I just canceled my Chase Visa Platinum Card.

I have had the card, originally from Washington Mutual, then taken over by Chase since January 2008, so two years. I have charged about $15,000 – $20,000 a year, and almost always paid off my full balance every month.

Smart. I know.

I don’t feel bad about them not earning much interest off of me since they collect 2% – 3% on all my transactions from the merchants. So they still gross $300 – $600 annually from me.

I usually have a monthly balance between $1,500 – $2,500 and pay it off in full. My last bill, I only had $368 and paid it in full. It showed up one day late and Chase hit me with a $39.99 late fee and $15.77 in interest = $55.76. Apparently Chase thinks it makes good business sense and good customer service and reputation sense to stand on principle and collect the $55.76 than average $500 annually. I am not a child. I do not need to be taught a lesson. The payment got there one day late and I have never paid late before in two years.

Seemingly, Chase also thinks I can’t live without them. I called and spoke to a customer service representative and then to a supervisor who both refused to waive the fee and interest. It’s odd that they think I need them that bad when I always pay off my bill in full.

I even added up the numbers for them and told them I certainly don’t feel like they care about or appreciate my business. I described how they will make more money off me by keeping me as a customer.

They repeatedly stated, "That’s the card agreement. It can’t be waived." Hello!?!? A robot can do that! The reason I called to talk to a person is because people are supposed to be able to reason and think.

A computer can’t reason and think, and apparently neither can Chase Visa employees. I told the supervisor I would cancel my card if he couldn’t do something for me. Again – "That’s the card agreement. It can’t be waived." promptly followed with, "Shall I go ahead and cancel your card then?" – kind of like Clint Eastwood saying "Make my day" – daring me to do it.

I gave him one more chance, and suggested a compromise – waive part of the fee and make me happy and I won’t cancel my card. Again – "That’s the card agreement. It can’t be waived." … "Do you still want me to cancel your card?" … as if I was bluffing.

I don’t bluff buddy-boy. Cancel it!

If you want an easy job, see if you can get one at Chase Visa. You are not required to think, reason, or make decisions. All you have to do is read a script like a robot, and for fun you can dare people to stop doing business with you.

Now I am going to walk across the street to Fifth Third Bank and get a shiny new credit card from a company that appreciates my business.

By the way, the colossally poor service from Chase Visa goes at least as far back as March 2006 when Craig made this post on Gear Bits – Credit Card Companies’ Late Fees Egregious and Stupid.

If I one more time have to experience someone misusing the word “Literally” I think I am going to stab myself in the eyeballs.

I can’t count the amount of times I have heard or read something like this.

Here is an excerpt from one of those idiotic mass email forwards people feel compelled to send out.

“The class was asked to go out and smile at three people and document their reactions.

I am a very friendly person and always smile at everyone and say hello anyway. So, I thought this would be a piece of cake, literally.”

No you dimwit. If it was literally a piece of cake that would mean that you would be baking a damn cake for your assignment, not smiling at people. Dumb ass.

By the way, I purposely used incorrect English in the post title, literally.

Japan’s new Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, won a landslide victory last week and is set to take office later this month. Hatoyama is himself eccentric by Japanese standards, choosing to wear green suits instead of the standard-issue dark blue ones worn by most men and for not combing his hair, but his wife is rather more distinctive.

In a book entitled “Very Strange Things I’ve Encountered”, the first lady relates: “While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus. It was a very beautiful place, and it was very green.”

The 66 year old cookery expert and musical actress also claims she met Tom Cruise in a previous life – when he was Japanese, naturally – and is looking forward to making a movie with him in the belief that she is destined to receive an Oscar for her performance.

on live TV, she once described how she ‘eats the sun’ every morning, closing her eyes and miming picking pieces of the star from the sky and placing them in her mouth: “Yum, yum, yum. I get energy from it. My husband also does this.”

She sure is making Michelle Obama look good.

Miyuki Hatoyama is Batshit Crazy

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Bank of America should change their trademarked tagline from "Bank of Opportunity" to "Morons Work Here".

It has come to our attention that Bank of America, in addition to having greed fueled, never care management that helped screw up the American economy, also employs morons as tellers and bank managers.

Steve Valdez, who is manager of quality assurance and customer satisfaction for Hillsborough County’s (Tampa FL) Public Works department, has two prosthetic arms.

Bank of America, 101 E. Kennedy Blvd, Tampa refused to cash a check for the armless man because he could not provide a thumbprint.

“They looked at my prosthetic hands and the teller said, ‘Well, obviously you can’t give us a thumbprint’,” Steve Valdez told CNN on Wednesday.

But he said the Bank of America Corp branch still insisted on a thumbprint identification for him to cash a check drawn on his wife’s account at the bank, even though he showed them two photo IDs.

