Chase Bank apparently wants customers to leave

Posted on October 15, 2009 by me

I had the funniest conversation this afternoon with a Customer Service Representative (defining the title broadly) of Chase concerning the newly increase interest rates on our Chase Mastercard.

I should back up a bit.  A few years ago we opened an account at Washington Mutual.  It was a nice little bank, conveniently located, and the employees were all very nice and helpful.  We were quite sad when they were gobbled up by JP Morgan Chase, an opinion that is shared universally among people with whom we have spoken.  In fact, I’ve not heard one nice thing about Chase, by anyone.  But, the bank was still local.

The first clue that we needed to leave was when my son, who also has an account there, went into the bank to inquire about something.  He was told, for some strange reason, not to come into the bank to ask questions again.  So much for nice and helpful.

Then, I read that while banks like Bank of America had decided not to increase their interest rates on credit cards, Chase was going ahead with their interest rate hikes before a new consumer protection bill takes effect in a few months.   Then, yesterday I read that JP Morgan Chase’s profits had exceeded expectations, almost six times its profits a year ago.  Six times!

So, I checked my most recent statement and sure enough, the rate had indeed increased… to 29.99%!  An increase to 19% I would not have been shocked at, but 30%?   When we took the card out about 4 years ago, the rate was under 10% – which was why we used it rather than our BofA card, which is still under 12%.  Fortunately, we keep our card paid down, so it’s not that big of a deal to us.  But, I decided to call Chase to discuss this out of principle (actually, out of interest, but you know what I mean).  I had already decided to bail on Chase, but I just wanted to hear what they had to say.

The phone call went something very similar to this (I actually wished I had recorded it, but it’s as verbatim as I can recall):

Me:  I would like to confirm the interest rate on my Mastercard.  Can it be true that it has been rased to 29.99%?

Chase (a male with an Indian-sounding accent):  Thank you for calling about Chase’s interest rates.  Let me check your account …   Yes, that is the new rate.

Me:  How can this be?  Isn’t this kind of insane?

Chase:  Thank you for calling about interest rates.  Chase made the decision in May to increase credit rates, and this is now in effect.

Me:  Don’t thank me – I haven’t raised the interest rates.  How do you expect people to continue with Chase when it is almost three times other rates?

Chase:  You are free to make whatever decisions you want concerning using the credit card.  I cannot make any adjustments to rates.

Me:  Do you realize that when I cancel this card, I am also closing out my other Chase accounts?

Chase:  You are certainly free to make whatever decisions you think are appropriate.

Me:  You no longer want me as a customer?  Let me ask you this:  Is there any reason you can think of for me to remain a Chase customer?

Chase:  unintelligible mumbling

Me:  You can’t think of a reason, can you?

Chase (female voice, obviously a recording):  If you feel you have been disconnected by accident, please call again …

Amazing.  I still can’t believe the twerp hung up on me.  I wonder how many of these calls they get a day?  I probably don’t have to tell you that I’m shutting down Chase tomorrow. But, I’m going down to the local branch to do it.  Someone there needs to know why customers are leaving like rats from a sinking ship.

I am, however, honestly perplexed.  In this delicate economic climate, and with Chase making money hand over fist, don’t you think they would be somewhat customer-focused?  Do they think people are so trapped that they don’t have any other options?  Perhaps some people are…  and that’s scary.

It’s also wrong … very wrong.   Chase will find out that stuff like this will come back to bite them.

The bigger they are…

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NT Wright’s Justification, Pt. 4: Wright’s Big Picture

Posted on October 14, 2009 by me

In the prior 3 posts in this series, I have pointed out a number of places where I am in disagreement with NT Wright’s most recent book, Justification.  Now, let me summarize some things I am in agreement with.

One of Wright’s goals, it appears, is to counter the standard Western Evangelical motif that salvation is about “going to Heaven when you die.”  This is the theme tackled in “Surprised by Hope,” and it is also taken up here in dealing with the title subject, justification.  Overall, I would tend to agree that justification goes beyond an individualized transaction where my decision to have faith is exchanged for Jesus’ death and resurrection, and therefore my eternal destiny is secured.  This does not mean that justification doesn’t have a personal, individual application.  Each one of the Israelites was personally saved when they crossed the Red Sea; that, however, doesn’t mean that God parted the Red Sea for any one person.

Wright sees justification and salvation as having a larger application, that of “setting the world to rights.”  This is not a foreign concept to Paul, who talks about the redemption of creation, which “will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” (Romans 8:21)

Wright’s “big picture” goes like this: God’s one and only plan was to choose a people – Israel – in order to bless all of creation, and therefore established the Covenant with Abraham. While the Israelite people failed, God did not, and sent Jesus – the heir as identified by Paul in Galatians – to complete that goal.  Jesus’ resurrection began that “setting the world to rights” process.  The Church, now – consisting of both Jews and Gentiles – continues this mission.   Therefore, as Romans 8 says, all of creation waits for the “sons of God to be revealed.”   We are living out the Abrahamic Covenant as adopted descendants of Abraham (and God).

