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.
Video Professor hooks people on subscription plans, advertising that you can quit any time, then doesn’t let you quit and keeps fraudulently billing you. Then when people posted complaints on infomercialscams.com, Video Professor tried to sue them out of existence and also sought the identities of the complaining consumers.
This is a post in our Worst Company In America 2008 series. The companies nominated for this honor were chosen by you, the readers. Keep track of all the goings on at consumerist.com/tag/worst-company-in-america/
STILL OPEN FOR VOTING: eBay/Paypal vs COX, Apple vs SallieMae, Diebold Vs Pfizer, MTV vs TransUnion
CompUSA vs DirecTV
Target vs Best Buy
Allstate vs Verizon,
DeBeers vs 1800 flowers, Starbucks vs United Airlines,
Exxon vs Crocs, Google Vs Sony, Ticketmaster vs Wachovia, Facebook vs The American Arbitration Association, Comcast vs Menu Foods
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50/50? Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
I’ve never had a problem with Capital One. So I’m voting for Mr. Try-My-Product.
@GreatCaesarsGhost: And that’s the only reason VP wins, IMO. C1 sends my son, the unemployed college student, at least three offers a week. I usually intercept them (the Postmaster General can bite my hairy white ass) and run them through the shredder unopened, but just in case, I also made sure the kid gets the utter illogic of someone like him being in possession of a credit card. I’d almost rather see him join the Marines than get hooked up with Capitol One.
It’s a dead heat. let them both lose or win or something.
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.
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.
oh man its tied! this is a close one.
@Steaming Pile: Would be ironic if Capitol One is sending your unemployed son cash in those envelopes, or job offers.
Be careful running stuff like that through the shredder unopened. I had one yesterday that had a nickel attached to a card inside.
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.
I had to vote for VP. I just couldn’t let his awful behavior stand. Any company whose model is based on “you can stop at any time” and then doesn’t honor that deserves to go down in flames.
It’s neck and neck!
… 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.
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!
Go go VP!
I would’ve voted for Video Professor, but the founder and guy in the infomercials looks like a nice guy (even if he runs a scammy business). With his bald head and mustache he reminds me of my dad. I can’t vote against my dad!
I tied it up for VP at 3642 votes each!
Vote VP!
Personally, I don’t really get the Capital One hate. I make a lot of foreign transactions, so the card is perfect for me (no exchange fee). Since I’ve opted out of their mailings, they haven’t sent me anything. I pay (usually bi-weekly) online and never carry a balance. When I’ve had to speak to their customer service, I usually don’t wait too long, although I pity the representatives who have to try to force certain other products on callers. Simple “nos” work for me.
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.
@Draneor: To be fair, international purchases are potential red flag for some auto-fraud prevention systems. If you had spent $500 within the US in a weekend instead of 50,000円 over the internet, I don’t imagine that the fraud warning would have been triggered.
@Draneor: The only real problem I’ve got with them at this point is that they tend to give very small credit lines and they usually just automatically say no if you ask for an increase. But from what I’ve read they’ve gotten better about this lately. The not reporting credit lines thing was pretty bad, but again they stopped doing that. So I truly feel that Capital One is making a serious effort to reform and eliminate customer-unfriendly practices. For that alone they don’t deserve to win this matchup.
Video Professor targets the old and clueless then scams them out of their money.
Capital One’s customer service isn’t great, but that’s about it…
VP FTW
Wow, my nails are bitten down to the swift!
(Voted Capital One because, unlike the 3,810 potheads here that watch Video Prof ads thru bloodshot, half-closed eyes at 3am, I haven’t seen the ads.
Damn guys – next time share okay?!)
@rainmkr & @GreatCaesarsGhost: Hence my dilemma because both of you are right.
I voted Capital One because there have been more complaints here about them than Video Professor. Is that a fair tie breaker? Maybe not.
Whoa, how did VP get so far behind? Perhaps some stuffing of the ballot box going on…
After looking at my APR and seeing how much you get shit on by Capitol One I will be dropping them.
Video Prof, just because their ads are so annoying. Luckily, I’ve never experienced any problems with Capital One … ever. (Probably just jinxed myself there.]
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.
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
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.
@postnocomments: TiVO and DVRs, ftw.
Incidentally, both C1 and VP are scum.
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.
Video Professor, amongst MANY OTHER MERCHANTS, use WEST@home to take incoming calls for their products. This means you are talking to someone working from their home. I used to work for this company, AOL would always transfer people to me(at home) to advertise video professor to them, I felt bad for every person I signed up, because even though you have to read this script verbatim, I don’t think the customer’s really know what they’re getting into. There is a way to cancel it, and I have a Capital One card and hate them as well, so this was a hard choice to make. I settled on Video Professor, I think they take advantage of people more easily.
Just like any shit you buy off the TV, you just can’t trust the baldy slaphead professor.
I haven’t dealt with either but I would kinda expect to be reamed by Capital One.
Evil professor wins!