March 14, 2009
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A Tail of Two Cap1 CC Holders, Pt.2
A losing fight.Again, this next story was very similar to the first but, had an opposite outcome. It was also a struggle with Capital One. They had jacked the APR of a man's credit card account which also had a spotless record. Having always been successful in similar bouts with other credit card lenders, this man started out fully confident of a positive outcome. As he happened to call at night, he escalated the call to a night supervisor at the beginning. The first thing he did was get the manager's name for further reference, if necessary. In a short time verbal commitment that the credit card APR had been reduced. The manager was so agreeable that he even provided a ‘special day number' to call in case something went wrong.
When the credit card statement arrived a few weeks later, however, the rate had not been reduced. Immediately, the man called the ‘special day number' and got a day superviser on the phone. Of course he had to go round and round again, starting from scratch. Finally he got a commitment to ‘fix it' and reduce credit card APR again. But, while performing the changes, the phone connection died (he never found out why and hadn't gotten the manager's name).
Immediately, he called back again and asked for same supervisor he had been working with but no one at Capital One knew who it was. Another day supervisor took the call instead but quickly responded with an absolute "NO!". So, the man asked to speak with higher-lever manager and was accommodated. But, this time, the "No!" was even more emphatic. (Remember all those ‘No Hassle' commercials where Capital One would always slam the competition for saying "No!". In this situation, Capital One were truly the "No!" people. Moral of the (true) stories: Some ya win, some ya lose. If you don't try though, you always lose. Good luck with that credit card hike. If they say "No!", think about changing lenders.