Thursday, June 16, 2016

Why Φ can afford extra ammo this month

From Chase Bank:

We're attaching a check for your credit card account(s) ending in XXXX *

Dear Φ:

We're writing to apologize because we may have charged you interest and/or fees incorrectly when you may have been eligible for Servicemember's Civil Relief Act benefits or protections.

Here's what we're doing

  • We're refunding you the interest and/or fees, plus an additional amount for the inconvenience.

  • We're attaching a check for $500.00. **

We'll report the taxable portion

If required by tax-reporting rules, we'll send you an IRS Form 1099-MISC (Miscellaneous Income) of Form 1042-S (Foreign Person's U.S. Source Income Subject to Withholding) for the tax year in which the inconvenience payment was issued. You may want to ask your tax/financial advisor, call the IRS at 1-800-829-1040, or visit IRS.gov for information about how this may affect you.

We're here to help

If you have any questions, please call us at 1-888-420-3863. We are here Monday through Sunday from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern Time. A Military Customer Service Specialist will assist you. If you are overseas, please call us collect at 1-302-594-8200.

We thank you and your family for your service to our country.

Sincerely,

John W. Delaney

Managing Director

Attachment

* All bolding in the original

** For the record, Φ hasn't paid interest on a credit card since 1994.

It may be uncharitable of me to ask this, in light of Chase Bank's generosity to what must be a considerable number of military customers, but . . . how does an honest company make enough money to send out $500 checks like this?

5 comments:

heresolong said...

Wait? There's a law that says that even though you entered freely into a contract to pay someone more than 6% on a loan, you get to skate on that if you join the military and the company has to suck up the difference, even if it costs them more than 6% to loan you the money?

That's super American.

heresolong said...

Thought that I'd mention that I'm missing the weekly-ish free entertainment and edification that I used to get from your writings.

Just saying. Hope all is well.

Dr. Φ said...

Weeklyish? At my peak, I was publishing 4-5 posts per day!

Which dropped to . . . not very often. I actually have over a dozen half-finished blog posts sitting in my outbox. But the wordsmithing became tiring, even when I thought I had something to contribute, which I thought less and less. And I would read over my old stuff with a sense of pride, and also despair: is what I was presently working on going to be that good? No? Then what's the point?

But your comment has provided me with some inspiration. Let me see if I can dust off one of those unifinished posts.

Dr. Φ said...

No . . . not 4 -5 posts per day. 4 - 5 posts per week. See? Wordsmithing is harder for me now.

heresolong said...

LOL. Just jumped back to the comments and saw this. I like it. And am enjoying your new posts. Substitutes for having friends to talk to. (Kidding?)