An Open Letter to JP Morgan Chase Regarding Your Lack of Help to the Everyday Consumer

August 12, 2010

To Whom It May Concern at J.P.Morgan Chase & Co.:

As a real estate professional, I deal with buyers and sellers in every stage of the process of home-ownership. The most difficult and heartbreaking situations to hear are the ones where people had a real financial hardship and lost their home as a result. The every day John Doe could really benefit from actually being able to speak to someone with a brain at your company, not a machine that doesn’t recognize social security numbers, loan identification or account numbers. A real live, breathing, human with a brain and a heart.

Your recent 2nd quarter reports show a net income of $4.8 BILLION for 2010. Are you using this revenue to pay the bulldogs to call incessantly and ask asinine questions that neither benefit your company in asset recovery or the homeowner in a resolution? I hear from clients that they get daily phone calls, sometimes upwards of 5 times a day, from your company asking the same questions about their situation everyday. These include: do you still live at this property? Do you intend to repay your loan amount?

Now let me ask you this…you bought a loan that was ALREADY in default, one where no payment had been made in over 8 months. Tell me please, professional to professional, how that was a good investment? And then please explain to me how this justifies receiving assistance as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program? What exactly are you DOING with the money you received from TARP to benefit the homeowners in trouble? Are you offering any sort of resolution to the money they owe but have NO ability to repay? Doesn’t a financial hardship fundamentally mean they WILL not and CAN not pay that amount back? Why not try to come up with a joint resolution that benefits these PEOPLE who have a life, a family, a future that will having nothing to do with you. And wouldn’t a joint resolution benefit your bottom line and asset holders? Wouldn’t recovering some portion of the loan they owe be better than nothing at all? Or even better – how about actually evaluating what assets you buy before you inherit another situation you deem worthy of harassment? That way, you can avoid making a bad situation worse.

So in closing to all of the employees and executives at JP Morgan Chase…why not actually work together with consumers in trouble to help them, you, the economy, the housing market, and everyone, everywhere that’s effected every single day by money troubles.

If you’d like to speak with me directly regarding particular situations, please feel free to call me at 703.283.6120 or email me at Laura@TheLJRGroup.com.

Sincerely,

Laura Rubinchuk, Realtor (R)