I recently wrote about how Chase Bank’s inflexible systems just cost it money by not allowing me to make a $100 payment to my mortgage account to make up an erroneous underpayment. Instead, I had to make an entire additional payment, depriving them of a significant amount of future interest. In January, I received an offer from Chase Bank to open a checking account with them, with a minimum deposit of $100. After I set up direct deposit, within ten business days of the first deposit they would deposit $125, which would be mine to keep so long as I left the account open and receiving direct deposits for at least six months. I asked an online banker whether there was any minimum amount that had to be direct deposited, and was told no. I decided to set up the account in person at a branch near my office, and again asked whether there was any minimum direct deposit. The banker told me no, there was no minimum–if I wanted to deposit only $1 per paycheck, that would be fine. As I have no interest in using Chase Bank as my primary bank–I’m quite happy with a regional bank that is one of the top-rated places to work in the country and has demonstrated reliability to me repeatedly over several decades–I decided to maximize my return on this otherwise non-interest-earning account by minimizing my deposits. My employer provides a convenient way for me to control my own direct deposits into up to three different banks, so I added a new direct deposit of $0.01 per paycheck into my new Chase Bank account. The first $0.01 went in on January 15. On January 30, no $125 had been deposited, so I sent an online email inquiry asking when I could expect to see it. A response a couple days later told me I needed to call in to get an answer to my question, so I dialed the toll-free number, waited on hold, and finally got to a person who told me I needed to wait four to six weeks after the first direct deposit. My second $0.01 went in on January 30. My third $0.01 went in on February 13. Still no $125. Today, I got another $125 offer from Chase Bank, which prompted me to dig up my application materials and see that they promised my $125 would be deposited within ten business days, not four to six weeks. So I called and left a message for the banker at my branch, I sent another online inquiry asking whether Chase Bank is going to remedy its failure to honor its offer, and called in to the toll-free number again. I described the issue to my “telephone banker,” and he asked for my account information. When he brought up my account, he asked if the $0.01 deposits were pre-authorizations for direct deposit, and I told him no, those are the deposits–I was told multiple times that there was no minimum deposit, and there is nothing in the written offer that mentions a minimum deposit. He was unable to solve the problem, and said he would have to send it to be researched, and I would hear back within a couple of days. If they didn’t want to honor the offer, they shouldn’t have made it in the first place. By failing to live up to it, they’re costing themselves even more money. It’s surprising to me that this is probably the strongest of the major banks in the U.S., and the least likely of the majors to end up costing the U.S. Treasury money in the long run from the TARP’s preferred investments ($25 billion put into Chase so far). UPDATE (February 18, 2009): I received a voice mail from Chase Bank stating that the promised $125 will be deposited into my account within the next two weeks. My real-life banker left me a voice mail saying that the issue was that their system doesn’t automatically count direct deposits for issuing an award if they are less than $1. So they do intend to honor their offer, it will just take longer since I used the system in a way they apparently didn’t anticipate (or did anticipate with the same reasoning companies use with rebates). UPDATE (February 25, 2009): My $125 was deposited yesterday. ...

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered Creation Ministries International and Answers in Genesis to settle their dispute with private arbitration, the outcome sought by Answers in Genesis and affirming the trial court’s ruling. CMI had hoped to force the U.S. dispute into the Australian courts, where a second lawsuit is ongoing and has its next hearing in April. This decision opens a route for AiG to stop the Australian proceedings in favor of the private arbitration that has been ordered in the United States. The court’s decision is here (PDF). It appears to me that CMI is going to be held to the agreements that its previous board of directors signed, however foolish, irresponsible, or unethical it was of them to do so. As those previous board members resigned in return for indemnification, it doesn’t appear to me that CMI is likely to obtain any remedy for the wrongs it alleges have occurred. It looks like AiG operated within the bounds of the law in its actions. ...

This black unneutered male Cocker Spaniel came up to us at around 11th St. and Caldwell while we were walking our dogs. There were some people nearby, and we asked if this was their dog, and they said no, so we brought him home and called Animal Care & Control. He’s wearing a spiked collar with no tags and looks like he’s been wandering the streets for a couple of days or so. He was very tired and thirsty. We’ve put his picture and description up on Pets911.com. ...

