Tag Archives: heloc

Chase Bank Fail

I had a very frustrating experience with Chase bank yesterday.

I wanted to pay down the balance of our home equity line of credit to zero. I did not want to close the account.

The pay down amount isn’t obvious on their web site, so I called their customer service.

The woman I talked to was clearly a script reading drone, as she could not give me JUST the information I wanted. She had to give me ALL the information that showed up on her screen.

The balance on the account was about $60 plus some variable interest.

The first amount she told me was to close the account entirely (which I explicitly told her I did not need) was around $500. This included the early termination fee.

The next amount she gave me was (supposed to be) the amount to bring the balance to zero. She quoted me $400!

I explained that the amount she gave me could not be right because my current balance was only $60.

So she had to log back into the account to get the breakdown. Since the call had already gone on for 25 minutes, I just told her to forget it and I would calculate the amount myself.

Back on their website I finally found the variable interest that was due: $0.46.

Unfortunately the website would not let me pay the full amount … I had to pay the current balance first, then pay the variable interest.

The last time I wanted to do this I was unable to make a payment less than $1 … So I had to make a $1 withdrawal so I could pay a little more than $1.

This time it let me pay the .46 without jumping through hoops.

I like many of the services Chase offers, but their phone customer service leaves a lot to be desired.

Real Estate Appraisals

A recent experience has got me wondering how many errors are made in the home mortgage industry.

Ginny and I are in the process of applying for a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) so we can do some improvements to the house in the next few years.

As part of the HELOC application, they did an appraisal of our house.

When they got the appraisal back, they informed us that our original loan offer had to be revised because the value of our house was significantly lower than our own estimate.

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