Capital One sued over marketing practices
Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 7:10 pm
The Minnesota state attorney general’s office has sued one of the nation's largest credit card issuers, claiming it is misleading consumers with promises of “fixed“ interest rates, then hiking their rates as much as 400 percent.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6781155/
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I think it mega lame that penalties such as 1 day late, (no matter what the fault) can raise a punative interest rate. I pay about 1/2 my bills via a web check free program and last month I got a phone call telling me that I had violated "the agreement" and "would need to have my interest rate adjusted". I quickly logged into my account and saw that the money was sent on schedule. I then logged into my bank account and found the money removed. This did not seem to matter much to the lady on the phone who simply repeated her message. Apparently her company had missplaced my payment. To add insult to injury, she asked if I wanted to make payments directly from my checking account. I told her that I had no faith in her companies banking computer system already, so why would I want to be put in a situation where I had no third party to verify payment was made? She would not budge so I hung up, called Checkfree who immediately took charge, contacted the payee and sorted it all out.
A few days later, I got a letter from the people who lost my payment to inform me that "due to my excellent credit record" I had my limit raised and now had the opportunity to "pay directly by checking account".
Their kind offer was feed to Mr. Shredder!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6781155/
------------------------------------------------
I think it mega lame that penalties such as 1 day late, (no matter what the fault) can raise a punative interest rate. I pay about 1/2 my bills via a web check free program and last month I got a phone call telling me that I had violated "the agreement" and "would need to have my interest rate adjusted". I quickly logged into my account and saw that the money was sent on schedule. I then logged into my bank account and found the money removed. This did not seem to matter much to the lady on the phone who simply repeated her message. Apparently her company had missplaced my payment. To add insult to injury, she asked if I wanted to make payments directly from my checking account. I told her that I had no faith in her companies banking computer system already, so why would I want to be put in a situation where I had no third party to verify payment was made? She would not budge so I hung up, called Checkfree who immediately took charge, contacted the payee and sorted it all out.
A few days later, I got a letter from the people who lost my payment to inform me that "due to my excellent credit record" I had my limit raised and now had the opportunity to "pay directly by checking account".
Their kind offer was feed to Mr. Shredder!