In the incident last week, a bank supervisor told Valdez he could only cash the check without a thumbprint if he brought his wife in with him or he opened an account with them.

“I told them I neither wanted an account with them and couldn’t bring my wife in because she was nowhere close by,” Valdez told CNN.

Bank of America said in a statement cited by CNN: “While the thumbprint is a requirement for those who don’t have accounts, the bank should have made accommodations.”

Duh. No kidding morons!

Steve should give them the prosthetic middle finger and Bank of America should change their trademarked tagline from “Bank of Opportunity” to “Morons Work Here”.

Read more about it on Tampa Bay Online.

Does anyone else here live in South Florida? Can anyone tell me why the heck the damn power goes out ten times a day every day? Did the little hamster on the wheel get tired of running around?

Seriously! WTF!?! I can’t remember the power ever going out in the 30+ years I lived in NJ. Does FPL have stock in APC, the company that sells the battery back ups for computers?

You would think in this day and age someone could figure out how to keep the damn power on.

There should be a law that says if you get injured while committing a crime, too freakin’ bad, that’s part of the price you pay. Further, if you try to rob someone and they shoot you, the person that shoots you should get a $1,000 reward and the guy that gets shot should be put in a cell with a 300 lb psycho. Lastly, if you try to sue anyone for any reason because you got hurt committing a crime, you should be punched in the face 100 times real hard and then shot again.

The owner of Nick’s Party Stop on Cass Avenue in Clinton Township and several people connected to his store are being sued by a man who was shot while robbing the store.

The lawsuit, filed by Scott Thomas Zielinski from his cell in a Michigan prison …

Zielinski is seeking in excess of $125,000 for injuries sustained when he was shot escaping from the owners of the store. They went after him because he held two of the employees at knifepoint and threatened to kill them, police said.

“He comes into my store wearing a mask and armed with a knife, threatens to kill my employees and steals cigarettes and $793 in cash,” said Acho. “And he is suing us because we ruined his life and he is going through pain and suffering.”

Zielinski, 22, was convicted of the November 2007 robbery. In a plea bargain, he was sentenced May 20, 2008, to eight to 22 years in prison for unarmed, instead of armed, robbery.

A year earlier, he was sentenced to one year, seven months in prison for the robbery of Charter One Bank in Warren on Feb. 17, 2006.

“His attorney should go to jail for the accusations he made,” Acho said.

From: The Oakland Press

I agree with the last statement that the attorney should go to jail, and he should be punched in the face too.

Here are the court records

Case number: 2006-000942-FC (Bank Robbery w/ weapon)

Case number: 2007-005572-FC (Armed Robbery & Assault with Dangerous Weapon)

Case number: 2009-001738-NO (where he is suing people from the store that he tried to rob)

Next thing you know, he’ll kill someone and hurt his hand doing it, and then sue the next of kin of the murder victim.

Scott Thomas Zielinski definitely wins Jackass of the Month for September 2009 and his lawyer is runner up.

In this day and age, why the heck do stupid moron idiot people TYPE IN ALL CAPS!

Are they completely retarded!?!!

HI I’M A MORON AND I THINK YOU NEED TO TYPE EVERYTHING ALL IN CAPS. SOMEONE PLEASE SAVE ME BY RIPPING THE CAPS LOCK KEY OUT OF MY KEYBOARD AND SHOVING IT UP MY ASS.

I also can’t stand the inverse of this, for example.

hi. i’m an idiot that thinks just because i am typing something for electronic communication rather than printed that i do not need to use proper capitalization and constantly type “I”, meaning “me” as a small “i”.

Can someone please help me line up all these people and punch them in the face?

I nearly become homicidal every time I have to hear an outgoing message that gives me 45 minutes of instructions on how to leave a message.

Seriously, who doesn’t know how to leave a message?

I want to throw my phone across the room when I have to hear not only the regular outgoing message, like: “Hi, this is Doug. I’m not here right now, so please leave a message”, but then the imbecilic system kicks in with, “If you would like to leave a message, please begin speaking after the tone” (of course another 20 mins is going to go by before you hear the tone), it continues … “If you would like to review your message, press 4. If you would like to strangle someone because your life is wasting away listening to idiotic instructions on how to leave a message, please smash your phone with a hammer … and on and on and on and on.

By the time the damn thing is done I forget who I called and why I called them.

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I can’t stand it when I pull into the empty lane to find out I will still be sitting there for 20 minutes while the one teller takes care of the other three transactions for the people that are first in line in the other three lanes.

They should just have one fucking lane with a line of 4 cars instead of 4 lanes where everyone thinks they are first, but then find out only one lane is being served at a time.