Notification regarding a negative balance on my JP Morgan Chase foreign currency account

Hi everyone,

I have a situation here and I'm not sure if anyone else has dealt with this, so maybe you could offer some advice.

Basically, back on March 24, 2010, I opened a foreign currency account at JP Morgan Chase. There hasn't been a single transaction on the account since then, and I just completely forgot it existed in the meantime (my mistake 😵). Then, last week, I received my first notice in the mail about the balance and a debt of -$57.00... basically.

I went down to a branch to get a copy of the contract, and to my surprise—well, I actually requested when I opened it that they wouldn't mail notices to my home address, but would instead deliver them to the branch (though knowing myself, I doubt that happened, but I didn't read the contract carefully, so again, my fault 😵). While I was there, I asked for a monthly statement of activity, and it looks roughly like this:

05/31/2016. foreign account maintenance fee $0.69
late interest $0.30
04/30/2016. foreign account maintenance fee $0.69
late interest $0.28

And it goes on like that for six years and three months without a single trace or any notification sent to my house.

I asked them why a notice is being sent now, what period this covers, how they calculated it, whether it's a leap year thing, or if they only bother because the amount is over $50... I guess they don't want to be bothered for smaller amounts. I just got a cold response that I can file an appeal, because that is MY right.

Is it true that a bank doesn't have to send any mail notifications if it isn't specifically defined in the contract? And why send it now? They could have just waited until it hit $500.

Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone has ever been in this spot, and if you filed an appeal, how that turned out....🎉

How do you honestly think an appeal is gonna go when you’re basically complaining that they didn't notify you about your debt—even though you explicitly told them not to send you any notices in the first place?

Or maybe you just don't want to pay because you totally blanked on the fact that you even opened the account?

Alexander Thompson said:How do you honestly think an appeal is gonna go when you’re basically complaining that they didn't notify you about your debt—even though you explicitly told them not to send you any notices in the first place?

Or maybe you just don't want to pay because you totally blanked on the fact that you even opened the account?

In any case, I'll settle the debt, but I really want to try filing an appeal first... I guess I can't quite remember if they ever actually asked me if I wanted monthly statements mailed to my house... I think I caught a glimpse of some simplified federal regulation somewhere stating that the debtor bank is required to mail out a year-end report by law... it might be worth a shot.

Anthony Newman9 said:In any case, I'll settle the debt, but I really want to try filing an appeal first... I guess I can't quite remember if they ever actually asked me if I wanted monthly statements mailed to my house... I think I caught a glimpse of some simplified federal regulation somewhere stating that the debtor bank is required to mail out a year-end report by law... it might be worth a shot.

Well, you couldn't even remember if you opened the account in the first place, could you? 😉

They're supposed to send out a summary of fund balances once a year, though I don't think that applies to checking or savings accounts specifically....

Just curious, though—what exactly are you planning to base a complaint on?

Alexander Thompson said:Well, you couldn't even remember if you opened the account in the first place, could you? 😉

They're supposed to send out a summary of fund balances once a year, though I don't think that applies to checking or savings accounts specifically....

Just curious, though—what exactly are you planning to base a complaint on?

That’s actually what I wanted to ask, if there's any real basis here... or if anyone has dealt with something similar... maybe looking into the statute of limitations might be an option.

JP Morgan Chase is the same way—it’s all just the same old story.

It's just that, if my foreign currency account ever dipped into the negative by even a single cent due to maintenance fees, some lady from the bank would give me a call to warn me... so I honestly can't tell
whether this is standard procedure across every branch, or if I just happen to have a really sweet lady looking out for me, or if your folks are just being exceptionally mean! :-)

My foreign currency account was also sitting in the red without me even realizing it. They told me all about those potential fees back when I was originally taking out the loan... After that, they just started docking the fees directly from my checking

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Rachel Diaz8 said:JP Morgan Chase is the same way—it’s all just the same old story.

It's just that, if my foreign currency account ever dipped into the negative by even a single cent due to maintenance fees, some lady from the bank would give me a call to warn me... so I honestly can't tell
whether this is standard procedure across every branch, or if I just happen to have a really sweet lady looking out for me, or if your folks are just being exceptionally mean! :-)

Maybe it’s because of the local branch, since the staff in Brooklyn are quite sour and unfriendly... they have all my correct info, and I suppose they would charge for that phone call too, much like the online statement printing $1.75 on their website, but honestly, whatever. When I close this one, I'm closing my other two accounts there too, because they aren't serious and it's just ridiculous....

How on earth did they manage to miss charging you from either of those other two accounts?

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Anthony Newman9 said:That’s actually what I wanted to ask, if there's any real basis here... or if anyone has dealt with something similar... maybe looking into the statute of limitations might be an option.

Ground to stand on? From where I'm sitting, you don't really have much... which is why I'm asking what your actual basis for a complaint would even be.....