The latest ApostAZ podcast is now available: Episode 014 Atheism and Sucker-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Intro from Vocab Malone ‘Lean Back- But think’, Guest Shawn from the Tough Questions Podcast and http://www.youtube.com/user/azsuperman01 and Josh, Religion and the Workplace, Outro Music from Greydon Square- CPT TheoremComments: I wish people would stop saying that you can’t prove a negative. You can. (Also see this.)

So much for change. ABC News: The Obama Administration today announced that it would keep the same position as the Bush Administration in the lawsuit Mohamed et al v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. The case involves five men who claim to have been victims of extraordinary rendition — including current Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed, another plaintiff in jail in Egypt, one in jail in Morocco, and two now free. They sued a San Jose Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen Dataplan, accusing the flight-planning company of aiding the CIA in flying them to other countries and secret CIA camps where they were tortured. ...

Russ Baker’s new book, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, The Powerful Forces that Put it in Power, and What Their Influence Means for America, states that George W. Bush’s conversion to evangelical Christianity was staged as a way to wipe the slate clean of his past record of misbehavior. It further makes the case that his story of a conversion after a visit from Billy Graham was his second conversion, the first coming a year earlier after a meeting with evangelist Arthur Blessit, who was determined to be too controversial for the story Bush wanted to convey: … what was a starchy, Episcopalian heir to a blue-blooded Yankee political pedigree to do? And what of his reckless, apparently non-religious, playboy son? These were the intertwined questions faced by Vice President Bush and George W. in the 1980s as they planned Poppy Bush’s run for president in 1988–and W.’s political future. Baker’s chapter titled “The Conversion” features startling revelations that challenge the well-known narratives of the Bush family’s religious history– including the way they crafted a strategy for winning over the religious right, and the creation of a conversion legend for George W. Bush. The purpose of the latter was not only to position him as a religious and political man of his time, but to neutralize the many issues from his past that threatened to undermine his future in politics (and possibly that of his father as well). The plan probably worked far better than anyone could have hoped. “I’m still amazed,” Doug Wead, a key architect of the Bush family’s evangelical outreach strategy told Baker, “how naïve so many journalists are who have covered politics all of their life." ...

My mortgage has been purchased by Chase Bank a couple of times (after the first time, I refinanced with another bank and then Chase bought my mortgage from them), and they’re my current lender. I pay extra principal with every payment, usually about 30% more. For my February payment, I decided to reduce the extra principal a bit, for various reasons including keeping a bit more cash on hand in current economic conditions. Unfortunately, I made a $100 error in my payment. Rather than paying an extra $40.37, I underpaid the monthly payment by $59.63. I learned my mistake when I received my mortgage statement, indicating that my entire payment was in “suspense funds received” and had not been applied to my mortgage at all. I immediately called Chase. Even though it was an hour before their call center closed, I was unable to get to a human being. Instead, after being told I was being transferred to customer service, I got an automated message saying that my call could not by completed. I looked for online options for payment, but the Chase website referred me instead to their phone-based “FastPay” system. The “FastPay” system by phone charges a $15 fee (which the phone system says can be avoided by using the online payment system) and only allows making a full payment. I tried again the next morning, and got through to Tonja, a customer service rep who told me that I could only make a full payment through the phone (not the $100 I wanted to pay), but said if I connected an external bank account online, I could make the payment that way, and as soon as the extra $100 was received, the payment would be applied as normal. I’m also well within the 15-day grace period for a payment, so I don’t have to worry about late fees. Online, I searched through some counter-intuitive menu options–within the mortgage account, payment options send you to the page about FastPay over the phone–I finally found that from the front page I could get to an option to connect an external account. I started the process, and learned that my bank could not be connected instantly by putting in my online banking authentication information, but had to use a method of verification where Chase puts two small deposits in my account and I come back later and input those amounts back to Chase to prove that it’s my account (or at least that I have access to it). It then allowed me to attempt the instant verification method, despite its previous claim that my bank didn’t accept it, but that failed (and I probably shouldn’t have tried–Chase shouldn’t have my authentication credentials to another bank). It then said it would take up to two business days for these deposits to go through. The next day, my bank showed me that there were two pending deposits from Chase (yet another cost Chase is incurring), so I went back to the verification page and entered those amounts. Chase’s website informed me that because those deposits had not been made yet, I was not allowed to verify the amounts yet. Dumb design. I tried again later in the evening, and my verification was accepted. Now I went to the page to make a payment, only to find that once again, the only option is to make an entire payment. Contrary to what Tonja told me, I cannot pay just an additional $100, because there is an outstanding payment that hasn’t been made, and my $1100 sitting in “suspense funds” doesn’t count and can’t be used. Well, I’ve got the money in savings, so I decided that if Chase is going to make things so difficult, I’m going to go ahead and make a full extra payment and deprive them of a little more interest over the life of my loan, in addition to the overhead costs they’ve incurred through this episode. The website told me it would take two business days to process, so it will be applied on February 11–still during the grace period. But now I still am not sure that the $1100 will be applied to principal reduction, so I called in again and spoke with Kim. I explained what has happened, and pointed out to her that Chase is losing money from its inflexibility, and she offered to move $100 from my January extra payment to February so that I could cancel the additional payment. I thanked her for the option (which I would have needed to take if I didn’t have the money to spare), but declined, since that would result in an increase in interest. I asked if she could verify that the $1100 would be applied correctly, and she suggested that I call in again after I see online that the new payment is applied–which will incur yet further costs to Chase. This is a nice demonstration of how an inflexible payment system doesn’t deal well with partial payments can cost a company money and customer goodwill. ...

