The current economic downtrend isn’t all bad.ADHERER
This is a lesson in the evils of credit. I admit, I have made some bad choices in life regarding credit, but I am doing what I can to make amends. But I have to recount a tale of woe regarding one creditor (Issuer, as they’re called in the biz) that’s given me some grief of late.
Due to various buyouts and portfolio sales, I ended up with a credit card issued by Washington Mutual (WaMu). In fact, I somehow had three. Only one of these cards is active, the other two having been closed many moons ago. A few years ago, I called WaMu and asked them why the closed accounts still appeared online and they said that they would remove the two closed ones. Very soon after, I had two accounts showing up. I guess they had a hard time counting to 2 because I, to this day, still have one open and one closed account appearing online. This tale isn’t about this, but it underscores the idiocy I am dealing with.
So, I made some bad choices, lived outside my means, and am now working on paying down my credit card debt. I am obeying every letter of every cardholder agreement, making payments on time, and accepting any mistakes that I have made. As such, I take the highest-rate card and pay as much as I can on it, and any other card I just take the minimum payment, round it up to the nearest multiple of $50, and make that payment. And occasionally, I look for balance transfer deals that will help me in the long run.
Well, my active WaMu card (calling it “active” is not really accurate since I haven’t made a purchase on it in years) has been accepting my payments of a certain amount for many many months. One would think that if that payment amount is acceptable (i.e. above the minimum) that the balance should only decrease (however slowly) and that the minimum payment should only decrease with time.
Well, WaMu suddenly decided to increase my APR astronomically (from less than 9% to nearly 30%!) and also change the calculation of the minimum payment. Well, I check my statements every month and make sure that cards I am not using don’t have any odd charges on them. But I just totally missed that my minimum payment jumped as well as my APR. And, of course, the minimum payment calculation jumping from 2% of the balance to 2.5% of the balance put that number above what I had been paying forever, so, I ended up only making a partial payment and my account went past due.
The next thing that happened was that I received a call from someone with an accent that I couldn’t make out. He was calling me from a Denver area code and told me my account was past due and became adamant that I give him some sort of recompense. I told him that I had no way of knowing the authenticity of his purported credentials and that, since he called me, there was no way in the universe I would give him any personal information over the phone, especially since WaMu (WASHINGTON Mutual) and Denver don’t jibe in my book. It would be like getting a call from Anchorage referencing your Florida Power bill; it just doesn’t make any sense.
In any case, you know how most financial institutions will tell you in no uncertain terms that they will never ever solicit information over the phone? Well, apparently WaMu didn’t get that memo. I asked the gentleman to make a notation on my account that if I paid my account current that the $39 late charge would be waived, as he promised he would do. He agreed and the phone call ended.
After the call, I called WaMu (using the number on the back of my card, which is so small an eagle couldn’t read it with Coke-bottle glasses) and asked them what was going on. The gentleman informed me that yes they do indeed call customers from time to time to badger people to bring their account current. Note: my account had been past due for all of maybe two weeks at this point. He could not confirm that the number I was called from in Denver was indeed good, nor that they even had any “collections” people there. I began to feel more and more uneasy. The rep also could not give me a good explanation for why my account’s APR had been jacked through the roof, nor why the minimum payment formula for me had changed. I told him to place a hold on my account because I was smelling foul play. My thoughts were either that I was being targeted for identity theft, or else WaMu was horrible at understanding basic financial security measures. Either way, I wanted that account gone, ASAP.
Apparently, WaMu cannot place a hold on an account, so he had it declared lost/stolen. As soon as I got off the phone, I went online to my bank and had a payment sent to this account to bring it current. To date, the $39 late fee has not been reversed. The dude in Denver must not have gotten his message through. Queue ominous music now.
The next thing that happened was that I received an email informing me that my account was past due. It instructed me to go to a website to take care of it. The website’s address did not match the address I usually go to online for WaMu, and to make matters worse, the URL of the link didn’t match the URL that was displayed on the email (the text of the anchor didn’t match the href). The site looked legit, but you can never be too sure. I closed the browser (without attempting to sign on… could have been a spear-phishing attack) and called WaMu again. They once again could not confirm nor deny the site I was given or that they send out emails of this nature. The lady did mention that I hadn’t requested a new card yet since the old account had been labeled lost/stolen. I said that she was correct, I hadn’t requested a new card, and that I didn’t need one because the next sound they heard from me was my transferring the balance and closing the account.
After another several days, I got a letter in the mail. Essentially, it said the equivalent of they didn’t like my face, so they had decided to jack my rate and my minimum payment and also lower my credit limit to my outstanding balance (which I hadn’t noticed until this point, but sure enough, they dropped the credit-limit to my outstanding balance to prevent me using the card). Folks, this is American Express (which I consider pure evil) behavior. Except at least AmEx has the decency to not tell you what the agreement is before they change it. WaMu just said they’re changing the agreement because they didn’t like how I was making more than my minimum payments, every month, and on time.
Okay, they didn’t tell me they didn’t like my face, but that may as well have been the case. They essentially said that my behavior, which as I have stated has been to round up the minimum payment to the next $50 increment and pay that amount on-time, made them uncomfortable and so they decided to change the metrics of my account. Looking back, I can only surmise that they saw the writing on the wall with all of the bad lending that’s gone on in the last several years, their stock was plummeting, and they probably went through their portfolio and decided that if they jacked everyone’s rates they could get a cool bunch of cash in the form of late fees (from people that don’t check their statements carefully… like me) and a lot more interest.
The next thing I heard was that WaMu was being glommed by the Fed and sold to JP Morgan Chase. I laughed so hard at that; it actually made me a little glad that all the nation’s economic woes had forced an obviously-bad company out of business. So there’s a little good news in all of this.
I have several Chase cards and they just recently DROPPED my APRs on all of them by a half-point, for no reason. Of course, once they take over WaMu’s portfolio I am certain that they will put me on the system at my new APR. In the meantime, I have transferred those balances to some 0% APR offers I had and will be shortly closing that WaMu account (as well as the already-closed one that’s still out there).
So here’s the lesson, boys and girls: credit is bad. Yes, I recognize that we all need it to achieve our dreams. But if you can avoid credit card debt, do it. Auto loans and property mortgages are acceptable, but there’s nothing like solvency to help you sleep at night.
