Posts about Capital One
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—>When Wally first got his Capital One credit card, the interest rate was 12 percent. Then they raised it to 22.9 percent. Now they're going to raise it again—the day after Christmas—to 25.9 percent. More »
—>Capital One denied Ryan a credit card limit increase, explaining the turn-down was due partially to the area in which he lives. More »
—>Back in April, Nait put a $500 refundable deposit down on a used car, then decided he didn't want to buy it anymore when he found it needed $10,000 in repairs. Five months later, neither the dealership nor Capital One, will refund his money. He gives a blow-by blow here. More »
—>A Capital One robot has been calling reader Catherine but she's been ignoring their calls. Then, today, she checked her account and found out that she was "0 payments past due." More »
—>What's an account-related message from your company, and what's marketing? Kevin, the subject of this week's Red Tape Chronicles column, wants to know, because he'd like Capital One to stop sending him advertisements for their products. Capital One claims that he can't opt out, since the marketing pitches are "account management communications." Right. More »
—>We're starting to think Capital One isn't just hurting financially, but also throwing a temper tantrum about the new credit card legislation. Eric received notice that they're converting his current fixed rate to a "promotional rate." In January 2011 they'll switch it over to an adjustable rate and hike it to 17.9% (it's currently 9.9%). Erik has until July 28th to agree to the new terms or they'll close the account on August 2nd, 2009. More »
—>What's in Lori's wallet? Not $5,000. She received a letter from Capital One, telling her that since it was her anniversary date with the card company, she had earned a $5,000 bonus, to be credited to her account. Really? It must be true. Capital One wouldn't send a letter like that out by mistake, now would they? More »
—>This is the format for email addresses at Capital One: firstname.lastname@capitalone.com. Cheers. More »
—>A clueless cable giant? Or a fee-happy credit card company? Who shall taste your wrath? More »
—> Which is worse? A fee party disguised as a credit card? Or an airline that tried charging for water? We report, you decide. More »
—>Every year Erick gets a Christmas present from Capital One. They reopen the credit card he closed 4 or 5 years ago. At that point, Microsoft gets into the act and starts billing that account for XBOX Live service he canceled at about the same time. More »
—>We've been getting a lot of shocked letters from Capital One customers asking how the company can get away with raising their interest rates on their cards when they "haven't even been late with a payment." There is, in fact, no such thing as a fixed rate card and credit card companies don't need a "reason" to raise your rates. They can do it whenever they like. More »
—>R wanted to get started paying off her Capital One credit card but after missing one month's payment she started a fee pigpile. She got overlimit fees, and then so many extra fees started piling on that she wasn't ever able to pay them off enough to bring her balance back under her credit limit. R wanted to get started on debt reduction snowball method but could never get that first ball started because the fees were too high. Tugs at the regular customer service line to try to get some fees waived were fruitless. To untangle this Gordian Knot R had to pull out her mighty sword of executive customer service. Her story, inside... More »
—>Capital One CEO's email address is rich.fairbank@capitalone.com. More »
—>Beverly, who always pays on time and recently started paying off her balance in full every month, just saw the rate on her Capital One card more than double, from 13.9% to 29.4%. That'll teach you to not help sink the economy, Beverly! More »
—>Capital One apparently believes in "honest and open communications" (even though they've been accused of purposefully dicking their customers around in the hopes of generating more fees). How do we know this? Because they've written their "valuable customers like you" letters letting you know that due to "extraordinary changes in the economic environment," everyone needs to pay a little more interest. Don't worry, you haven't done anything wrong. That's just the Capital One honesty you're feeling. Read the letter inside. More »
—>Reader Ed reports that the Capital One Card Lab custom credit-card maker keeps rejecting his request to put a picture of himself wearing a Snuggie on his credit card. After the jump, the rules for which photos are not allowed. I've bolded the ones that might apply. Ed thinks he might have gotten tripped up on the "Controversial subject matter such as political or religous statements and/or images" clause, i.e. Capital One thinks Snuggie is a cult. More »
—>Over 100,000 people have been laid off by banks, but 9 in 10 executives at banks that accepted bailout money are still working says the Associated Press. More »
—> David L. Mackie, a 35-year-old salesman from Oklahoma is perhaps the coolest person ever. He personalized his Capital One credit card with Nick Nolte's mugshot, and now, embarrassed, Capital One has offered to pay him $50 to send it back. More »
—>Mr Bill says his latest dealings with Capital One have him "wanting to spit venom." Whence this reptilian impulse? There is apparently no structure to refinance your loan with them. They consider it makes you a new customer, and they aren't making any new loans. This takes several hours and several phone calls to figure out. There also seems to be no way to pay off a loan with a credit or debit card. This also takes several hours and phone calls to figure out. It's really just totally frustrating for Mr. Bill. "What is this, 1987?" he writes. So he's taking his business elsewhere. His misanthropic misadventure, inside... More »
