I appreciate your encouragement, and detailed outline of your experiences and strategies with regard to Chase. This may help others, and that is the purpose of this site.

I do think you’ve answered your own question, posed at the end of your comment, however!

Before we’re done, at ChangeInTerms.com, Chase will be “dead” in the eyes of many more account holders (not that we’re claiming to do this single-handedly: Chase is proving to be its own worst enemy, by virtue of its “unfathomable” decision making processes, targeting customers who take pride in their credit and good name).

As you know if you’ve been reading here much at all, I am part of your fan club, since you are an entrepreneur. Any future comments or insider insights are welcomed and appreciated.

Take care.

I have so far made two attempts to “resolve” this with Chase. The last, I spoke to “Proactive Solutions” but was only able to get through to them because I already knew about them. In general, I got a run around and the same lame offer for 7.99% until 2011. Oh yeah, and a sob story from the customer service supervisor about how another bank did this to him – yeah right!

I have 4 Chase cards (all but one from portfolios purchased by Chase from other issuers) and only the 2 with 3.99% until paid off are affected. Proactive Solutions offered to close ALL my Chase cards, RAISE my interest rate and set up a 5 year payment plan after I outlined my debt service costs. Since I am self employed, I have from -$1500 to $500 available for non-debt expenses.

I’m $190 away from paying off a 0% loan on my Amazon Chase card. I will submit the final payment the day before the “statement opening date” (a term that first got me concerned about dirty tricks from Chase and accelerating my payments to them). Then, a $60 purchase at Amazon will get me to the 2500 points I need for a $25 Amazon gift certificate. As soon as that is obtained and spent, I will be canceling the card. I’m actually looking forward to that conversation.

I’ve compiled my full payment history on the two cards carrying 3.99% “forever” loans. I’ll admit that I have layered some short term, lower rate loans onto these since I first took the advances in late 2006. But knowing that payments would apply to those loans first, I always paid them off before the rate expired. In general, I also made a lump sum payment on the 3.99% balance before taking those addon loans. In all, I have taken advances totalling $48,892.10 on those two cards and made payments of $39,050.54 which included $3,503.44. I guess that’s not enough over three years. (I had another at 4.99% that I paid off when it somehow got another charge on it. Though interest is supposed to be applied to all rates, I watched the balance slowly creep up on that charge and finally paid off the whole thing after a relatively short time. I’ll include the data for that card when I finally decide who to complain to and how.)

I’m still debating what further action to take. For now, I’m essentially going without food, selling stocks that will certainly have further gains, and whatever it takes to get the payments down to a nearly affordable level. From that point on, I will pay exactly the minimum payment and concentrate my resources to other debt. (I’m not throwing away 3.99% if I can help it!) That will include aggressive payment to yet another Chase balance transfer loan at 5.99% – one I took just before this obscenity was revealed to me. Interesting that that loan remains at 2% of balance.

Here’s the thing that bothers me most: why is notice for these kinds of payments not required to be ON THE STATEMENT!!! Chase made a big deal about the extra couple of days to pay (required by Congress) but something that REALLY affects me relies on the US Mail. That failure of adequate notification put me at a huge disadvantage. Not only would I NOT have taken a Chase loan on another card, but I would also have conserved cash rather than paying down other debt.

And the balance transfer offers continue to arrive from Chase. Not with the 5% transfer fee I’ve heard so much about but at the (still somewhat usurous) 3%. It’s just unfathomable!!!

Chase is dead to me. I do think they were a good company before they were bought by JP Morgan. I have that opinion because I work in the credit card industry (card security) and have worked with them for years. NationsBank ruined BofA, JP Morgan ruined Chase.

They have done this to customers who they know are responsible, ethical and care about their credit ratings. Why would I ever want to do business with them ever again?