Consumerist reports that readers have been writing in today with complaints about Capital One credit cards. They’ve increased their interest rates (APRs) on purchases across the board, affecting a large pool of customers.
Here’s a strategy to remedy this situation if it affected you.
If you have another credit card with a low interest rate, transfer your balance out of the Capital One card.
Call Capital One’s customer service and let them know that you have transferred your balance out due to the abrupt interest rate adjustment. Tell them you’ll transfer the balance back if they provide you a promotional rate for balance transfers. You could also try to negotiate to get your original rate for balance transfers and purchases if you cannot get the promotional rate.
If they provide a promotional rate for the transfer but leave the purchase rate high, do not purchase anything on the card again, and work to pay off the original balance as quickly as possible.
This strategy is not guaranteed to work, so your mileage may vary.
The best solution is to avoid interest charges in the first place by paying off your entire balance every month, no matter what brand card you use. As sub-prime mortgages hit the fan and more people take advantage of the good points of credit cards, the more ways they will find to screw their customers.
Also, pay attention to the mailings from the credit card companies no matter how unassuming they look. If you always read your notifications, you won’t get blindsided by seeing the interest rate change on your statements, when it’s already too late.
Subscribe
A co-worker of mine got a letter on this from Captial One yesterday.
They raised his rate from a fixed 8.99% to a variable rate of Prime + 7.5% or something, effectively doubling his rate on purchases. He called and spoke with a CSR and supervisor. He said the supervisor sounded a litte flustered and indicated he had been getting a lot of calls on this issue.
In the end he got the rate back down to 7.99% which he was happy with. He has had the card for 4 or 5 years, and did’t really want to get a new card even for 0% on purchases.
He had a sweet offer in the same mail in his wifes name for a 0% transfer for 15 months on a Chase Platinum card with a $99 BT fee cap. I couldn’t figure out any way to use this offer myself as it was a targeted invite. Any ideas?
Cheers
the transfer to another lower cc only works if you do your own calculations. you don’t want to be paying a high bt fee that’s for sure.
seems that capitol one can’t keep charging below prime for a long time, so the rate increases seem like a natural progression. that just goes to show you that you need to read your monthly statements for any kinds of changes, and second that cc companies can change terms any time.
I got the letter from Capital One. There are two important aspects to this APR issue.
First is that basically the APR is doubling. Second is that it is becoming variable. This means as the mortgage business continues to head south your variable rate could hit the roof.
I canceled my card by the way. I can see robbery when it is staring me in the face.
I also got the infamous letter a few days ago, raising my rate to 15.99% I was a little suprised they did this as I always pay on time and have a $3,000 balance on the card. I immediately sent a letter to the customer service dept. and asked them to drop my rate back down to 9.9% or I would cancel the card and never do business with their company again. I’m looking at a 0% into offer card until Oct. ‘08 with 9.9% after that.
Good bye Capital One