—>Capital One wrote to explain why they were changing lowering the minimum balance calculations, as we posted about yesterday. Pam Girardo in Capital One External Communications wrote: More »
—>UPDATE: Capital One Explains Minimum Balance Calculation Changes More »
—>We hope you're enjoying our current economic roller coaster because it's likely to continue — According to a new report from research firm Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, titled "Credit Cards at the Tipping Point," the fun has only just begun. As the credit crunch begins to affect consumers, they're going to have more difficulty paying their credit card bills. The report suggests that credit card companies' misleading practices and cavalier extension of credit may come back to bite them. Who should be worried? Capital One. More »
—>"Lisa" writes, "I recently found out that I was a victim of identity theft." What shocked her, and us as well, is that after Capital One notified her that they'd approved the card with another address, they followed up by sending their fraud claim to the criminal's address instead of Lisa's. More »
—>Identity theft reports to the Federal Trade Commission show that Verizon was the most frequently named company, averaging over 900 events per month in 2007. According to an updated study by Chris Hoofnagle, senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, the number of complaints involving Verizon nearly tripled from 2006. Rounding out the top five are AFNI (a collection agency), JP Morgan Chase, AT&T, and Capital One. More »
—>Joseph is having problems paying his Capital One card, mainly because Capital One keeps making it hard for him to pay it, and then reports his payments past due after they've cleared the bank. Now he wants to know what he can do to remedy the situation. More »
—>Here's your second "Elite 8" match-up: #12 Diebold VS #36 Capital One More »
When I asked for more details, the representative (who sounded like he was from India), took vengeance on my account and told me he was closing the account and that there was nothing I could do. When I asked for his manager, he said “There is nothing he can do, the account is closed.” —CLICK— And that was the sound of him hanging up the telephone. More »
This is Round 40 in our Worst Company in America contest, Capital One vs AT&T!Here's what readers said in previous rounds about why they hate these two companies... More »
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—>How hard should you have to work to pay your bills? No, not to make enough money to pay your bills, but to actually give your money to someone else? Reader Matt has been trying to convince Capital One to take his money for several months now. They're not taking his money, or his calls, but they are willing to send him to collections! Check out his story, inside. More »
—>This is Round 15 in our Worst Company in America contest, Capital One vs Video Professor.
Capital One's amusing credit card commercials aren't so funny after dealing with their appalling customer service staffed by thugs and gutter snipes. More »
—>Andrew's wife got mugged, the thief rand up purchases on her credit card, and now CapitalOne has sued them for $1200 and won. How can this be? Andrew writes:
In May of 2005 my wife was mugged at one of the elevated train stations in Chicago. After calling the police and filing a police report, she started calling each credit card company to cancel each account. Except she forgot about one card, her CapitalOne card. A card hardly ever used and only had a $500.00 limit...More »
—>Capital One accidentally sent a customer with a closed Capital One credit card a check for $500. She cashed the check and now CapO wants its money back... so badly that they reopened the closed credit card just so it could bill her. They also added a $1.42 finance charge. When asked by The Oregonian, a consumer advocate and official with the Office Of The Comptroller of Currency both said they had never heard of a company reopening a closed credit card for this reason before. What a brilliant new scam, here's a check for $500 dummty dum dum two months pass oh wait guess what that was actually a loan, pay up, bitch. In all seriousness, don't cash unexpected checks, you're just asking for trouble. More »
—>Capital One Account Supervisors: 1-800-707-0489. They have full access and powers to fix any account problems. They're probably even so smart that they can tell what's in your wallet without even asking. More »
—>800-889-9939 is the number for Capitol One's U.S.-based Senior Customer Service reps. They take escalated calls for credit limit increases, fee waivers, account term changes, or interest rate decreases. More »
—> When Capital One "closes" your credit card account, they'll continue to allow automatic withdrawals even though the account is closed. But they won't send you a statement—you know, because it's closed!—so that you'll end up with late fees. Quenten experienced this first hand when he closed his account recently, and now Capital One has sent his account to collections over a $38.00 late fee for two 38-cent charges that he never knew about. More »
—> Mike and his wife are backpacking their way around the world, and like a smart consumer, before they left he looked around for a credit card without a currency conversion charge. Capital One is fee free, which in theory makes it ideal for travel. In reality, there are hidden costs, and they're called human stupidity and random interpretation of the rules. As a consequence, he's "pre-paid" $6,000 onto a Capital One card that has been red-flagged and frozen, and Capital One refuses to budge—even though they acknowledge there are notes on the account that indicated he would do this before he did it, and even though they're the ones who told him to pre-pay. More »