Look man, if you can’t find WAMUCARDS.COM by doing a little research on the internet aka type “WAMU” in google, you don’t have anyone to blame but yourself. Also to say you’re glad 10,000+ people about to be out of work and THOUSANDS+ effected by the investments in the company stock has to make the biggest head scratcher in a long time. Look, I can see how you’re frustrated but it seems like you’re one of MANY that has no self-accountability.
Wow. Did you even READ my post? CAN you read English?
I can indeed find Wamucards.com… as I stated, the link they sent me DID NOT MATCH the URL I usually use. The link in the email said wamucanhelp.com and the href was email.wamu.com. Do you see a match there? Do you click on every link you see in an email and start typing in usernames and passwords? Go for it, and we’ll see how fast someone grabs your identity. Hey, the prince of Nigeria has millions of dollars for you too.
As well, if someone randomly called you on the phone and claimed to be from your issuing bank and started asking for account information, would you give it out?
So what’s your beef here? Are you saying that because I couldn’t find their true website (which is patently false) that I deserve to have the company rewrite their agreement with me simply because they want to, and not because I broke the agreement in some way?
Nah, that’s not it. You are taking this personally. So, are you the guy in Denver that tried to steal my information and I wouldn’t give it to you? Were you the bonehead I called who couldn’t identify whether your company employs “collections” people in Denver? Or that couldn’t say whether email.wamu.com is a valid WaMu URL?
As well, I think I demonstrate tons of self-accountability… as I stated, I freely accepted the late fee and brought my account current immediately upon realizing its status.
So, dude… own up to your vitriol or take it elsewhere.
-Mike
p.s. if you are a WaMu employee who will shortly be a JP Morgan Chase former-employee, I feel for you. But I can’t abide how WaMu treated me, and for that they lose my business and get a negative post about them. These are my right as an American.
“they jacked everyone’s rates they could get a cool bunch of cash in the form of late fees (from people that don’t check their statements carefully… like me) and a lot more interest.”
First off, if people don’t keep track of their own finances like you boldly stated above, you deserve to get your rates jacked (which is called the “default rate” which is diclosed in virtually ALL card agreements) and assessed a late fee. If you’re working to pay down your debt, why the hell would you NOT check it thoroughly?? Besides, raising the minimum payment by half a percent will only help you to bring the principal faster.
Second, if you know the correct website, WHY DON’T YOU SEND A MESSAGE DIRECTLY FROM THE WEBSITE??
Third, Credit card is bad in hand that are IRRESPONSIBLE. For anyone to say credit cards are bad PERIOD would be pure ignorance. Heck I made $300 with out paying a single penny of interest this year alone using credit cards.
I worked for a credit card processor for 7 years and currently work for a bank that was not so stupid as to think that selling sub-prime mortgages as A1 stocks would be a good thing… as a result, my employer is not up for auction by the Fed.
In any case, let’s look at your points.
WaMu sent me an email and called me (or some bad guys called me, I still don’t know for sure) looking for personal information. Are you saying that only the tech and security savvy deserve to not get fleeced? It is a piss-poor business practice to blatantly send out correspondence that is a huge security hole.
I don’t know if you are believing that this email I got came from WaMu or not, but your point is blatantly obvious, but also incredibly callous. The average internet user can barely turn on their PCs; how can you make the statement that “if you know the correct website, WHY DON’T YOU SEND A MESSAGE DIRECTLY FROM THE WEBSITE??” This also shows your lack of understanding of the issue.
I wasn’t LOOKING for a place to send a message to or from. I already know that the safest place to go is the phone number on the back of the card. But not everyone knows this. And to defend WaMu’s blatant disregard for internet safety is completely irresponsible… on their part AND yours.
Moving on… “default rate?” WTF are you on? My rate was set. My minimum payment was set. I made it, over and over for well over a year. I abided by every letter of the cardholder agreement. WaMu CHOSE to change the agreement, without notice and without provocation on my part. If they thought that 2% as a minimum wasn’t enough, then they should have set it at 2.5% in the very first place. Then I could have agreed to it or not, but on my own behest. As well, if they felt that my agreeing to and following everything in the cardholder agreement wasn’t enough, then they should have had a different agreement in the first place. And yes I know that they write in that they can change it at any time. Doesn’t make it fair.
The point is that as long as they were fat, dumb, and happy, my following the agreement was fine. They were getting interest, I was making my payments and not delinquent. But they got THEMSELVES in financial trouble and suddenly they want me to pay more. And then they make that change and send me the notification some weeks later. Honestly, if I felt that my loss was significant, I could probably have a good legal case against them. As it is, I acted quickly and am only out $39 plus a few bucks of jacked interest. As well, I am much happier without them in my life.
Moving on, if you even think for a second that things like late fees and overdraft charges aren’t carefully planned by every financial institution, think again. Or look to get in on some above-janitor-level meetings. I work in a bank… I KNOW that late fees, NSF charges, overdraft fees, are all carefully planned and counted on as income.
Sure, I missed that my minimum payment went up and I paid the price ($39) for that error on my part. However, EVERY other card that I have ever had has NEVER changed the agreement to MY detriment without something I did to cause it. Why is Chase LOWERING my APR? If I am such a horrible customer and fiscally irresponsible and deserve to be taken advantage of, why are they lowering my rate?
Your comment about paying it off quicker has to be the stupidest utterance ever. If I wanted to pay the account off quicker, then I would have elected, of my own volition, to make a higher payment. But instead, WaMu made that choice for me, disallowing me from making financial decisions in my own manner. What if your auto lender suddenly said, “um, we want you to pay us the balance due now… but look at it this way, the car will be yours next month.” Would that make you happy? Or would you be pissed that you made a deal, shook hands, and then they changed the deal? That’s a bait-and-switch, by the way. And would your electricity provider, cable company, leasing office or mortgage holder all understand that you can’t pay them because your auto lender changed their minds? And would you be saying that you deserved to be taken advantage of in that instance? I would wager that when that shoe is on the other foot, your tune would change instantly.
You do have one point… credit cards don’t HAVE to be bad. But I challenge you to find even ONE financial advisor that says, “oh yeah, go get the cards… use them… no problems there…” I’ll bet you can’t. Every one I know of says have one for emergencies and don’t keep it with you. Some even suggest freezing it in a block of ice to prevent using it.
