Posted on 03/17/2011 7:49:02 AM PDT by JoeProBono
MIRA MESA, Calif.- A California man upset with his bank for disallowing his requested refinance said he decided to pay off his $6,500 credit card bill entirely with pennies.
Thierry Cahez of San Diego County rolled 650,000 pennies in plastic, loaded them into crates and drove the lot to his Mira Mesa bank, KABC-TV, Los Angeles, reported.
Cahez was turned away by the bank several times but eventually was sent to a branch with a vault large enough to handle the coins.
Cahez said he opted to pay his credit card bill with pennies because he was turned down for a refinance and for the amount of charges and fees on his credit card, KABC-TV said Tuesday.
lol!
LOL! Your right, that’s one government giveaway I take advantage of, I separate out my pre-1982 copper pennies and keep them.
“He has every right to protest his bank, and other people have every right to point out that if he’d put as much effort into not running up a huge bill as he put into “creatively” paying it he’d have never had any reason to protest them in the first place.”
Good points.
The tellers at the Chase branch who have to count the coins, didn’t cause him to rack up credit card debt.
If it happens often enough they might get the message they aren't working for the good guys, heheh.
AKA “lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.”
He was an IDIOT! He should have had someone video their refusal of the pennies. They are legal tender and if the bank refuses them then the debt is LEGALLY considered PAID IN FULL.
Chase turned down a requested refinance, so he’s protesting....what, exactly?
Actually, they are not legal tender for debts greater than 25 cents. Neither are nickels. Dimes used to be, and may still be. It depends upon whether dimes are now considered "minor coinage." When these laws were passed dimes (and higher value coins) had silver content equivalent to their value (based upon a 1792 law which defined a dollar as 371.25 grains of fine silver and is STILL the legal definition of a dollar).
The bank did have the option to accept the payment in the form presented, but they were not legally obligated to do so.
ML/NJ
Chase is a bank that is beyond incompetent. They bought Washington Mutual. We had a WaMu credit card. Chase wanted to ditch WaMu accounts and convert them to Chase accounts, so they canceled pretty much all WaMu accounts thinking the customers wouldn’t be pissed and open a Chase account. They claimed we had “risky credit”, although that wasn’t even close to the truth.
Another story of their gross incompetence is something we took them to the cleaners about. We bought a house they were selling. Due to their extreme incompetence and lack of any communication between their offices whatsoever we got them to pay $28,000 in closing costs so we paid nothing. They even paid several years of insurance and taxes. Only $7,000 was in the contract to be paid by them but they passed the buck from one office that failed to respond to another and we ended up getting someone to pencil whip the paperwork at the last minute in our favor. Anyone at Chase trying to question the HUD settlement paperwork couldn’t get answers from anyone else at Chase so they simply signed the deal.
Corporate America: No one really cares; they just want to keep their jobs. When the company eventually fails, everyone heads to their cars in the parking lot and proclaims, “Well, we tried. It was out of our hands”, with no one taking the blame.
Some guy tried that stunt once with a large traffic fine. He wasn’t too happy when the judge ordered him to verify by counting each penny to make sure it was the proper amount.
Agreed. In addition, nobody forced him to run up a balance of $6,500 on his credit card. Nobody forced him to miss his payments that drove up fees, etc. And of course nobody forced him to get a credit card in the first place. That dude needs to grow up.
I don't know where you got that little nugget but United States Code, Title 31, Section 5103, says otherwise:
United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts.
Take a camera to the nearest Federal Reserve Bank and see if they will swap the greenbacks for silver.
I owed about $5,000 on my BofA credit card and made a $2,600 online payment, except I forgot the decimal place. I ended up making a payment of $260,000. This may come as a surprise, but I didn’t have that much in my checking account.
So, what did the bank do?
1. They can only take payments of a max of $99,999, so they broke it into three payments.
2. Then the actually tried to withdraw all three from my checking account. They all bounced, but my bank only charged an NSF for one of them.
3. Then BofA put my balance back to the original $5,000, but as a cash advance, which over doubles my interest rate.
4. Then they charged $39 for each of the three bounced transactions for a total of $117.
My wife called them when we got the notice and the lady said that the most she could do was remove one of the $39 charges. After much discussion (my wife was on the phone with her and me at the same time, and I have PCI experience), I told my wife to tell the lady, “ok, but we’re gonna stop using that card”. The lady asked if we wanted to cancel the card. We said not just “no”, but “hell no.” They just won’t get the fees from our purchases any more but we will still have the excellent credit afforded by the card.
I also have experience with how call centers work, so the next day I called and the guy (who can see everything the original lady typed about our conversation) almost immediately said they were reversing all charges, removing the balance from the “cash advance” category, and even backing out the extra interest we had paid since it was entered (already almost $30!).
Nevertheless, the first lady treating my wife like we were idiotic deadbeats and deserved what they did was enough to cause us to abandon the card. We still use it, but only when we are somewhere that does not take American Express.
Idiot is a harsh word.
He’s an irritated customer, who wants to cause Chase to feel some of his pain. Pennies are legal tender - and processing pennies is going to cost Chase more time (time=money) than cashing a check.
If I were the banker at Chase, I’d accept the payment, but make him wait until we had unrolled and counted each and every penny. Sure, it’s gonna take some time; but I wouldn’t write a receipt of payment, until I knew I had full payment.
The time it will take Chase to count these same pennies is significant. But, his intent is to cause Chase some pain - and in doing this, coupled with the press and negative publicity Chase has received - I’d say he was successful.
That’s hardly an idiot. And idiot has the money to pay Chase off, and continues to make minimum payments and continues to deal with Chase. This man has done neither.
“These coins are US legal tender”
Money is money.
>>The tellers at the Chase branch who have to count the coins, didn’t cause him to rack up credit card debt.<<
You have to start somewhere, and the bottom is where to do it. When a company pisses people off, the people in the trenches are always the first to hear about it. If it is bad enough, it affects morale and the “good” ones find somewhere else to work.
Which is as it should be.
Another poster here who thinks Chase is the WORST. Had a cc with a balance, they jacked up the interest to 29.99% because they sent us a new CC with a different name.... Paid them off to get rid of them.
Chase screws their customers. I’m surprised they can stay in business.
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