So, I had this Euro account that I didn't even need anymore since I’d switched over to a USD one. I wanted to just shut the whole thing down, but the teller at JPMorgan Chase basically told me, "Oh, don't worry about it, if there's no activity on the account, they won't charge you anything." So I was like, okay fine, let it sit there—you never know when you might need it. Fast forward a bit, I check my USD statements and realize that for the last two or three years, they've been quietly bleeding a few bucks out of my main account to cover those monthly maintenance fees for the old Euro one. I absolutely lost it. I marched right back into the branch, went straight to that same teller, and demanded to know how she could pull a stunt like that. She just gave me some vague "I didn't know" nonsense and kept babbling. Long story short, I went off on them, but nothing really came of it. My personal banker eventually reached out, admitted the teller gave me bad info, and that was that. Honestly? What can you even say? Just another day in paradise.

Honestly, the absolute dumbest thing about JPMorgan Chase is how their foreign currency accounts work. You can’t just have one multi-currency account; instead, they force you to open a separate account for every single currency, which means a separate card and separate monthly fees for each one. It’s such a headache. At the end of the day, a dollar is a dollar, or a euro is a euro—it should all just be under one roof.

That’s not right.
At JPMorgan Chase, you only need one foreign currency account because it can hold multiple currencies at once. That means they only hit you with the fee once—usually in whatever currency the card was issued in, which is most often USD.

placidmaker6 said:That’s not right.
At JPMorgan Chase, you only need one foreign currency account because it can hold multiple currencies at once. That means they only hit you with the fee once—usually in whatever currency the card was issued in, which is most often USD.

That's just not true if you're looking for a card specifically for something like PayPal; you'd have to open a whole new account for that! And obviously, I need a card... I mean, how else am I supposed to grab cash when I'm traveling?

With JPMorgan Chase, their foreign currency account is multi-currency, so you can manage everything through just one single card...

Lawrence Alvarez2 said:That's just not true if you're looking for a card specifically for something like PayPal; you'd have to open a whole new account for that! And obviously, I need a card... I mean, how else am I supposed to grab cash when I'm traveling?

All you need is one card. You get paid out in whatever local currency the ATM uses, and your account just gets charged in whatever currency is on the card. Simple enough?

Lawrence Alvarez2 said:That's just not true if you're looking for a card specifically for something like PayPal; you'd have to open a whole new account for that! And obviously, I need a card... I mean, how else am I supposed to grab cash when I'm traveling?

Well, sure, you get the card and all that... the account is multi-currency, so you can hold whatever you want in there, but the fees—including the monthly maintenance stuff—they all get pulled from your "primary" currency...

So, like, my main currency might be USD, even if I’m also holding Euros or Swiss Francs... but all the charges (PayPal, ATM withdrawals, random fees) hit the dollar balance. If you run out of dollars, you're stuck—you won't be able to buy anything even if your other currency balances are looking pretty healthy... and honestly, the fee is basically the same regardless of how many different currencies you've got sitting in there...

placidmaker6 said:How on earth did they manage to miss charging you from either of those other two accounts?

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Maybe they should have, I guess. If they had, I might have seen the balance change and closed it sooner. I suppose we should just ask them... personally, I feel like this is all just an Apple issue...

Alexander Thompson said:Well, sure, you get the card and all that... the account is multi-currency, so you can hold whatever you want in there, but the fees—including the monthly maintenance stuff—they all get pulled from your "primary" currency...

So, like, my main currency might be USD, even if I’m also holding Euros or Swiss Francs... but all the charges (PayPal, ATM withdrawals, random fees) hit the dollar balance. If you run out of dollars, you're stuck—you won't be able to buy anything even if your other currency balances are looking pretty healthy... and honestly, the fee is basically the same regardless of how many different currencies you've got sitting in there...

Same deal for me. Five different currencies in one account, but with only one primary currency, so every single charge hits that one specific balance.

Alexander Thompson said:Well, sure, you get the card and all that... the account is multi-currency, so you can hold whatever you want in there, but the fees—including the monthly maintenance stuff—they all get pulled from your "primary" currency...

So, like, my main currency might be USD, even if I’m also holding Euros or Swiss Francs... but all the charges (PayPal, ATM withdrawals, random fees) hit the dollar balance. If you run out of dollars, you're stuck—you won't be able to buy anything even if your other currency balances are looking pretty healthy... and honestly, the fee is basically the same regardless of how many different currencies you've got sitting in there...

Look, I used to have separate PayPal cards—one in Euros and one in Dollars. Each account was its own thing with its own set of fees. I know what I'm talking about here. It comes down to the card itself; the currency is printed right on it. Why else would I bother having two different cards? If you try to use a single-currency card for a different currency, you're just inviting conversion fees to the party...