As well, look into the history of issuing banks. There’s some REALLY big money to be made in issuing cards. AT&T took UCS from nothing to a huge portfolio (63,000,000+ accounts) in just a few years, which they sold to Citi for a LOT of money. If it’s so lucrative to extend credit to people in this manner, then how could you EVER claim that credit cards are inherently good for consumers? They have to be getting the money from somewhere… answer: their cardholders.
You are just being elitist and feeling that just because you are solvent (which I’ll bet you aren’t) that you are better than the rest of the world. That’s a twisted position to take. And if you ARE a disgruntled WaMu employee, as I strongly suspect, then you’ve made some HORRIBLE choices about whom you chose as an employer. And you’ve made even greater errors in judgment in not calling them on their poor business practices. You complained about thousands being affected by the company stock tanking, so I assume you are a vested employee and have your 401(k) tied up in WaMu stock. This makes you part owner in the company and therefore have a responsibility to ensure legitimate business practices. And if you didn’t see the writing on the wall and bail early, then I would have to say your financial advice isn’t worth the electrons it took to beam them to my server.
So yeah, I’ve made some bad choices in my life regarding revolving debt. I admit that. But I am doing something about it, regardless of the efforts of one of my creditors to thwart me. But you cannot deny that I had the right to dump my account and also to blog about it. As well, you cannot deny the prudence in severing my ties to such an institution.
Oh and also, yeah, I do feel good that the financial institutions that let their greed surpass their morality ended up failing. And I think they should be left to twist in the wind. The government bailout is tantamount to socialism, particularly when the CEOs of all of these firms are going to walk away with millions of dollars while their faithful and loyal employees lose their retirements and their jobs.
The only problem is that this nation is full of people who would panic, which would affect decent banks, like the one I work for, detrimentally. The bailout is to keep the economy rolling. Which it would anyway if we were all just a little better-informed.
-Mike
“The average internet user can barely turn on their PCs”
First of all Mike, the statement I made to force you to make an idiotic remark like that was directed at YOU so I don’t know where you get the idea that it was a generalization. And when did I ever insinuate that banks charge ODs, NSF, etc. aren’t counted as income?? For a guy that takes offense to a remark that may have implied that you were technologically inept, you sure do a good job of being condescending. Who in this world doesn’t know that banks profit off FEES?? INTEREST?? ALL commercial banks are in the business to make money dude…
Second, I’m going to repeat my earlier point. If you actually LOOKED at your statement, you would have KNOWN that the minimum payment went up and would have had ample time to make the correct payment (online statement anyone? 25 day grace period after the statement generated date? And a guy who blogs on the INTERNET and works at a bank, it’s a friggin disgrace to make that mistake). And as for your interest rate going down, when the Feds drop the rate, any variable rate revolving debt are subjected to go down as well. I have a Citi, WaMu, HSBC, AND a Chase card and they all dropped the rates around the time the Feds imposed the rate cut.
I agree with you in that credit cards are not for everyone, and people should know their weaknesses when it comes to choosing a method managing their finances. What I definitely don’t agree with you is the fact that the greedy CEOs are the only ones behind this mess(although they definitely have a HUGE part in all this and definitely don’t deserve an easy retirement after running a company into the ground). Sure, greed forced lenders to loosen up their underwriting guidelines (WaMu, Chase, Wells, you name it), but what about the people who lied about their income? What about the irresponsible media kinds like you who scared the crap out of the customer base to make BILLIONs of dollars of deposit runs in a matter of few weeks which basically drove companies like Indymac, WaMu, and Wachovia to the point where they became insolvent? The nervous government who was quick to pull the trigger and auction the company out when they were still solvent? The point is, if all companies that is driven by greed were to go out of business who do we have left? You want Wal-Mart to fail? Microsoft? Nike? Intel? Starbucks? So don’t give me that crap about you feeling good about justice being served to these companies that went under. Plus I didn’t see any previous blogs from you regarding you seeing these events unfold so don’t even mention writings on the wall like you knew this was going to happen when some of the greatest economic minds of our times couldn’t see this coming.
Easy to fingerpoint at others when one messes up but don’t blog about what you could have avoided in the first place… you were smart not mentioning you bank’s name throughout the whole ordeal because it’s an embarrassment.
One more thing, Do you think employees are the only ones who had a stake in WaMu?? You think 401k and stock option plans are the only things to get affected?? The company donated MILLIONs to the local community, many businesses domestic and international had very high stakes in the bank, not to mention retirement funds of employees in other companies. So I say again, for you to think and feel good about a company with a 119 year history and affect the local and global economy in a profound manner to fail is a good thing… Don’t know what else to say to you man. You’re hopeless.
“And you’ve made even greater errors in judgment in not calling them on their poor business practices. You complained about thousands being affected by the company stock tanking, so I assume you are a vested employee and have your 401(k) tied up in WaMu stock. This makes you part owner in the company and therefore have a responsibility to ensure legitimate business practices. ”
P.S. I don’t know what the size of the bank that you work at, but what are you suggesting? You call out all the mistakes by your management or better yet, do you even have the authority to do so? PLEASE
You continually display an unerring ability to not READ what’s before you and to go off half-cocked with a misunderstanding.
First, I never said you didn’t count fees as income. I merely stated that if you were about to try and make the point that financial institutions don’t formulate strategies to get MORE fees to not bother. Yes, they are in the business to make money. And I am certain that WaMu’s changing the terms of my account were part of a specifically concocted strategy to try and make some instant money. Add to that their recent financial woes and it’s pretty obvious that they tried to bilk their customers of cash to try and solve their problem.
As for generalizations, you stated that I deserved to have my rates jacked simply because I didn’t notice every minute detail of one statement on one month. How can I not infer that you would have the same attitude toward others in the same situation? If it’s directed solely at me, then it’s not a cause-and-effect thing but a personal attack. So, why attack me personally? And if that is the case, then why make an ipso-facto argument about how I deserved it because of my behavior?
Moving on, you are COMPLETELY missing the point. I am not complaining about the late fee or the fact that I missed the rise in minimum payment on the statement. Sheesh! Read, will ya?!? My beef is about the nature in which WaMu decided to make that change. I’d done nothing that was outside the cardholder agreement. My credit situation had not changed. They simply decided they wanted more money and then did what they did. And they didn’t warn me until after the fact… weeks after the fact. THAT’s the issue. So you need to stop looking at what I did or did not do, since that’s not what the issue is. Look at the facts. READ the words on the page, dude.
