Canadians who had credit cards with Chase Bank can breathe a sigh of relief as the company says it will “forgive” all outstanding debt.

Chase Bank, part of the New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co., closed all credit card accounts in the country in March 2018, the company said.

Originally, customers were told to continue paying their debt, Reuters reported, but the company confirmed Friday to USA TODAY that the debt was now cancelled.

“Chase made the decision to exit the Canadian credit card market. As part of that exit, all credit card accounts were closed on or before March 2018. A further business decision has been made to forgive all outstanding balances in order to complete the exit,” Maria Martinez, vice president of communications for Chase Card Services, said in a statement.

Chase declined to say how much debt was forgiven or how many customers were affected. It wasn’t immediately clear when the decision was made, but the CBC spoke with some Canadians who said they received a letter from Chase this week.

The bank had offered two rewards cards – with Amazon and Marriott – in Canada, the CBC reported.

“It’s crazy,” Turner added. “This stuff doesn’t happen with credit cards. Credit cards are horror stories.” The 55-year-old trucker also told the CBC that his most recent payment on the account would also be reimbursed. 

While the company could have sold the debt to a third party, Martinez said, “Ultimately, we felt it was a better decision for all parties, particularly our customer, to forgive the debt.”

Paul Adamson, of Dundalk, Ontario, told the CBC that he called his bank when he saw the account was closed last week because he didn’t want to miss a payment.

“I’m honestly still so … flabbergasted about it,” he said. “It’s surprise fees, extra complications – things like that, definitely, but not loan forgiveness.”

Christine Langlois, of Montreal, told the CBC that she stopped making payments on her card five years ago.

A 24-year-old university student, she said: “It’s kind of like I’m being rewarded for my irresponsibility.”

via: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/08/09/chase-bank-canada-forgives-all-credit-card-debt-customers/1964419001/

Photo Credit: usatoday.com

A young, fit South Korean coronavirus patient said he contracted the deadly illness despite “overusing hand sanitizer” and taking several health precautions — as he warns others not to be “stupidly overconfident.”

Hyun Park, a 48-year-old university professor, wrote in a Facebook post that he wanted to share his experience as a lesson to help “friends and loved ones to ward off the highly contagious virus.”

Park said that he lived a healthy lifestyle so he was “stupidly overconfident” about his chances of getting infected.

“I was a healthy guy going to gym 5 times a week, washing hands all the time, and overusing hand sanitizer, and staying in Coronavirus-free area,” he said. “So, I was naive and stupid to think that it is not my problem.”

But last month, on Feb. 21, he began to experience a “very mild” sore throat as well as a dry cough, which quickly progressed into discomfort in his chest.

Within days, Park said he began to have trouble breathing so he decided to get tested for COVID-19 on Feb. 24.

The next day — four days after he displayed initial mild symptoms — the test came back positive and he was hospitalized due to the severity of his condition.

“Since then, my condition were [sic] up and down several times a day,” Park wrote.

But following eight days of hospitalization, he finally tested negative for COVID-19, placing him on the path to recovery, he said.

After the reality check, Park is now cautioning others to take the virus that has infected more than 196,000 people worldwide seriously.

“We need to stay healthy and positive to keep our condition well and immune system high,” he wrote. “Fear and panic do not help us at all. And also, we should not take this [lightly].”

via: https://nypost.com/2020/03/17/coronavirus-patient-tests-positive-despite-overusing-hand-sanitizer/

Photo Credit: facebook

A Florida ex-con swindled $3,000 from a woman he met on a dating app – and then coaxed her into sending nude snaps of herself in order to be repaid, police said.

Michael William McDougal, 35, posed as a man named Michael Reynolds on Plenty of Fish while getting acquainted with his victim, who lives in Orlando, police said.

The pair moved the conversation to Facebook, where McDougal said he needed to borrow $1,000 after losing his bank card, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

The woman lent McDougal $3,000 over the course of several days.

He promised to pay her back, but notifications she received from PayPal were bogus, according to a police affidavit obtained by the newspaper.

Investigators said McDougal, of Winter Garden, later messaged the woman using his real name in an attempt to “clear up” any of the victim’s “confusion” about his alter ego, which she assumed was a real person, according to police.

McDougal even bragged he could cover the victim’s losses out of sheer “generosity,” and then offered to pay her $5,000 if she sent nude photos to his cousin, police said.

