Chase fee refund in settlement reveals spirit of Scrooge
It's Christmas Eve, and like Bob Cratchit you may be worrying about money. Who isn't these days?
So this column might present you with a bit of good news.
If you are among the 60,000 people who took out a home mortgage with JPMorgan Chase Bank between Sept. 22, 2001, and Dec. 31, 2008, you may be entitled to a refund of $100 to $500.
That's not including interest, though you would be entitled to that as well.
It all hinges on whether you paid a post-closing fee for services that Chase never provided. in plain language, it means that the "too-big-to-fail" bank ripped you off.
According to the settlement of a class action lawsuit, processed this week at an approval hearing in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, Chase agreed to pay back $19.9 million to the mortgage buyers they fleeced.
In an era of billion-dollar bonuses and bank bailouts that's small change, especially to a behemoth like Chase that takes us all for chumps.
But think of it this way. The total amount of money Chase is compelled to return could've bought Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff's Montauk beach house with enough left over to pay a year's salary for a starting pitcher on the Yankees.
"This is an excellent recovery," said Oren Giskan, an attorney whose Manhattan law firm, Giskan Solotaroff Anderson & Stewart, initiated the claim way back in 2004. That's right — Chase fought this for five long years.
In reaching the settlement, Chase admitted to nothing. but then, faceless banking institutions that recklessly gamed the system and continue to gorge on the nickels and dimes of ordinary citizens never apologize. Admit to guilt? Bah, humbug!
To Chase, this should be nothing more than the cost of doing business, easily reconciled in a nanosecond by a slight computer adjustment to the APR on your credit card. however, according to a court document, the bank's lawyers argued that there will be a "flood of litigation if banks are required to show some link between the fee and the services."