Interesting that you find that Credit Card rates reflect the Fed’s prime rate. I don’t think you know the credit card industry very well. Most cards are NOT variable rate. The rate is set by the cardholder’s credit status at the time of application. That’s why they ask for your SSN and your income and such. The various rate levels initially offered do indeed fluctuate with the Prime, but once the rates are set, few institutions change them without provocation or pre-ordained ideals, such as an introductory rate ending. And historically, my APRs have NOT followed the Prime in any way (and I avoid cards that do). I imagine Chase is just being kind and trying to do their part in helping the nation through this tough time. The same cannot be said for WaMu, however, who appears to have been trying to prey on their customers. I guess the difference is that Chase isn’t in the toilet financially.
By way of comparison… My BofA, AT&T UCS, and Citi cards’ rates have not changed. So obviously, not all credit cards follow the Prime.
Okay, on to the next point. I never said that greedy CEOs were the cause of this mess. Just that greed exceeding morality is. And then I mentioned that many CEOs (and presumably second-tier officers as well) will make out well in this deal. I didn’t make any such connection as you are purporting.
As well, “media types like” me? Dude, I’m a blogger. If you are taking me to task for financial advice, you are barking up the wrong tree. And you obviously haven’t been reading my blog. It’s about technology and gadgetry, interspersed with the occasional personal opinion. This very blog entry has only “opinion” as its tag. Look into it. In any case, I am not spewing financial advice, other than “be careful with credit cards or else you may end up like me.” You are the one who have been saying, “ah credit cards are not to blame. Stupid people are to blame. Everyone should do things like me!” That’s advice you’re trying to give out. You’re also trying to make the case that unfair business practices are somehow deserved by the consumer, as though somehow rape victims deserve it. I have yet to see you address the nature in which WaMu handled this. You haven’t said a word about the random phone call demanding money. Or the email with the addresses different than their main address. Or the Customer Service people that couldn’t address or answer these questions. You haven’t made an utterance about the letter I got, weeks after the rate and minimum payment went up while the credit limit went down… the letter that basically said, “we don’t like the way you are making your payments, so we jacked you a few weeks ago. Deal with it.” In fact, here are the exact words of the letter:
“* Average payment compared to balance over the past six billing cycles too low.
“* Payment compared to balance over the past year too low.”
Ahem, I was making the minimum payment and then some, as established by WaMu in the first place. If they think that’s too little, then they should have sent me a letter stating that IN THE FUTURE they were going to change the minimum payment calculation. But instead, they did it and told me about it later. In essence, they didn’t like THEIR OWN policies and rewrote the agreement without informing me first.
I need to look it up, but I am fairly certain that all such changes need to, by federal law, be communicated, in writing, to the consumer 30 days in advance.
Again, when you say it’s easy to fingerpoint, you are totally missing the entire point. You still think that I am complaining because I was assessed a late fee. Then you somehow say that my bank is an embarrassment. First, read the post. Actually read the words. All of them. Try to understand the point before you keep beating on the WRONG point, a non-existent one.
As for my bank, I left its name out because I don’t want goofballs who seem to have a personal grudge against me for no reason to show up at my office. As such, since you DON’T KNOW which bank it is, how can you qualify your remark that it is an embarrassment? Go for it… tell me how you know this. Are you psychic now?
Moving on, yes I do say that a company, ANY company, regardless of their history and community service, that does deals such as the sub-prime lending scandal should be held to task. You try to blame the borrowers who lied. Um, what about fact-checking? Isn’t that a hallmark of a responsible lender? As well, if a loan is defaulted, there is collateral to seize. You don’t turn around and sell the bad loans as A1 securities. That’s irresponsible, immoral, and will soon be illegal, I am confident.
The last round of immoral business practices brought us a few arrests (VERY few) and Sarbanes-Oxley, which is some of the most misguided legislation ever to come out of Washington.
In any case, yes, my bank does indeed encourage employees to bring attention to illegal or immoral practices where they see them. In fact, we are made to take a course on it. As well, as a stockholder, I am invited to all stockholder meetings and I can go and have my business heard, even that of things I see the business as doing wrong. Stockholders hold their ownerships accountable all the time. There isn’t a publicly traded company anywhere that doesn’t have to satisfy their stockholders. So yeah, you and your fellow stockholders were asleep at the wheel. I don’t blame you, as you weren’t the cause (unless it was all your idea to sell off the bad loans as securities). But you can’t buy stock and then assume it will never tank. And you can’t just whine when it does. FWIW, my 401(k) is tanking too… not to the level that WaMu’s and Wachovia’s are, but I am feeling the hit of the financial downturn as well. But there is nothing that I can do about it other than reinvest elsewhere. There’s nothing I can do to change what my company is doing about this, since they weren’t involved in the immoral scandal to begin with.
As for what bank I work at… wait a few months and then look at the mid-sized international banks whose doors are still open. I’ll be in the data center of one of those.
In any case, you have a lot of misplaced venom. For some reason you are blaming me personally for your own personal woes. I feel for you, I really do. This sucks. And I hope you land on your feet with every dollar in your retirement account that you deserve. I also hope that WaMu pays for the mess they got themselves into without having to drag the employees and stockholders through hell to do it.
Oh, by the way, you mentioned other “greedy” companies. I wanted to add that once again you’ve missed the point. There’s nothing wrong with greed. It’s been a good thing ever since the Reagan administration. But it’s when greed gets absurd and moves above morality that I have a problem. Microsoft has indeed exhibited some of this behavior, but they weren’t totally irresponsible about it… they didn’t let it tank their stocks nor affect the economy as a whole. In any case, any company that can make bank legally and without doing so immorally is aces in my book. It’s the American way/dream and the benefits of a free market economy. Go for it, I say. But any company that would screw themselves up, take their employees and the economy with it, and then try to recoup losses by jacking loyal customers’ rates should fail miserably. My opinion.
Oh, I just got led to another point. You are complaining about the borrowers who couldn’t keep up their loans. It seems to me that they broke their agreements with the banks, but they are allowed to keep their homes while their loans get sold out as bogus securities. They broke the agreements but are not taken to task for it. Then there’s me, who did NOT break the agreement, but is getting hammered with changes to the metrics of my account. Explain to me how that is fair.
