEY to finance many operations comes from the bankers. Rudy Giuliani presented an award to David Rockefeller at a meeting of the Business Council for the United Nations:
Not even 3 minutes long and it almost made me throw up.
The only PEACE we’ll see as long as the banks run the planet is the kind of peace we had when the blacks were slaves, working peacefully on the plantations for their masters. We peacefully work and peacefully pay our debts and taxes.
Is that what Nigel wants?
I’m assuming that Nigel watched The Money Masters and Money As Debt and some of the other documentaries exposing who runs the world and how they do it. But then again, maybe he doesn’t know and that would explain a lot. I keep forgetting that I just learned so much about the extent of the corruption over the last year.
I knew how everything sucked, but I didn’t know why. And I also made my payments “religiously”, “believing” it was the RIGHT thing to do, until 12/07. I can’t even begin to understand why I made these payments.
Obviously, I’m sending Nigel this URL and I’m not trying to put him down. I read quite a bit at his site, the internet dating advice is very funny. I just want to understand what he is thinking, what makes him “believe” that he needs to pay WaMu anything and especially the outrageous amount of interest.
Aside from the bankers’ involvement in wars, usually funding BOTH sides, especially in the Middle East, WaMu deceived many thousands of borrowers who are losing their homes. My “1% mortgage approval” was for a WaMu loan (Exh. 18, my suit against the CRAs).
Why support this scummy outfit with YOUR money?
Why not give the money to a Palestinian organization?
2008 IC System suit (FDCPA -- SETTLED!) • WaMu 26% interest rate • (6) Comments • Permalink
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Credit card rates and fees increase—STOP paying the credit cards!
Credit card rates hustle higher
By Kathy Chu, USA TODAYEven as the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates, financial institutions have sharply raised rates for credit card customers — even those who pay on time — as they grapple with losses from other bad consumer loans.
This month, Washington Mutual (WM) told some credit card customers that it was raising their rates by as much as 100%. Discover (DFS) is lifting its penalty rate to 31%, effective May 1, and may apply that maximum to consumers who exceed their credit limit twice in a rolling 12 months.
Bank of America (BAC) raised rates for some customers in March — triple, in some cases, though spokeswoman Betty Riess says, “It would be very rare.”
All three institutions say they reserve the right to adjust rates when customers become higher risks. Keith Givens, a spokesman for Washington Mutual, also notes that the decision to raise some rates is “an indicator of overall deterioration in the economy.”
As banks deal with tough business conditions, their definition of risk is evolving: “It’s a lot like beauty; it’s in the eye of the beholder,” says Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com.
That’s why even responsible consumers whose credit scores haven’t changed are being hit, says Joseph Ridout, a spokesman for Consumer Action, an advocacy group.
Bill Hardekopf, CEO of LowCards.com, says the card comparison site is “seeing more aggressive fees come out, and issuers are quicker to change interest rates.”
He notes that as banks lose money on mortgage loans, it’s logical they would try to boost credit card profits. “If one end of your business is suffering, you look to the other end to pick up the slack.”
To boost profits, some banks have also imposed higher fees on consumers for paying late, transferring credit card balances and withdrawing money from an ATM.
The danger for card holders is that as some struggle to pay bills, steep rate or fee increases could nudge them toward default. Credit card delinquencies — a precursor to defaults — have been climbing, and overall consumer loan delinquencies are at their highest since 1992.
“If every (card company) raises your rate, you might have to write the debt off or go into bankruptcy,” says Dan Blanton, of Pevely, Mo. He was notified this month that his Washington Mutual credit card rate would nearly double, to 24%.
Blanton calls the rate increase “totally unfair.” He pays his credit card bills on time and generally pays more than the minimum due. He also has a solid credit score of nearly 700, he says. (Washington Mutual says it doesn’t comment on individual accounts.)
Discover’s new penalty rate applies to all new customers. About 10% of existing customers could also be hit with the 31% rate if they miss a payment or exceed their credit limit twice in a year. Bank of America and Washington Mutual declined to say what percentage of their existing customer base would be hit with higher interest rates.
I noticed that my BofA MBNA statement had a $49 late fee! Can you believe that? That’s the card I stopped paying after they closed my account despite my perfect payment history.
Obviously, they’ll never get a dime of that $49 late fee. But way too many people are still struggling to keep up with their credit card payments.
If you’re one of the many millions of consumers one paycheck from not being able to pay the rent or mortgage and with no major assets:
Max out the cards with food and fuel purchases, get your car fixed and take care of medical problems and then STOP paying!
Yes, the banks CAN legally raise their fees and rates and YOU can legally NOT pay them.
I’m sure you’ve all seen the WSJ article on food shortages and stocking up the pantry. It doesn’t matter whether the increasing prices and shortages are caused by vile speculators or insufficient supplies, it’s a FACT that food prices are going up just like fuel.
It’s also a fact that the SEC refuses to stop the speculators. You can continue to expect dollar devaluation as the Fed (the privately owned Federal Reserve) and other banks and investors are creating trillions of dollars out of NOTHING—for the benefit of bankers and speculators.
SEC took bribe from criminals involved in TWTN - AHFI - CNDD fraud - NC AG sues
This is just one example documenting the extent of the corruption of the American government. The SEC is happy to take an about 10% cut of the fraud money, you could think they’re the Mafia, openly accepting protection money.
I posted my research as these stock frauds were happening. Many people could have saved $20k, $50k and as I recently posted, somebody lost $500k —why didn’t they read my posts? Amazingly, some people read my posts and STILL invested.
So, you can follow my advice or not, I really don’t care. Just don’t whine at me when you’re homeless because you’ve been giving all your money to the banks.
My Open Letter to WaMu: My refusal to pay my $8,000 WaMu (Providian) VISA card due to the 26% interest rate
Credit - Collection - Economic News • WaMu 26% interest rate • (0) Comments • Permalink