The victim agreed, and then he asked for even more dough, threatening to report to police that she sent nudes to an underage teen – McDougal’s 16-year-old cousin, police said.

The woman ultimately went to cops in early February.

McDougal, who was convicted of fraud in 2015, initially insisted she was lying, but failed to show up to a meeting to show a detective proof of his claims, police said.

He also downplayed a “Mike McDougal Victims United” Facebook page created by people who say he schemed them out of money, police said.

“Again, McDougal stated it’s all a big misunderstanding,” Orlando police Det. Annemarie Esan wrote.

The Facebook group, created in 2013, had 75 members as of Tuesday.

McDougal, who was arrested Thursday on charges of extortion and scheme to defraud, has been released from custody after posting $4,500 bond. If convicted, he face up to 20 years in prison.

(CNN) — On any other Sunday, Coaches Bar and Grill in Columbus, Ohio, would be rumbling with customers. But this Sunday, the staff of the popular sports bar gathered around the TV, standing aghast as Gov. Mike DeWine ordered all restaurants and bars in the state to close to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

As thoughts of “How will I make next month’s rent?” or “How will I provide for my family?” ruminated in the minds of the waitstaff, they served a customer who would be one of their last for the foreseeable future.

After ordering a beer and some food, the customer’s check came out to be just under $30. But after he left, the spirits of owner Patrick “Benny” Leonard and his staff were uplifted immediately after seeing the tip he had left.

The amount? A whopping $2,500.

“Please split this tab equally between Tara, Nicky, Jim, Liz and Arrun,” the check read.

“There were tears of joy among everyone here,” Leonard told CNN. “On a day when I’ve never seen a shutdown like that, I’ve never seen a tip like that either.”

Leonard said the customer wanted to remain anonymous, but noted that he was a regular who visited the bar every Wednesday to play trivia.

As the coronavirus shows no signs of slowing in the US, the pandemic has induced a panic that is bringing out the worst in people.

“You go to the store and we have people fighting over toilet paper,” Leonard said. But in this case, the customer showed that it’s not the “every man for himself” mentality that will get us through this time, but offering a hand to those who are struggling.

“To have a person sitting here and do that, it’s amazing,” Leonard said. “This is where we should all be. The more we have of this, the better the country will roll through these unprecedented times.”

The bar will try its best to stay afloat by preparing food for takeout, Leonard said. But still, he said, everyone at the bar understands this will be a difficult time. So instead of dividing the check among the five of them, the staff named on the tab decided to split the $2,500 with all 12 employees.

Ohio joins a growing list of states that have ordered all restaurants and bars to close. For those who have the privilege of working from home, the coronavirus might not affect your livelihood greatly, but for small businesses like Coaches, social distancing will be devastating.

Here’s how you can support your favorite small businesses survive the coronavirus crisis.

via: https://www.kmov.com/a-customer-left-a-tip-to-support-an-ohio-bar/article_01835c6c-e174-5f47-836e-2b77dc2c46d8.html

Photo Credit: Benny Leonard

ROME — In the part of Italy hit hardest by the coronavirus, the crematorium has started operating 24 hours a day. Coffins have filled up two hospital morgues, and then a cemetery morgue, and are now being lined up inside a cemetery church. The local newspaper’s daily obituary section has grown from two or three pages to 10, sometimes listing more than 150 names, in what the top editor likens to “war bulletins.”

By death toll alone, the coronavirus has landed in the northern province of Bergamo with the force of a historic disaster.

But its alarming power goes even further, all but ensuring that death and mourning happen in isolation — a trauma in which everybody must keep to themselves.

All across Bergamo, people are being picked up in ambulances, rushed to the hospital and dying in sealed-off wards where even their closest relatives are not allowed. Many funerals are taking place with only a priest and funeral-home employee present, while family members face restrictions on gathering, remain in quarantine or are too sick themselves.

So many have died that there is a waiting list for burial and cremation.

“I think it’s worse than a war,” said Marta Testa, 43, who is in self-quarantine and whose father died Wednesday of the virus at age 85. “Dad is waiting to be buried. And we are here waiting to tell him goodbye.”

Other countries are only beginning to grapple with the pandemic’s implications and the distance it forces between even the closest people. But in Italy, death by lonely death, its full cost is becoming apparent.