-Mike
p.s. Something occurred to me just now. You seem to be all about personal accountability, even to the point of clairvoyance. Your point seems to be that I deserved to have my APR raised and my minimum payment raised because I was not going to carefully read the statement that came out AFTER the increases. But yet when it comes to your own company’s misbehavior, you only claim that you are not in a culture that allows questioning of such practices. Sounds to me like a double standard here. You are for personal accountability when it’s me, but not when it’s you. Explain that, if you can.
I’m not going to respond to another 4 page long essay of you trying to cover your tracks, but I’ll just make a few points:
-FYI, banks have been selling mortgage as securities for YEARS even before the sub-prime mess, which I never denied that it was the wrong decision by management. I was only saying there are PLENTY of blame to go around and you can’t just pinpoint one source for this whole thing. Executives definitely had a huge stake in this mess, as well as the investors who traded these securities thinking these were the best thing since sliced bread.
-I won’t defend the practices of credit card companies such as using two cycled billing, changing due dates and the problem you went through, really I don’t condone it. At the same time as a bank employee, you should be the first to know the nuances of card agreements and just about EVERY credit card company has tricks up their sleeves to make money. Your experience is nothing NEW to consumers, and it’s seen throughout the industry, even the bank you work at (if they issue cards). With that said, best ways to use the card is to take advantage of the rewards system, and treat it like a debit card and pay the balance off each month.
-Shareholder meetings to voice your opinion?? you kidding me? You DON’T think people were going after the exec’s heads?? Trying to get executives to talk about an important issue and make the changes for the shareholders is about as painful as watching Couric interview Palin.
-Last point I want to make. I’m voicing out my opinions throughout the comments. If you’re a blogger in a public medium, one advice, prepare for backlash when you voice out opinions without giving too much thought and sensitivity to the subject matter.
I HAVE to cover my tracks as you’ve totally missed all of them. And by cover, I mean “reiterate,” not “obscure.”
I agree, credit card companies have many tricks. I am no stranger to pretty much all of them. But this is the first time ever that an issuer has changed my credit terms to my disadvantage with no notification and no specific event from me (like missing a payment, for instance). I am fairly responsible with the accounts, just not my spending. Lesson learned.
Shareholder meetings may be a nightmare, but that’s no excuse to throw up your hands and give up on the process. And if the problems were identified, then a savvy investor would have bailed before too much $$ was lost. I am sorry that this has happened to you and every other innocent bystander in this fiasco. But I don’t think barking at me for my identification of a series of poor business choices will help anything. Might make you feel better, and I hope it did at least that.
As for being in the blogosphere, yeah, it’s tough to take some criticism sometimes. Especially when the criticism is in the form of “You (deserve it/are an idiot/don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground) because you (did something totally unrelated to the post being commented on).” That’s a tough pill to swallow. You were, in essence, saying that I deserved to have my APR raised because somehow WaMu knew that I would miss details on my subsequent statement. If that were true, then there would be all manner of “hey, we raised your APR… if you noticed, call us and we’ll put it back where it was. If you don’t notice, then nanny-nanny-boo-boo.” I am fairly certain that that type of thing isn’t happening to any great degree.
As well, I hope you’re not saying that the comments section should be off-limits to the author. I surely deserve the chance to respond to my criticisms in kind. I relish the tete-a-tete. If I really had a problem with the comments, it’s my blog and I can delete them. Not to worry, I’ll sleep well tonight whether you like me or not.
In the end, yes, there is plenty of blame to go around for our current financial crisis. But I find it loathsome that I was not part of the problem but WaMu tried to make me part of their solution.
-Mike
My family last year before the effects of the current recession in the housing and financial and markets became widespread began construction on a new house even larger than the existing one we are living in — 3 stories total with the highest floor being a deck. It has become very expensive for us to pay for this house and are finances have become tighter recently. The last thing we would need is higher interest rates that would make the situation even worse. The house is almost complete now — we expect to move in November 4th as of now construction though is still ongoing but almost finished. I just hope the crisis ends soon — although it is highly unlikely. Also my family arranged for me to buy the old house we used to live in (it was a 1 story house) our current home is 2 stories tall — the old house they were unable to sell on the market for the price they wanted even after spending money to fix it up so they sold it to me and since then I’ve become unemployed also which hasn’t helped matters.
We needed a new car and my father wanted to trade in his old one a Honda from 1998 but with the loan he had to take out for the new house he couldn’t afford a loan for the new car so he got the car loan in my sister’s name. So I got a home loan to buy our earlier house and my sister got a car loan to buy a new car. My dad traded his old car for my sister’s existing car a 2005 Honda and my sister got the new 2008 Honda that was purchased.
So yeah this economic recession has been tough on my family as well. I hope things improve soon.
Man, I am sorry to hear about what’s going on with you. But you’re smart, you’ll figure something out. Hey, I hear that some blogs (not mine… I don’t even get paid for mine) are always looking for contributors and will pay like $10-20 for each entry. You’re always up on current tech events; maybe that’s something you can do until you get your next gig.
It sounds like your family is doing okay, though. Three stories is a sizable house, even if it is unfinished. Much bigger than my little 2 bedroom apartment.
-Mike
Yeah well in the meantime I’m doing volunteer work or whatever else I can do. The only good things to have come out of my being unemployed is it gives me a chance to enhance my skills and got me thinking about going back to school next Spring. Perhaps I’ll take some college courses in education, paralegal or journalism.
This house is very huge — the garage is at the back of the house and the driveway has a gate at the entrance. There are actually 3 or 4 different decks. At least 2 on the second floor including 1 next to the master bedroom. In my current home there are only 3 bathrooms with 2 on the second floor (one being the master bath) the other a regular bathroom, and downstairs a guest bathroom and guest bedroom. The master bedroom’s closet is huge. In the new house every bedroom has its own bath — and there are 4 or 5 restrooms in the new house.
Most of the construction is already done — they’ve just started installing the ceiling fans downstairs, and except for the master bathroom every bathroom has a bath tub, a toilet and a sink already. The master bath has both a tub and a separate shower.
The ceiling fans would have been installed upstairs but there was a problem with the wrong fans for upstairs being ordered and we have to wait for a new set to arrive. The ones downstairs are fine though.
The bathrooms are tiled as is the kitchen. Half of the family room will actually be tiled the other half carpeted. Aside from adding the rest of the ceiling fans, and fixing the electrical system (its been installed but some lights weren’t working upstairs),
Most of the plumbing work is done — except a few bathrooms still require more plumbing work to be completed. The largest deck is on the highest floor of the house. My parents combined make at least $250,000 a year. There is a block fence that was built around the outside of the house. They installed some pipes for a swimming pool connection.