—> If one of the goals of credit card marketing is to give customers the illusion of choice and control, then Capital One has just outdone itself with its new Card Lab, where you can construct the card offer you desire from a menu of options. Your available options are determined by which general credit score category you pick: Excellent, Above Average, Needs Improvement, or Limited History. When you select certain options, others go away. At the end, you've self-selected the "perfect" offer, and possibly saved yourself from the hundreds of thousands of junk mailings* Capital One would otherwise send to you on a daily basis. More »
—>I had an interesting experience with Capital One this morning. After paying our bill in full promptly for 10 years we were notified today that we owe the company a couple of hundred dollars due tomorrow November 09, 2007. More »
—>In what BusinessWeek calls "financial Night of the Living Dead" credit card companies are refusing to stop reporting legally discharged debt to credit reporting agencies—illegally forcing consumers to pay debts that they no longer owe in order to get approved for mortgages. More »
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I have had a Capital One Mastercard for about 10 years. My interest rate has been 4.99% for as long as I can remember. I received my statement for October to find that my interest rate had jumped from 4.99% to 13.5%. More »
—>"ConsumerMan" Herb Weisbaum over at MSNBC says that banks have messing around with their late fee structure lately—adding a third tier of pricing, raising fees, etc. Those of you with higher balances might be paying more if you're late. We think that's not cool, so we're posting a round-up of current fees. More »
—>Blueprint for Financial Prosperity reminds us that savvy consumers can take advantage of credit card companies hellbent on turning a profit. Most credit card companies will go to great lengths to keep their customers happily spending away. Use these tips to make them cater to your every financial desire: More »
"Current conditions in the secondary mortgage markets create significant near-term profitability challenges," Capital One said in a statement. "Further, recent and continuing developments in the mortgage markets reduce the long-term outlook for profitability in the business, as the company expects markets for prime, non-conforming mortgage products are likely to remain challenged."Later, gator. More »
—>Call 703-720-2500. Ask to be connected to the executive customer service team. Be prepared to describe the nature of your call. More »
—>Capital One will start reporting cardholder credit limits to the three credit bureaus, a common practice from which most cardholders had no idea their creditor abstained. Credit limits help TransUnion, Experian and Equifax determine credit utilization, which accounts for 30% of a credit score. Capital One's decision, which will take effect by the end of the year, will likely boost its cardholders' credit scores. From the Washington Post: More »
—>We're getting complaints that Capital One has raised interest rates across the board for its customers. One reader says his wife's rate went from 9.9% fixed to a variable rate, making it about 15%. More »
—>Capital One, the credit card company notorious for slamming its customers with huge fees (and encouraging them to open multiple cards with low limits so that they can incur more huge fees) is cutting 2,000 jobs. "As a broadly diversified bank, we now compete across multiple businesses and channels with some of the biggest players in financial services in massively consolidating industries," Chief Executive Richard Fairbank said in a memo to employees. "They're increasing their scale and driving down costs every year. To win in each of our businesses, we must create a sustainable cost discipline." More »
—>Capital One is so evil that not even media inquiries phase it. Around here we tend to roll our eyes just a little bit at consumer reporters who praise companies for doing the right thing post-media inquiry. After all, what company wouldn't fix a situation rather than suffer a public shaming by a newspaper? Finally, the answer has been found. That company is Capital One. More »
—>Samantha, pictured holding a log more customer friendly than Capital One, had $300 stolen from her Capital One account, even though her debit card was still in her pocket. When she filed a claim with CapOne, not only did it take numerous contradictory phone calls with employees not knowing their ass from their elbow, her claim was denied. Why? Because she said on her claim form that her mother might know her PIN. Oops. More »
—>What credit cards charges the least for overseas purchases? More »
Ring ring, Mr. Banker, pick up the phone, we hit the stopwatch and hang up. Here are the results. More »
Today's results in our week-long test of how long it takes banks humanoids to pick up the ring ring ring. More »
The results of today's benchmark test to see how long it takes banks' live humans to pick up the phone. More »
We'll be calling up the banks this week to see who's the quickest at having a human pick up the phone. More »
—>You might remember last month's Wal-Mart blogging scandal, in which it came to light that Wal-Mart was feeding information to bloggers. Many bloggers were posting the propaganda wholesale without attributing the (obviously) subjective source. Slimy MSM toads chortled as a chink in blogging's armor appeared: why, mainstream media is objective. They'd never betray the precious sanctity of their journalistic integrity, as holy and binding as stone tablets handed down from YHWH. They would never simply ejaculate PR propaganda into our faces wholesale — they were better than that. More »
A humanitarian aid group en route to Haiti suffered from a scheduling change made by American Airlines and had to pay $450 in hotel bills. American Airlines (AA) refused to offer hotel vouchers in return. More »
