Beware of Chase

My husband is kind of upset with Chase credit card right now. Back in January, he noticed that we were getting charged a $10 finance fee so he called customer service. He was told that it was because more than half our balance was in promotional deals. So we paid off the card’s balance with our taxes. But now we are still getting charged the $10 fee per month. So he called customer service. He used to work in customer service as a team lead assistant–so he usually got to deal with the irate customers. He knows how to speak to the customer service reps without placing the blame on them. It is just a job, he understands that. Problem was, now they changed their story. They are charging the $10 fee per month. So essentially they are charging $120 a month to have their card (with no points, etc). So he asked to speak with a manager to discuss why he was lied to in January. The customer service rep transferred him to another rep, just a rep, who in turn said she was transferring to a manager. But after waiting 10 minutes on hold, his call was dropped back in the normal queue. Basically this third rep told him they cannot take off the $10 fee, so essentially that is why he was dropped in the normal queue again. My husband also wanted to discuss with the manager the crappy customer service he was getting. But this third rep, with no warning, hung up on him. I have worked in customer service on the phones—you do not hang up on a customer. I have been yelled at, sworn at, etc and still have not hung up on anyone. But then again, if someone asked for a manager, I’d give them to one. But I have a work ethic that I do not think most people have. I think people sometimes look at their job as just a job and that real people with real issues are on the other end of that phone line. So now my husband is physically driving to Chase Bank to see if they can help out at all. I also think we are going to send an email or try to contact the company again to just discuss the customer service. There was no reason for the rep to hang up with him. He wasn’t being rude, he wasn’t being threatening, and if you are going to hang up, you are supposed to warn the customer. But look what that gets them, me blogging about what crappy customer service we were given. The thing is, we would have cancelled the card back in January if we would have known we would be charged the $10 fee per month no matter what.  Well, bye bye Chase card–good riddance.

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Neighboorhood Housing

I know I spoke of this in an earlier post, but today we got a letter from the Neighboorhood Housing Services.  Every year they send out a letter to make sure you still live in your house that you borrowed money for.  Basically to see if they need to start hounding you for their money back!  Anyone who’s buying a house around our area, we direct them to Neighboorhood Housing.  They are there to help you with almost anything–needing to learn what goes into buying a home, foreclosure help, and helping to find financing. They are also fixing up houses in neighboorhoods to make the neighboorhoods more friendly and inviting. They really are cleaning up the town. I hope some day when we win the lottery, we can give money to fix up the area.

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Gliding

My sister made the comment to me that she was looking into maybe getting a Toyota Prius. She wanted to know what my husband and I think of it. We LOVE it. We are getting 51.6 miles per gallon right now, partly thanks to my sister.
Why, may you ask? My sister is kind of anal, she likes to search on the Internet for info and to me seems to believe the complaints she reads. She told me she did a Google search for Prius complaints and read something about the car stalling in snow. We never had the problem and after we got the car Green Bay had one of its biggest storms. The most annoying complaint we have heard is that it has sucky gas mileage on the highway. Our comment to that is show me a car that has better gas mileage than 45 mpg on the highway. Yes, the Prius gets better mileage in town, but its no inefficient on the highway. We drive about 15 minutes to and from work everyday, mostly highway and are still at 51.6.
But my husband decided to search for ways to drive more efficiently. According to the site he looked at, some people are getting 70 to 100 mpg. It all depends on the routes you take and how much attention you are paying to your driving. I don’t really understand the entire concept of the gliding, but it added 2 mpg for us in 2 trips out with the car. Basically, you watch the screen and tap the gas pedal to make all arrows disappear so you are not using either of the engine or battery.

If we can only get gas 1 time a month per car, I can handle that!

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Loans

Andy and I did have some debt that we wanted to get rid of before we got married and bought a house. We went to my credit union and we got a signature loan. Then we also took out a personal loan for the consolidated loan Andy had taken out on his credit card debt through MBNA. The problem with the consolidation through the credit card company was the high interest rate. The personal loan and signature loan both had lower interest rates. Because of that, we made the same amount of payment, but the total amount of the loan was actually going down. The best thing was with our tax refund we were able to get rid of the signature loan.

Loans are really easy to get as long as your credit score is high. Now that we have one less loan, we are thinking of maybe getting a Home improvement loans to work on our kitchen. Its great to actually still live the life you want, and not have to worry too much about the finacing.

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Never Enough

Andy and I worked about 6 hours overtime this week. We are trying to get back into it because there is so much we want to do. We are saving for our trip to Germany, we are saving to buy a new car (A Prius), we are trying to pay down loans, we are saving for a new washer and dryer. Why does it always seem no matter what you do, there will never be enough money? And Andy wants to wait until after we do not have any debt left to have a kids. I laughed at this comment because we are always going to have debt.

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