We’re not building the pool currently after we move in we will — but much later. The pool will cost at least $30,000 on top of the amount being paid for the new house.
We had just finished paying off our existing home after living in it for at least 15 years (since 1994 we have lived in the same home) when we decided last year to build a new one. We really want to add a swimming pool but won’t have the money to pay for it for a while. The house itself is expensive enough. There is room to build the pool later. The thing is on top of whatever we need to pay for the entire house — it is so expensive I don’t even know how much the new house is costing us — my parents might have an estimate but they haven’t told me.
I mentioned the swimming pool would cost $30,000. Here’s the thing the house costs way more than that.
My existing bedroom closet is not a walk-in closet but my new bedroom closet will be. Your right I’m sure I’ll figure something out. I just hope its soon. We’ve had 3 houses over the past several years the first being the 1 story house my dad sold to me after fixing it up and being unable to sell to anyone else. The second being the existing 2 story we live in, its not huge but its bigger than the previous 1 story. Since construction of the new house began we have lost ownership of our existing house — in the sense we owe so much money (will owe) that until its all paid any of our assets like the existing house we paid off would belong to the bank again. The swimming pool as I mentioned will cost $30,000. We aren’t building it yet because we can’t afford to at present but when we can we plan to add it later. As at present it does not look likely that we will be able to build it until next April at the earliest. As I mentioned the house costs a lot more than the pool will.
When we move out of our existing house we’re going to try to sell it as soon as we can but till then likely also put it up for rent.
We have lots of room in the new house and have talked about as soon as we can afford it also how we plan to add an entertainment center including an HD TV to the house — well we would get one for the family room and one certainly for my new bedroom but only when we can afford it. That also means we would have to wait on installing a new surround sound system. My dad has had configurations put in place for a surround sound speaker to be put in my room when the time comes. Again your right on one thing though we are managing the best we can.
So they just have to fix the electrical system so the lights turn on, finish the plumbing, in my new bathroom the mirror on the wall still has to be installed, the master bath tub has to be installed, the carpet still has to be installed, the refrigerator has to be brought in and installed — our existing one will be taken to the new house and put in our new pantry so we’ll have 2 refrigerators, counting the new 1 to be installed in the kitchen, a new microwave will be there built-in, we’ll also take our existing microwave to the new house; there will obviously be a new dishwasher installed — that is yet to be done.
So a few little things still need to be done — by November 4th at the earliest we should be able to move in (same day as the election). The doorbell still has to be installed, the gate is there — and there are 3 different entrances to the garage implying 3 garage doors.
Finding a job has just been taking longer than I thought — after all it was May when I became unemployed and now its almost November. If I can find out about a blog willing to pay contributors for each entry I’ll look into it.
I’ll figure something out though its just taking longer than I hoped and since becoming unemployed I’ve had to start applying for unemployment wages assistance from the state. I get $214 dollars every week and they offer a total of $6,000 a year — so once I have been paid $6,000 in total I’ll have to wait a few months without unemployment financial assistance before beginning to receive it again.
I have also started getting health insurance through a state controlled socialized health care insurance program.
Mike,
Sorry for the double post but just wanted to say sorry for the long post above — I just had a lot on my mind I wanted to get out.
No problem, dude. I hope things get better for you. In the meantime, that house sounds awesome! Downright palacial. It sure beats my little 2 bedroom apartment or my girlfriend’s 2 bedroom house.
-Mike
Well yesterday my laptop died — it was getting old I’ve had it since winter 2003 but now without my PowerBook G4 I am a laptop less. Sure I still have my Mac Mini but I do miss having my Apple laptop. As soon as I can afford it will need to get a new one. Yeah and the house is great.
Well, maybe the PowerBook is fixable. What died on it?
But I hear ya… if my Macbook Pro died, I would feel lost. I do everything (except games) on that computer.
-Mike
The hard drive died — now every time I turn it on it won’t load the operating system — sure the white background with the apple logo comes on and the scroll wheel loads but then it shows me a screen with the finder icon showing it cannot locate the OS to load. Its as if Mac OS X got deleted somehow and when I try to reinstall it cannot find the hard disk to install to.
When I first got my PowerBook I didn’t know about Disk Utility and sometimes was forced to restart my PowerBook which meant shutting it down wrong and restarting which would cause hard disk errors — later I tried to fix it and it seemed to work for a while maybe its too many forced restarts or that it just got too old to keep working. Its out of warranty so will have to just replace it at some future date.
Well, be sure to check online. There should be instructions on how to replace the hard drive. And replacing the HDD should be far cheaper than replacing the whole computer.
As well, if you have an external drive, you can boot to the OSX CD (hold ‘C’ while booting) and then install the OS to the external drive. It won’t recover everything on your internal HDD (hopefully you kept good backups… do you have Leopard and use TimeMachine?) but it should at least get you up and running.
Oh, BTW, hold Option while booting to choose which drive the OS is on. I’ve done this on several occasions to backup Tiger while I was seeing if Leopard would work for me.
Good luck. Let me know how it turns out.
BTW, I recently had a big issue with my Mac Mini. I can only think that the problem was QuickSilver… it wouldn’t even allow me to force quit it, and then the machine wouldn’t boot at all. Then it seemed to ignore my Apple keyboard as I couldn’t boot to the OSX CD (which was scary because I thought my CD was stuck in the machine forever). I switched out the keyboard and used Option (instead of ‘C’ which seemed to not be working) to boot to the OSX CD and ran all of the drive check utilities on the HDD… it found a few issues, but those didn’t allow the machine to boot (it would just spin the little asterisk-type icon with the Apple logo… I let it try to boot for over 24 hours with no luck).
Finally, I gave up, booted to the OSX CD and used the restore feature in TimeMachine. It took a while to restore the drive (an hour or so) but ever since then it’s worked perfectly.
But here’s a mixed blessing. Since the Mac Mini’s drive is only 40GB, I can’t store all of my music and movies on it, so I do so on an external 500GB drive. Well, iTunes kept randomly resetting the location of my music folder, so I deleted that folder and set up a symbolic link to the 500GB HDD. It’s sort of a kluge but at least iTunes doesn’t lose it’s mind periodically.