More than 2,000 people in Italy have died of covid-19, the disease caused by virus — half of them over the most recent five-day stretch — and many of those cases have looked like that of Testa’s father, Renzo, a former newspaper advertising executive who felt short of breath a week ago Saturday, was taken to the hospital and did not see or talk to his family again.AD

“Grief is a phase that requires closeness, but our grief has had to come via the telephone,” said Testa, whose parents had been married for 50 years and whose mother also appears to have the virus but is recovering.

Testa’s siblings bring food to their mother. Out of precaution, they leave it on her front door.

“Right now,” Testa said, “our family is living in a suspended state.”

Even as the virus has spread around the world, it is in Italy where people are contracting the virus — and dying of it — more rapidly than anywhere else. On Sunday, the country reported 368 new deaths, a toll exceeding even the highest daily figures from China. By Monday, 349 died, bringing the total in less than one month to 2,158.

And within Italy, Bergamo, a wealthy province of 1.1 million to the east of Milan, has become the most worrying hot spot. Hospitals are at the breaking point there. Military doctors have been called in to assist. Residents describe Bergamo as a ghostly place where only ambulances and hearses are on the road at night. In the small town of Nembro, according to the Corriere della Sera newspaper, 70 people have died in the past 12 days. Some 120 died all of last year.ADItalian local newspaper obituary sees spike amid coronavirus outbreakGiovanni Locatelli compared the obituary sections of L’Eco di Bergamo, which increased from three pages on Feb. 9 to 10 pages on March 13. (Giovanni Locatelli via Storyful)

“It’s as if a chemical bomb has exploded,” said Daniela Taiocchi, 49, who helps handle obituaries for the local newspaper, L’Eco di Bergamo.

Bergamo also stands as a warning sign about how coronavirus cases can explode if restrictions are not quickly put in place. Italy dealt with an initial hot spot, in the province of Lodi, by placing 10 small towns under lockdown more than three weeks ago. But the government waited far longer to put similar measures in place elsewhere. Bergamo now has three times the number of coronavirus cases as Lodi.

“Morgues and health institutions are collapsing,” said Claudia Scotti, a funeral-home co-owner. “We were absolutely unprepared for an emergency of this kind.”

The people who are dying, memorialized in page after page of the L’Eco di Bergamo, are ex-politicians, electricians, emergency phone operators, priests. Most are in their 70s or 80s. Their short obituaries don’t mention the cause of death but don’t need to — 90 percent, the newspaper’s editor estimated, died because of the coronavirus. Instead, the obituaries have other clues about how much grieving has changed during the emergency. They mention “direct transport to the crematorium.” A public ceremony at a “date to be determined.” A funeral held in a “strictly private form.”AD

Across the country, funerals inside churches have been put on hold, part of the government’s absolute restriction on gatherings. For families cleared to leave their homes, some in Bergamo have been allowed to meet for small burials at the cemetery, capped at 10 people. But aside from those moments, the city has closed the cemeteries entirely, fearing that residents would take public transportation, visit the graves of those who have died and spread the virus themselves.

The mayor’s office has encouraged the cremation of people who die of covid-19. And on Wednesday, the local crematorium began operating around the clock.

“It never closes, and still we don’t manage,” said Francesco Alleva, a spokesman for the mayor.

The top editor of the newspaper, Alberto Ceresoli, said that Italy is in the middle of a “collective tragedy” and that the virus is “decimating” the place where he lives. For a while, he wondered whether the obituaries should be bunched toward the back of the paper, to reduce the emotional toll on people reading. But he decided people needed to see what was happening: The names of the dead have been appearing in the middle of the paper, spaced out every other page.AD

“These are our great elderly who are dying,” he said. “That they should go like this, it’s deeply unjust.”

It was in Friday’s edition where Renzo Testa’s name appeared, along with a head shot and a quote from Pope Francis. Below, there were basic details about his family and several more columns with remembrances from his family, noting his dedication to the newspaper, his work with civic groups.

He had been healthy before he caught the virus, his daughter said.

“No underlying conditions,” Marta Testa said.

“We were always thinking: ‘Dad is strong. He will make it,’ ” she said. “Of course, hope is the last to go.”

The hospital called her nearly at midnight on Wednesday to say her father had not survived.

His coffin now sits in a church, waiting its turn in line to be buried. If it happens soon, he will be buried without the presence of his wife and children. Marta said the family still had plans to organize a ceremony in his honor.

“In better times,” she said.

via: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/coronavirus-obituaries-bergamo-italy/2020/03/16/6c342f02-66c7-11ea-b199-3a9799c54512_story.html

Photo Credit: L’Eco di Bergamo