Chase card with original line of credit $2000. due to financial troubles, interest has added up to almost another $1500 to total $3500. i have been paying the $100 they have required for the last few months but it is not making a dent in the balance. it's just keeping me out of collections. does anyone know if Chase has a hardship program or do you think they would take some kind of settlement on the account. i could possibly borrow something from my 401k. this debt is really bothering me. any help will be appreciated.
First off I wouldn't borrow anything from your 401K because if you lose your job then they may require full payment up front! That would really hurt. Do you have another card that you can balance transfer to? Are your other debts behind also? You just mention Chase. I have 2 chase cards (Freedom Mastercard and Platinum) and I can't help you with the hardship program but I would assume there must be something they can do if you just ask. Have you tried calling and asking?
thanks iambroke! i have 3 other cards but they are almost maxxed so i am trying to get my credit back in order from highest to lowest. i called Chase a while back about a hardship program and they "hemmed and hawed" around about you have to be so many months behind to qualify. i am gonna call them back and hopefully talk to someone else. i learned from this board "never take a no from someone who's not authorized to give you a yes." i also have searched the archives here and found a few folks with similar situations. thanks again. p.s. i like your username
I have a chase also. Same situation as yours with the exception of that I gave up trying to maintain that monthly payment just to get nowhere. I just quit paying. Now as I'm getting ever closer to the 180 day mark, I have received two seperate offers about a month apart. The first syas they will settle for 50%, the next one, a month later says they will settle for 35%, if I call them and pay by a certain date. I suspect the certain date is the end of the 180 days. Haven't got the funds myself right now to settle, wish I did, but thought the info may be helpful. Also I'm sure at this point I have awful score with them. (Although I did pay on it until the end of last year) Good luck and keep me posted.
I hope you can get it worked out. Maybe a loan from a family member? Something to get you caught up to get back on track? How about a 2nd job to get it paid back up so you can handle it. That would be a temporary thing and once you're caught up you won't have to do that. I love Chase as far as I have 2 credit cards with them and my mortgage. I am refinancing my current mortgage with them and also refinancing my 2nd (HELOC) to them too. We'll be closing Aug 4th on both. I would call and ask to speak with someone that can help you get back on track. Don't speak with a regular customer service person. I don't know what they call that department but when you get thru to them demand to work something out. I think they would be more likely to work out a payment plan (lower your interest to help maybe?) so you can get caught up. It's either that or NO money....I would think anything right now would mean more then nothing. PS: I AM BROKE...LOL but happy I have too much credit for my own good and am working on paying it off. After a bankruptcy in the early 90's I don't want to EVER be that way again! Luckily I don't overextend but I do end up with nothing it seems But I guess everyone is broke in some way, huh?
neomatrix, GEEZ....so you couldn't afford the payments so you just quit paying? What type of advice is that? YIKES Ok, so you settle for 50% of your balance...this means the other 50% is written off which means if it's enough you'll get a 1099 from the IRS for the forgiven amount of which you'll have to report on your income tax return as INCOME....Not good! Then the charged off amount goes onto society in higher fees. That just doesn't sound fair, does it?
I apologize if it seemed I was advising not to pay. I was actually trying to let them see how much bargaining power they had if they were willing to let me off at 35% of the debt. I do not advocate not paying your bills at all. I always pay my bills as well, but sometimes we just get in over our heads. I quit paying not because it was a decision to quit paying, but because I no longer had the money to pay their minimum. I am currently working two + jobs just to stay alive. They just don't pay very well. I even do side work for family and friends when I'm not working . However, if I have the choice of eating, or paying my cc bill, I'm gonna eat first, then pay my cc bill with whatever is left over. Unfortunately chase did not agree with me, and thought that paying them a minimum payment by some due date was far more important. I just disagreed. If they can't accept what I can only afford to give em, them I have no other recourse, but not to pay them.
