As has been detailed in Pluto's excellent diary and my earlier diary Chase Bank is raising their minimum payments on some of their cards from 2% to 5%.
This change in the cardmember agreement is going to make life difficult for a lot of people, and they refuse to allow an "opt-out" with this change.
Those of us who thought we were getting a great deal on a balance transfer are now getting stuck with monthly payments we may not be able to afford.
I decided to dig a little bit deeper and discovered something interesting...
I went online to chase.com to see if I could find a copy of the cardmember agreement. Right now I am considering some kind of legal action, and this particular document would be a great place to start. Of course, there isn't one available on the website.
So I go to the chase message center to send an e-mail request for a copy of the cardmember agreement. I type my message asking for a copy of the cardmember agreement. Then I hit the send button...
I get an error message.
It says something like "due to inactivity, you have been logged out and your message has been saved in the drafts folder".
But I'm still logged in. There is no message in my drafts folder. Something is amiss...
I log out. I log back in. I type my message into the web form again. This time I copy my message to a text document. I click "Send"
Same error message
I try another time, and get the same error message. I'm not being logged out, and I'm not spending too much time typing my message since I'm copying and pasting so it can't be a timeout.
So I borrow a page from the spammer playbook.
I paste my request into the web form but then replace "cardmember agreement" with "c_a_r_d_m_e_m_b_e_r a_g_r_e_e_m_e_n_t"
I click "Send"...
Message is sent.
Fuckers.
If anyone else cares to try this to see if it is a more widespread phenomenon, I'd appreciate it.