As we prepared to take our dogs for a walk this evening, we found this guy in our yard. He has a collar, but no tags. We’ve put his photo up on Pets911.com, and he’ll spend the night here and get a pound pickup tomorrow. UPDATE (February 7, 2009): This black lab (mix?) isn’t happy-go-lucky like our first stray of the year–he was quite fearful, but did relax a bit when we got him on leash. He was interested in our dog Fred, which we used to catch him. Once on leash and after receiving some attention, he warmed up, and he would then come back after being let off leash. He was terrified to come in the house, and didn’t seem to want to walk on the wood floor of the kitchen, but we did eventually get him into the spare bedroom, where I stayed with him overnight. He ended up sleeping peacefully at the foot of the bed. This morning, I had the same challenge getting him out of the bedroom that I had getting in–so I ended up letting him straight out to the side patio, and he’s now back out in the front yard. UPDATE: The same animal control officer who picked up our first stray just picked up this dog, and gave us some good news–the first stray we turned in was successfully adopted, and is now named Truman! UPDATE: We got our first call today about our Pets911.com listing for the above dog, which includes a photo and a description. The call went like this: ME: Hello? CALLER: Uh. Did you find a lost dog? ME: Yes, we did. CALLER: What did it look like? ME: It’s a black lab mix, young … CALLER: Oh, that can’t be our dog. Our dog is white.Every phone call save one that we’ve received as a result of our found dog notices online has been from someone whose dog could not possibly have been confused with the dog in the description. (The one exception was one where the dog was returned to his rightful owner.) By contrast, when we’ve put up posters there’s been no similar mistake. I suspect the Internet information is being passed on to the callers by friends or family, but apparently people who look at lost dog information on the Internet do not know how to communicate basic information about color or breed. Or perhaps this caller has a computer infected by a virus that replaces all images with photographic negatives? ...

Just as Conservapedia is often edited with parodies that even the real conservatives there can’t distinguish from conservatism (let alone everyone else), the global warming-denying Heartland Institute has mistaken a parody video for a real one, and briefly posted it on their site until they realized they’d been had. It was probably the traffic from Tim Lambert’s Deltoid blog that tipped them off. This is a problem faced by ideological groups that search for evidence to support their established positions rather than trying to honestly evaluate the evidence. This isn’t the first time the Heartland Institute has demonstrated that this is how they operate, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

Orac at Respectful Insolence shows the deception from Bishop Richard Williamson, the formerly excommunicated Holocaust-denying Catholic bishop who was recently reinstated by Pope Benedict XVI. Williamson created a recent media firestorm because of his Holocaust denial, and has now apologized–not for his Holocaust denial, but for the fact that there was a media reaction to it. It’s a not-pology. Orac debunks some of Williamson’s falsehoods about the Holocaust, and points to some of the best sites for responding to Holocaust denial: Nizkor, The Holocaust History Project, and Holocaust Denial on Trial. ...