Let me tell you a bit about fair......Last year, around Thanksgiving, someone from somewhere in Spain hacked into my companies on line merchant account with Verisign. They proceeded to process untold number of charges through our electronic cc terminal which placed several thousand dollars into the company 's check. account. Then they started issuing numerous credits back out of our account to specific credit card numbers. They were running up consumer credit cards, using our bank account, and then attempting to issue credits back to their own accounts. Pretty clever, eh? Well when we came into work from Thanksgiving weekend, our merchant account provider called us and stated that there appeared to be an unauthorized charge on a credit card we had processed. As I started to investigate and discovered the previous 3 days shenanigans, I immediately phoned the cc companies in which we process cards for, IE Visa, MC, Amex, Discover. I was told by all of them, not to worry about it because they could block the transactions. Sweet! Well several days later we started receiving all of this money into our comp. check accounts. I contacted the bank, and explained it to them and we froze all transactions through that account except for paper checks. NO Electronic transactions at all. I once again notified the cc companies and this time requested card holder info, so that I could individually call each one to apologize and explain what had happened. I was told that I should have the contact info since I was the one who had lost control of the cc numbers. I politely told them that we had never dealt with the card holders> The crooks were just using our merchant account to process stolen cc numbers. They assured me they would contact their cardholders to let them know their cards had been used in fraudulent transactions. So after blocking our bank account, which means the bank has to manually process all checks by hand, both AMEX and Discover still managed to deposit the funds from these transactions into our account. The bank could not explain it, and every time I tried Amex or Discover on the phone, I had to talk to a new person each time and explain the situation all over again. It started to get very frustrating. They would not listen to reason, and would promise me that they would resolve the problem. So after setting up all new merchant accounts, bank accounts, etc. and spending several hundred dollars in fees in the process, and speaking with the FBI, and the local police department, who advised, me by the way, to never ever use a credit card on the Internet, since I was in the US and the attack originated from Spain, well they might be able to investigate it. We'll call you they said. Meanwhile 2 months later, I start receiving angry calls from credit card holders complaining that they had charges on their cards from my comp. and wanted them deleted. I was shocked to learn that AMEX and Discover did not contact their cardholders. Not only did they have charges from our company, they had numerous charges from other companies as well, whose merchant accounts had also been hacked into. Lesson learned throughout this whole ordeal? The merchant, IE my company is 100% liable for all charges to cc's placed through my merchant account, regardless of the circumstances. My only recourse, is to track down some freak in Spain or wherever and have him arrested and try to get my money back. So when the CC company smiles and tells you not to worry, you are not liable for unauthorized charges to your cc, take note that when the merchant loses money through fraudulent transactions like those, they raise their prices to cover the losses. Guess who pays for that fraud? You do. by paying higher prices for the goods and services you have to pay for, plus higher interest rates on cc's. And one last thing I learned. If the merchant is 100% liable, what about the credit card companies. I thought they were losing millions of dollars a year in fraud? No they aren't. It's the poor small business merchants being raked over the coals by the huge financial cc co's taking the losses and then passing them on to you, The credit card companies actually profit from it because they are getting transaction fees for all of those transactions. The cc companies use fraud as an excuse to jack you, while putting the burden on small businesses. And the worst part of it all, besides me losing thousands of dollars, I unknowingly sent all of fraud funds back to AMEX and Discover. Now that they have the consumers money, and haven't notified the consumer, the only way for the consumer to find it is too dispute it, and then they will remove the charge. I know three months after this happened there were several consumers who still had no idea that their cards were used. They will just pay their bills and never think twice about it. Meanwhile AMEX gets to keep the money, then charge interest on it to boot! Sounds like a sweet deal to me! Now is that fair?
Ahhhh....but remember Chase DID NOT charge those purchases....nor did anyone hold a gun to your head to buy that stuff you can't pay for now. This is the very reason why I charge what I can pay off each month and thus no troubles with late pays, over the limits, etc.... I have been in your boat...I know the way you feel. It sucks but sometimes it's much harder to take care of our responsibilities then run from them. I admit I have done that in the past and I regret it. Therefore I am totally responsible when it comes to credit. I guess you live and learn the hard way. But I do understand what you are saying and I do empathize totally.
this means the other 50% is written off which means if it's enough you'll get a 1099 from the IRS for the forgiven amount of which you'll have to report on your income tax return as INCOME....Not good! iambroke ===================== What cost the most 100% of the 50% to the creditor or 25 or so percent of it to IRS? THE END ** *** ** LB 59 """""""""```~~~```'"""""""""
But you can't think that just paying 50% is the right thing to do, do you? The other amount is written off, thus society pays in higher fees. Do you think just shirking your responsiblity is the RIGHT thing to do? Either way a deadbeat is always a deadbeat until they understand what the bottom line is.
Chase does have a hardship program, called FlexPay They let me pay an amount I chose at 5% for 2 yrs....be very aware of the rate jack at the end of those 2 yrs though.......prepare to BT!
Deadbeat? Wow! as many peolple who are in here that have fallen on difficult times, and who want to pay, but can't, yet, and your calling people deadbeats? Are you sure you don't work for a CA?
One of the best methods to reduce your finance interest fees monthly is to make 2 payments per month. Split the $100.00 -- make the first payment starting 14 days before the billing date, another near the due date. This reduces your principal quicker over time ( by 75% faster) than waiting the whole month to pay what's due. If you have any spare $$ in between--send those as well. Good luck. D.B.
thanks all. i really appreciate the help and am gonna work on doing a couple of the things mentioned.
Re: Re: Hope Someone Can Help Another way is to pay the min. plus the interest each month. THE END ** *** ** LB 59 """""""""```~~~```'"""""""""
hurrytime, could you explain this concept in more detail, like why it works and how it achieves '75% faster' define billing date thanks bugman
