Filing for unemployment in California, part 2, and getting screwed by Chase credit cards

Thursday afternoon I was finally able to get through to a real person to file for unemployment in California. Imagine my dismay when she told me that I would have to file in Ohio. Why? Because I had a claim in that state last year and did not exhaust all of the available benefits.

This sucks for so many reasons. First, Ohio pays less the California for weekly unemployment checks. That is a problem since I have California rent and not Ohio rent. Difference in rent? Over $1,000 a month. It also sucks because my employer here in SoCal paid me $10,000 more a year than the one in Ohio. Hopefully the Ohio people will adjust my unemployment to reflect my most recent salary. It also sucks cause when I got this news it was 6pm in Ohio - too late to call.

In other news, I will be praying for the fall of Chase credit cards and Chase Bank in general. On our most recent credit card statement for Chase their finance charge put is $1.07 over the limit. They promptly charged us $39.00 for an over the limit fee. Coincidentally our annual membership fee for the Chase rewards card was $39.00. So, actually, it was that fee that caused use to go over the limit. Regardless, we recently locked in a promo rate on that card. It was paid off and we transferred a balance at 3.99%. Now that card will go back to the default interest rate, which is almost 28%. That is really unfortunate since the card the balance was transferred from had a lower rate than that!

I called Chase and asked to get the fee waived. Apparently they only do that in the case of bank errors. I asked to talk to someone higher up. Guess what? No one can waive an over the limit fee there. A look online shows me that Chase Bank is a bastard to everyone.  Good to know.