I’d done this some time ago and a few months ago got a 1TB external drive for my TimeMachine drive. Well, it turns out that is way overkill because it refuses to let me back up the 500GB drive as part of the TimeMachine process. So I still have to schedule a backup (I use RSYNC) of all my music and video to a 1TB NAS that I got a few weeks ago.
Well, that’s bad news for TimeMachine being the #1 solution for my backup. However, the good thing is that when I restored the TimeMachine backup to earlier in the week, that didn’t include the 500GB drive, so it was as if no problem ever occurred.
In the end, TimeMachine gets an B from me… it’s super convenient and saved my bacon, but it loses points for not allowing me to backup from one external drive to the other.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, it’s not following the symbolic link to find the music and videos to back them up… I checked. Bummer.
-Mike
I regularly backup files so am not worried there. Most of my files currently that were on the PowerBook are on the Mac Mini. The PowerBook G4 came with Mac OS X Jaguar (10.27) and updated to OS X Panther (10.3) last, Mac Mini shipped with Mac OS X Tiger (10.47) and updated to 10.4.11 plan to update Mini to Leopard in future but don’t know when.
How is Apple’s Back Up application that would come with dot mac compared to Time Machine? Any ideas? Ever used it. I have as part of the dot mac free trial. I never became a subscriber though. Was okay but restricted in how much can be backed up per disc without dot mac premium account — of course dot mac has been replaced now with Mobile Me. The problem on the PowerBook is if I try to boot from the OS X CD and I can do so — I use the alt+option key and works fine but when I launch the installer and asks me where I want to install OS X it cannot find the hard drive to install on so cannot install OS X. From what I understood as this PowerBook is out of warranty it would cost a lot to replace the existing hard drive. I asked my father who is more knowledgeable than me even — doesn’t know that much about Macs but he knows computers in general better and suggested it would be cheaper to buy a new laptop. Even a new Apple laptop probably in that regard would be cheaper than just repairing the PowerBook.
I was saying to plug in an external drive and install OSX to that. I don’t know if that will work with your Powerbook or not, but it works fine on my Mac Mini and my Macbook Pro.
But replacing the drive should only cost a few hundred dollars for the drive and a little elbow grease to install it. A new Mac notebook is a grand or more… but man, the new ones look nice.
I don’t have a .Mac/MobileMe account, so I don’t know much about the backup. But it is for files and documents, not the entire OS. So that’s the big difference there: MobileMe is limited and allows you to keep some of your files and documents in the cloud (very safe), but TimeMachine keeps versions of everything in your computer (except external drives, apparently) and also keeps versions so that you can go back to any point in the past. And you can restore your entire OS from TimeMachine; you can’t do that from MobileMe, I’ll wager.
-Mike
Oh okay — well I don’t really have an external drive to plug the PowerBook into but if I did I would.
By the way with the huge debt my family now has because of our new home which will be finished now in another week or two I think (there was some delay) we’re trying to cut costs apparently and my dad found a cheaper plan for cable television and is now considering canceling Dish Network when we move to the new house and re-join cable. We have had Dish Network for the past 4-5 years. Before that we even had Dish once.
We have switched over the years back and forth between satellite television and cable TV.
What I didn’t like about digital cable the last time we had it was that it was only available in one room of our home on one TV only. All other TVs got the basic channels but none of the other channels.
Personally, if it wasn’t for the price issue I would keep Dish Network (I hear their struggling by the way to retain customers this year and just lost 10,000 subscribers in its third quarter despite plenty of new promotions to keep existing customers and add new subscribers. ) I have liked the service, trouble is my parents only reason for having it initially was to get Hindi channels from India and the last time we had cable we canceled it when cable stopped offering Hindi channels — now they just started offering them again. We just started getting local channels through Dish Network (before you could still get local channels and Dish Network but you had to install an antenna on your roof separate from the dish to pick up local channels and the local channels would be free) now that Dish Network is offering them directly we ordered them through Dish Network and are paying extra just to keep the local channels on top of the Top 200 package we already have. At one time we even had a DirecTV service and once we had both DirecTV and Dish bundled. At present we only have Dish.
Personally, I prefer satellite television and see more value in Dish than DirecTV because its cheaper than DirecTV and still has had great value but with the worsening economy many people are switching from Dish to cheaper alternatives even when those alternatives turn out to be cable companies. Our local cable company provider is Time Warner Cable. We already get Road Runner Internet service from them.
I’ve wanted to get an Apple TV of course as I mentioned — and have been willing to hold off a while in doing so but if we switch to cable I think I’ll try to get an Apple TV sooner provided the money is there.
By the way I have tried Google’s new Chrome browser on my PC running Windows and it seems great. It does not yet have the amount of extensions and the amount of functionality as Mozilla Firefox but otherwise is a great browser in my opinion. I also have Google Desktop Search for both Mac and Windows, and Google Toolbar for Mozilla Firefox on my Mac and my Windows PC (I know Macs do Windows now too however, I’ve chosen to continue using a separate PC for when running Windows — the PC I have is customized to my liking it has Windows XP Professional SP3 installed I’ve been considering adding a second hard drive to the PC and adding a dual boot partition to install either Ubuntu or Kubuntu Linux. and still keep Windows on the PC when I need to use it.
I’d had Dish Network some years back but their DVRs were the worst, so I bailed and went with DirecTV with a DirecTiVo. I am planning to move in about 5 months, so I don’t know what my options will be then. I will probably go with cable and drop my DSL to get internet access through the cable company. I doubt FiOS is available anywhere around me.
Heck, if I can get a good internet connection, I may dump cable altogether, get Boxee, and just get everything from the ‘net. But then again, my girlfriend loves the reality shows, so we may have to keep cable.
Hey, be sure to check out VirtualBox. It is a free program that allows virtualization (like VMWare or Parallels) and it might be a better solution for you to mess around with Linux without having to reboot to do so.
My jury is still out on Chrome. I’ve heard it isn’t very secure and has some holes. As well, for some reason, when I use it at my office (behind a proxy) it will frequently mis-render pages. Many graphics only half-load. Some CSS doesn’t render properly. And some pages never come up at all. But at home this problem doesn’t exist.
On the other hand, for some reason, I can use Google Chat with Chrome at my office when it is disabled in IE. Go figure.
In any case, there are some really great points about Chrome and some not-so-great ones. I like using it.
-Mike
Thanks for the feedback. I didn’t know I used to use Dish Network. We’ve never had a DVR before in our home and will be getting one for the first time when we move to the new house — likely if we switch to digital cable we’ll get a DVR by the cable company.
