Chase Verification Letter

[Druid001]

It's the extension to the Patriot Act actually.  They passed the original act a month after the September 11 terrorist attacks.  Obama signed an extension in 2011 I believe.  In terms of banking, the government and the act are focused on identifying laundering activities for the most part and to identify all people involved with an account, meaning they wanted to find out all beneficial owners who may not have their names on the accounts.  However the main purpose is to keep a tab on all accounts owned by NON US Citizens.

I have checking/savings accounts through 4 bank and 1 federal credit union, and not a single one of them ever asked for my income like Chase did.  Actually none of them ever called since the addition o the Patriot Act and Chase's letter today was the first one.

I think it was BoFA that had contacted me 2-3 years ago, saying "the minimum payments on cards will be $35 as per new laws passed by the GOVERNMENT".  They claimed it had to go into effect the next year on January 1 but this was sometime April or May.  They even had a section saying they were "proud" of being the first bank to put this requirement into effect (like it's something to be proud off trying to collect $10-15 more from account holders before they were obligated by the law).  However I still have tons of cards that don't have the so-called $35 minimum monthly payment requirement which BoFA had said was a government requirement.  So somebody was lying but I never paid much attention since it didn't matter to me.

All those aside, the banks are supposed to report transactions greater than 10k (in a single day), any tax evasion, laundering or other suspected criminal activity.  Aside for the name, SS#, name and address, they have no other legal obligations in terms of obtaining personal information.

And claiming what they do is "as per the government" is actually a crime.  As I have mentioned, the letter said no such thing and they were honest by stating "Chase policy requires us to obtain, verify and recrd certain identifying information for each customer" whereas the phone representative lied not by mistake but by intent since she repeated the same thing when I specificaly asked her to clarify the "government" part of her sentence.  I don't know why they would not use an email or even sending a system message online when I have all communication preferences checked as electronic

However it's done.

[jorgeorpinel]

Druid001: congratulations for standing your ground and enforcing your basic rights.

Shame on all the sheep that blindly obey everything they're told by banks, companies, institutions, or the government. Have you no brain? This is an absolute violation of privacy.

We should never give up basic rights in the name of "safety". Such info and power will always be abused by (again) banks, companies, institutions, and (especially) the State. The argument of embracing big brother to protect us from a ghost threat is for suckers. It's just sad to see how many of those there are in this country.

That said, I also got the letter and I plan to ignore it completely, what a scam. If they don't want my business I'll move it elsewhere. And BTW I have no credit lines whatsoever with Chase, in fact I lend THEM money by having banking accounts with them. This is complete BS and I hope more people reading this thread can think for themselves and either ignore similar info requests or call Chase back and complaint / close your accounts.

[Stralem]

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@jorgeorpinel wrote:

Druid001: congratulations for standing your ground and enforcing your basic rights.

Shame on all the sheep that blindly obey everything they're told by banks, companies, institutions, or the government. Have you no brain? This is an absolute violation of privacy.

We should never give up basic rights in the name of "safety". Such info and power will always be abused by (again) banks, companies, institutions, and (especially) the State. The argument of embracing big brother to protect us from a ghost threat is for suckers. It's just sad to see how many of those there are in this country.

That said, I also got the letter and I plan to ignore it completely, what a scam. If they don't want my business I'll move it elsewhere. And BTW I have no credit lines whatsoever with Chase, in fact I lend THEM money by having banking accounts with them. This is complete BS and I hope more people reading this thread can think for themselves and either ignore similar info requests or call Chase back and complaint / close your accounts.

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Great speech, Captain Revolutionary.

Now how about you put your money where you mouth is and do something about it?

Oh wait! It's so much easier to call people "sheep" and wax philosophical about muh freedums than it is to do something tangible, isn't it? Guess I shouldn't hold my breathe then.

Go play freedom fighter somewhere else.

[myjourney]

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@jorgeorpinel wrote:

Druid001: congratulations for standing your ground and enforcing your basic rights.

Shame on all the sheep that blindly obey everything they're told by banks, companies, institutions, or the government. Have you no brain? This is an absolute violation of privacy.

We should never give up basic rights in the name of "safety". Such info and power will always be abused by (again) banks, companies, institutions, and (especially) the State. The argument of embracing big brother to protect us from a ghost threat is for suckers. It's just sad to see how many of those there are in this country.

That said, I also got the letter and I plan to ignore it completely, what a scam. If they don't want my business I'll move it elsewhere. And BTW I have no credit lines whatsoever with Chase, in fact I lend THEM money by having banking accounts with them. This is complete BS and I hope more people reading this thread can think for themselves and either ignore similar info requests or call Chase back and complaint / close your accounts.

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You are in violation of TOS and this will not be tolerated 

MJ

[09Lexie]

This thread is locked and under Moderator review.

~Lexie, myFICO Moderator