In this sense, justification is not about individual salvation, it is about the redemption of Creation.  Wright, in fact, writes that his understanding of Galatians is that it is a “theology of justification which includes all that the old perspective was really trying to say within a larger framework which, while owing quite a bit to aspects of the new perspective, goes considerably beyond it.” (p.140)

This was always my understanding of Wright’s views on justification: the so-called “old perspective” may have been wrong only in that it was somewhat short-sighted.  For justification to be properly understood, it needs to recognize the larger context of the redemption of all creation.  In this sense, I don’t find Wright’s theology to be dangerous in any way, as some would think.

But, I still have three chapters yet to go.

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NT Wright on Justification, Pt 3

Posted on October 12, 2009 by me

Continuing my series on NT Wright’s latest book, Justification, I promised to address the issue of Covenant.   Wright chooses (starting at p. 71) Calvin over Luther, doing Luther a disservice, in my opinion.  The difference between the 2, as Wright paints it, is that Luther saw Moses “as the bad guy” (ridiculous, of course, as Moses was just the messenger) while Calvin pictured the Torah as “the way of life for a people already redeemed.”

While Wright is, I think, at least partially correct in seeing the Mosaic Law within the context of the prior Abrahamic Covenant, I think he is a big myopic to cast Israel as having been already “redeemed” at that point.  The Exodus is obviously metaphorical (I don’t mean to imply it didn’t happen) of a greater redemption, but I don’t think Israel’s escape from Egypt qualifies them as having been already redeemed.  In fact, I can see no justification (again, pun intended) for this claim, and Wright provides none.  One of the big critiques of this book is that Wright doesn’t support many of his claims, he just expects people to except them at face value.

The clear fact is – and Paul is clear on this – that there was no real redemption at that point. There was the covenant promise, which was and is being fulfilled in Christ.  I would agree with Wright that the Law was more or less a “covenant charter” – but not given to a “people already redeemed.”  They had been saved from one master, but were in no manner “redeemed” in the Pauline sense.

Wright also got a bit under my skin on page 112 with his comment about Luther’s “wonderful and deeply flawed commentary on Galatians.”  Wright disappoints over and over in this book with these off the cuff comments, casting mild insults upon any who don’t have his viewpoint.  I don’t think that Luther imagined that Paul was fighting off the Roman church – though he was perceptive enough to identify both Rome and the Anabaptists as having fallen into the same error as the Circumcizers, turning from grace to works of men.

Here, Wright starts to reveal his – in my opinion – greatest error:  He sees justification mainly in terms of breaking down the barrier between Jew and Gentile.  For Wright, the primary Pauline issue is community.  At this, I still have to shake my head in surprise; to me this is as far off as liberation theology.   Talking about Paul, Wright states (page 115):

He is talking about ethnic identity, and about the practices that go with that. And he is about to show that in the gospel this ethnic identity is dismantled, so that a new identity may be constructed …

So when Paul says that “we are not justified by works of the law” he is talking about being part of God’s one people.  He admits that “justified” is a lawcourt term, but he states (p 116) “But Paul is not talking about lawcourt, he is at a dinner table.”

I think Wright may have forgotten what the Letter to Galatians is all about.  Paul is not talking about dinner here, he is talking about circumcision!  This is not about fellowship, this is about giving in to demands of the Torah as opposed to the Gospel (remember the Gospel?).  So sin is not the problem here, it is fellowship.   He goes on (p 117) to say that Paul’s reference to “Gentile sinners” was a cultural reference, not referring to any real moral issues.  Thus, Luther’s “simul lustus et peccator” (simultaneously saint and sinner) is way off base.

Unless, of course, one is to simply read Galatians and take it on its face.

For Wright, righteousness “denotes the status enjoyed by God’s true family.”  Justification, then, “denotes the verdict of God himself as to who really is a member of his people.”

Wright doesn’t totally deny that the problem of the law is an issue, however he relegates this to a “subtheme.”  I will conclude with this section from page 123:

But the problem is not simply that the law condemns (though it does), shows up sin (though it does) or indeed encourages people into self-righteous “legalism” …  The problem is that the law gets in the way of the promise to Abraham, …by threatening to divide the promised single family into two.

Strange, indeed.

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To Creed or not to Creed?

Posted on October 9, 2009 by me

Again, the Internet Monk has an interesting post in his series on “Evangelical Liturgy,” this time on the use (or non-use) of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds.   It has never occurred to me that any church would not subscribe to either of these creeds- in fact, I would have said that any church that didn’t hold to the creeds was heterodox.  For that matter, I probably would still say this.  Of course, not officially holding to the creeds doesn’t mean they don’t believe in them, but still…

I guess that just goes to show once again that I am obviously not – and never have been – an evangelical in the popular sense (Luther first used the word to refer to his theology).

Posted in Church, The Liturgy | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment