I haven't dealt with either but I would kinda expect to be reamed by Capital One.

Evil professor wins!

I know a lot of people are going to vote for Capital One, and probably for some pretty good reasons, but Video Professor is an out-and-out scam. I'm going VP.

Incidentally, both C1 and VP are scum. :)

This is a close fight, like elections!

I voted for C1 because the amount of paper they mail out, and the resulting ecological impact of all the dead trees and all the spent fuel of the mail trucks is atrocious.

Outside of seeing his crappy commercials I have never known anyone that has bought any of the Video Professor's products so I don't really know how good or bad his stuff is.

I've had a Capital One card for years and years. It's always been more of a back up card and any time I've had to deal with them their customer service has pretty crappy.

Until last November when two of my credit card numbers were stolen and used. One was the Cap 1 card and the other was my Providian/Washington Mutual. It was actually Capital One that notice odd activity and called me. The removed the charges immediately and without hassle.

Providian/Washington Mutual took a little longer and a few phone calls. Nothing horrible but to my surprise not as painlessly as Cap1.

I still may vote for the Video Professor though. He looks like my step-father and that gives you an automatic -50 on my scoreboard :)

I've been with them for a long time now. My credit rating was screwed and I got an unsecured CC w/a 500 limit. Many years later I've got a guaranteed no annual fee, ever, really low apr, high limit platinum card with them. It's also a rewards card, so I get a nice sum of cash back each year, as it's my primary credit card.

Have never had any customer service issues with them, and on the 3 occassions I've filed fraud/chargebacks it's been resolved really fast.

Just my .02.

I voted Capital One because there have been more complaints here about them than Video Professor. Is that a fair tie breaker? Maybe not.

Capital One's customer service isn't great, but that's about it...

VP FTW

The only problem I've ever had is that their auto-fraud prevention measures tend to kick in every other month, since, I guess, normal people don't buy 50,000円 worth of goods one weekend from a couple of different merchants. It can be a hassle to call them and verify every charge, but I can live with it. It's better than not watching for unusual activity, I guess.

Anyway, while it is the only credit card I have had and I do not carry a balance, I enjoy abusing the no exchange fee. ^^ I guess people's experiences vary.

Vote VP!

Ok here's why it's a tie. First people vote for Capital one by instict because "Hey, it has something to do directly with money!". And then they scroll down to read the facts about how evil Video Professor is and then they realize "shoot I should have voted for that!". And voila! a tie!

... Holy crap, for the first time in my life I think my vote counted for something!

It was a close call for me as well, but I ultimately voted for Capital One. This was the tie breaker:

Video Professor is an infomercial, and by default all infomercialls are sketchy. You had no real reason to trust them to give what they expected in the first place. They had no prior reputation and no infrastructure to speak of. Think of buying off an ebay seller with no feedback. If you buy from them and they screw you, you got to take part of the blame yourself because you should have known it was coming.

Capital One involves big money, and by default that makes them suspicious as well, but they've got infrastructure. They can't hide behind obscurity. Their existence doesn't throw up as many red flags as VP. And they service a HELL of a lot more people. And yet, they still make your life hell. Why? Because they can.

It's neck and neck!

Holy crap it's still a dead heat!

VP has terribly annoying, sleazy low budget commercials.

I voted for C1 because of their terribly annoying high budget commercials. If you are bathing in cash, the least you can do is come up with something better for TV. Thank goodness I can usually skip your commercials thanks to my DVR.

Be careful running stuff like that through the shredder unopened. I had one yesterday that had a nickel attached to a card inside.

When I cast my vote, the results indicated that C1 had one more vote than VP, out of about 5k total votes cast. It chokes me up a bit knowing that at that moment, my vote did count. ;)

But had I actually educated myself I would have picked VP.

Wow 3186 for CO and 3187 for VP. Great competition in this round. I still say that Capitol One is the more evil of the two.

I voted for VP. The problems with Capital One are mostly (though not all) down to employee incompetence. VP is 100% scammy and evil.

But you have to look at that mug on the tele.

A year back, I applied for a secured card, where I had to put a deposit on it. Granted, I didd't have a credit history, and only had 1 other card open at that time (with my bank, and the limit was $500.00) I could see why they would charge me.

Fast forward 11 months later.. I now have 6 (yep thats right) 6 credit cards. That old card I had before Capital One, well now it's a gold card (Gold Cards in Canada, excluding Crapital one have to be a credit limit of $5k or higher), I have another US dollar card with a 5k limit, and 2 other gold cards from major banks.

What does Crapital do? Well they see I am not using my card, so they raise the limit to $1500.00 and dont want to budge on ever getting my security deposit back or getting rid of the damn annual fees! All my cards have 0.00 annual fee with the major banks, if Crapital wants to play, why dont they play fair!

Now I am getting purchasing checks every 2 weeks like clockwork... I am waiting until next month, thats when my 1 year anniversary with them is up and either they are changing my card to no annual fee and refunding my deposit, or I am cancelling

Capital One is actually working to provide a service, even if we may not always be satisfied with every aspect of the business. But Video Professor exists just to take your money. It's like the difference between [insert big bad company you don't like], and a lemonade stand where the kid spits in every cup and picks your pocket as you leave -- small scale, but no redeeming qualities at all. As far as percent rottenness, I think VP wins.

Now I get a collection agency calling me about the same thing day after day; they don't listen either.

Capital One sucks. I frequently carry a small balance on my card, always pay on time and never go over my limit, they're bombarding me with home loan offers now that I'm looking to buy a house, and I have a 780 credit score... YET, for some reason, will NOT raise my card's credit limit over $700. WTF?

I can't even buy a new fridge for the house I'm planning to purchase with that limit. I have the cash to pay, but want the added benefits/protections of buying it with a credit card, and don't want to have to open a new card to do it. Looks like I may have no choice...

On the other hand, I've thought for years that Video Professor was a scam.

I think I'm just happy there's such a tight first round matchup.

I have a personal history with capital one & really HATE them with a passion. Back in the day when I was not as consumer savvy.... I had a card through them. Even though I ALWAYS paid my bill on time every month, for some reason (at least 3-4 times a year) I would incure their $25 late fees. I believe this is because they have a special "processing facility" (in atlanta I think) that's sole purpose is to delay mailed payments before sending them off to the final payment processing place. This was just a theory I had long ago to explain why the bills I sent off way ahead of time didnt make it on time somehow.

There was also an issue when i went to cancell the card because of their late fee shenanigans. They kept keeping minute interest amounts on my card so they could keep me as a customer (tlking about like less than 3 dollars). I had to LITERALLY OVERPAY to get it to where they would finally cancell my account. The miserable bastards!

So, even though the video professor may be a tad bit more evil than the usual evilness of credit card companies..... i am going to vote for capital one.... I hold a special contemptuous place in my heart for them.

Who do they think they are!?

Capital One is what it is -- a credit card company with a lot of downmarket customers. But VP's conduct is wreckless.

VP FTW!

So I voted for Video Professor - that bit about them trying to get the identities of customers who complained about them was what pushed me over to their side.

As bad a C1 is, they are a real company offering a legit service. VP is literally a con.

I think the people who would fall for video professor are the sort who would be buying computers at thrift stores. (and not because it's cool) Therefore Windows 98 makes sense.

OTOH, for what Video Professor will steal (yes, steal) from them, they could be buying new computers.

I'm sure capitalone screwed over many more people. But, Video Professor all the way. Those commercials are annoying.

Yikes this one IS close. Go VP!

@sburnap42: And you object to this so much why? You can opt out of all prescreened offers of credit. Not defending snail mail spam, but that's an easily solved problem if it bothers you.

I have to vote for Capital One. They issued my daughter, who has terrible credit and no job a credit card a few months back. I'm sure they must have known, with her credit score and rating that she would never make the payments. So of course now she has late fees on top of late fees on top of an unpaid balance. Not saying it is their fault she is not paying her bill of course, but what the hell kind of business sense does it make to give someone a credit card when they have such bad credit?

America, no wonder we are on the road to ruin.

Is it just me, or does it seem like this is more battle of which commercials and other misc advertisements suck more?

Cinderella???

I've never been happier.

And while name recognition is priceless, you also have to think about how the audience perceives your brand. Geico's advertising has done wonders for them, and bully for that, but they've also pidgenholed themselves as the low rent insurer.

whoa this is a tough one, i voted VP though

And yet, we all remember exactly which ads are Capital One ads. They're the annoying war-related ones that end with a "What's in your wallet?" We also all know Geico ads because of how much they suck. Therefore, it can't be nearly as bad as making a generic and forgettable ad based on rigorous "inside the box" (God.. I detest that type of saying as much as you probably detest Capital One and Geico ads) advertising strategies.

I boychotted Capitalone for ages because of their annoying pop-up ads of long-ago. However, they really seem to have changed their attitude lately. I've noticed their annoying ad rate is way down and their really offer some unique services. Being in American in Australia they have saved me a lot of money in foreign conversion fees (since they are the only company that has NO foreign conversion fees).

Speaking of foreign conversion fees.. I recently needed to use my St. George Credit Union ATM card in America. I used a BoFA ATM.. 3.50 fee from BoFA.. from my bank so far $5 Overseas Withdrawal and $7 foreign conversion fee. Absolutely insane. Oddly enough, using my American card in Australia only incurs a $1 fee...

1) The ads focus so much on the problems, i.e. the blackout dates, high rates, that it's too easy to associate Capital One with the problem, not the solution. A good test with commercials is watching with the sound off - chances are, most people would think the vikings (or whateverthefuck) represents Capital One. I understand the message, but the first thing I think of when I hear "Capital One" is "Lame commercials, getting killed on high rates, blackout dates". It's easy to make jokes about the negatives, but it's a lot harder to express a product's benefits in a memorable, non-preachy way.

2) The tagline, "What's in your wallet?" is a classic "Don't" in copywriting. You shouldn't ask a question if there's a possibility that you won't like the answer, but hacky copywriters have been doing the question-as-tagline thing ever since "Got milk?" was a hit. The line says absolutely nothing about the product - it just makes me say, "Well, some cash, my ATM card, a couple of credit cards THAT AREN'T CAPITAL ONE, receipts, business cards...".

That said, I'm voting for the video professor.

But Video Professor radiates dark waves of unmistakable sleaze.

Go video professor! I dont know if you have what it takes to go all the way, but I've got your back!

video professor all the way, I would choke that dude to death if I had 5 minutes alone.

The Video Professor guy isn't as annoying though as that woman who comes on in the whiny/ nasaly voice and says that her 3 1/2 year old daughter is better at using the computer than she is!

Is that before or after she used the courses?