With our current set-up the boxes inside the house (the Dish receiver boxes — not the dish on the roof but the system inside) we have 2 such boxes 1 downstairs and another upstairs. Both the family room downstairs and the master bedroom upstairs are linked to the same receiver. Then there are two other bedrooms including mine which operate on a second receiver box so I get all the channels also on the TV in my room. When and if we switch back to cable — which I cannot imagine doing now but we’ve had it so long and I enjoyed it for the most part more so than the last time we had cable because I didn’t get my favorite channels with cable on my TV even if they were available on the family room TV — this time if I can get the digital channels also in my room through cable that would still be great.
I was wondering though how does TiVo compare to a cable company or satellite television DVR? Speaking of Chrome yeah I heard it has some problems — but so did Apple Safari when it came to Windows. The Windows version of Safari was insecure and buggy but is now better. Safari at the time was a beta browser for Windows users as is Google’s Chrome which is in its third beta release now that has improvements over the first two beta releases.
I will check out Virtual-Box but may still want to run Linux natively sometimes and Windows natively other times. Typically, I’ve found virtualization programs to be slow and buggy.
When I had my PowerBook G4 working one time I tried Virtual PC 7 for Mac and when running the Windows XP virtual machine in Virtual PC it would sometimes become buggy and the Mac OS itself would stop responding when the Windows virtual machine froze.
Some improvements may have been made in virtualization programs since then though.
Oops I made a typo in my post above in the first sentence I was trying to say I didn’t know you had Dish Network before switching to DirecTV.
By the way I just read an article titled “The Dish On Dish’s Mounting Woes” here http://www.multichannel.com/index.asp?layout=talkbackCommentsFull&talk_back_header_id=6568794&articleid=CA6614960
It says that “Charlie Ergen’s Dish Network is struggling to overcome a “perfect storm” of obstacles and setbacks, with the satellite-TV provider reporting its second consecutive quarter of subscriber losses earlier this week.
Missing Wall Street’s projections, Dish Network shed about 10,000 subscribers during the third quarter, compared with its gain of 110,000 subscribers in the year-ago period. In the second quarter, Dish had also reported a subscriber loss of 25,000 households, the first such loss ever for the satellite company.
“It doesn’t look like they’re going to be able to turn this around,” SNL Kagan analyst Mariam Rondeli said. “They’re looking at a very bad year next year with a lot more than just 10,000 subscribers lost. It’s just shocking to me how this has developed in some ways.”
Losing Streak
Dish Network has lost subscribers for two consecutive quarters:
DBS
3Q 2008
3Q 2007
2Q 2008
2Q 2007
Dish Network
(-) 10,000
(+) 110,000
(-) 25,000
(+) 170,000
DirecTV
(+) 156,000
(+) 240,000
(+) 129,000
(+) 128,000
SOURCE: Company reports.”
These statistics suggest while Dish was losing subscribers this year DirecTV gained some which means the satellite television businesses overall didn’t suffer huge losses necessarily to digital cable. DirecTV is a little more costly than Dish though and with the global recession occurring I would expect more people abandoning Dish to look to cheaper alternatives mainly cheap cable services. However, DirecTV added and maintained subscribers as Dish was seeing losses.
So how is your DirecTV based TiVo DVR? I know Dish keeps saying lately in their commercials their DVR is better than TiVo but having used neither I wouldn’t know. However, you mentioned you didn’t like Dish DVRs when you had Dish so you switched to DirecTV.
It seems to me that DirecTV’s costs though may be higher than Dish.
When it comes to DVRs, the usefulness is in what you need it to do.
I actually don’t use my DirecTiVo anymore because it died… I could probably resurrect it by opening it up and running Spinrite on the drive, but I had other uses in mind.
I went and got a Series 2 TiVo because I wanted to use TiVo-2-Go, which allows me to download my shows from TiVo to a PC and then re-encode them for watching on iTunes, AppleTV, or my iPhone. However, TiVo doesn’t do everything perfectly. For instance, if I tell TiVo I want to watch South Park, it will record every instance of South Park, including the repeats. It’s not good about ferreting out the new shows. It’s also not good about getting episodes that are only on a single channel. Like, in the later days of Friends, the show was in syndicated re-runs on other channels, while the new episodes were on the network. TiVo grabbed them all.
So I use a combination of TiVo and a dedicated PC running Snapstream BeyondTV, which does a lot better at allowing me to specify only which episodes of a show I want to get. So I use the PC to get South Park, The Colbert Report, etc. Trouble is, the PC isn’t the most stable thing in the world, so I force it to reboot once a week, which helps. But the TiVo is rock-solid and has other features (like Amazon Unboxed downloads, for instance) that make it a great DVR.
Incidentally, Snapstream will re-encode recorded videos automatically and make them available as a podcast, so it is easy to get access to the shows on it. However, like I said, it tends to get flaky. Just a few days ago, for some odd reason, it’s stopped re-encoding. I need to spend some time figuring out what the problem is. And there is also an ongoing issue with audio/video syncing when the videos are played on the iPhone.
In any case, if all you are going to do is record shows and watch them on your couch, then pretty much any DVR will do.
-Mike
Mike,
Thanks for the info on how TiVo DVRs work. The new house’s construction is done now all the carpeting is done (the upstairs doesn’t have ceiling fans yet but they’ll be added after we move in) however, the toilets, bath tubs, sinks in every bathroom are done, wiring is done, a lot of the electrical work is done — the city has already cleared the house for final inspection and given us the keys. We have the plumbing done for the sprinkler system, we have the area to keep all the piping even for the swimming pool complete (the pool as I said is yet to be made and will be done later), we have the lighting, we have a gas line, we have gotten the digital cable service activated, phone service and Internet all from the same company for the time being.
Since we have an alarm service we needed to have a phone so we got the phone service from the same company for now — we’re not moving in till much later in the month — after we move we’ll take all our TVs, phones and computers with us to the new house — in the meantime for when the service was being activated we installed a spare TV we bought recently in the main wiring closet of the new house and a laptop for setting up the Internet connection and a new phone we got just for use in activating service.
My parents have decided for all we know after we move in we might switch back to Dish Network or just keep the new digital cable service but we activated it to test in the new house. We even got a DVR from the cable company and not just any DVR an HD DVR from Time Warner Cable.