Capital One All Hassle Credit Card
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.
Hi Consumerist,Be fair now, Matt. Don't assume Sago can take credit for your Capital One's genius. It's time to call Capital One's Account Supervisors, and probably time to think about closing this account. If they're this bad at taking your money, they probably don't deserve the 13.99% APR.So two things happened in January. One: I started leasing a dedicated server from Sago Networks, and two: I asked for paperless credit card statements from Capital One. Little did I realize this would cause me
headaches for the next 4 (going on 5) months.Sometime in February I received an email from Blockbuster Total Access that my card was refused. I thought that was strange, so I tried to login to capitalone.com (as I did every month to pay my bill) to check it out. So one of two things happened here: right after logging in I was either sent to http://www.capitalone.com/?state=timeout or I received a standard 404 message. I thought that was even stranger so I decided to call and see what was up.
Over the next month or two I'd call about twice per week, stay on hold for about an hour, then hang up. As a good Consumerist, I'd call the collect number on the back of my card and try to blast my way through to a human by repeatedly dialing "0". This did little good. Every time I called I was on the phone for a minimum of an hour, at which point I had to hang up because I was calling during my lunch breaks.
Once I finally got a hold of an actual human, I was told I needed the fraud department, which added to my hold time. When talking to the fraud department, I asked several times why my card was marked as fraudulent. They wouldn't answer. I was asked some simple questions, like my mother's maiden name, city of birth, then, "Did you charge $69 with Sago Networks in January?" (Gee, I wonder who was responsible for my card getting stopped.) I said yes, and then they supposedly reactivated my online account and sent me a new credit card.
Next time I logged in to Capital One I could navigate the website without errors, but when I clicked "Pay My Bill," I got an EMPTY SELECT BOX when choosing which account to pay! Over the next TWO MONTHS I ended up playing phone tag with a mysterious "special division of the fraud department." Every person I talked to told me I needed the fraud department. When I was connected to the fraud department, they told me I needed some "special division." They wouldn't give me any names, but they did tell me that this special division is only open M-F 9-5 EST (very inconvenient for me on the west coast). After holding for my entire lunch break, I had to hang up.
HOWEVER: This did not stop them from calling me on Saturdays. I turn my ringer off at night, but when checking my phone later on I'd see up to 3 missed calls from Capital One. Apparently their collections
department works all weekend but the fraud department is only available M-F.So one day earlier this month I took a personal day and called Capital One again. This time I decided to take notes during my call:
Began phone call - 10:52
Talked to Ashley - put on hold at 11:04
Talked to Evelyn from 11:15-11:29
Talked to Marian (Collections department) 11:35
Talked to Kam (Fraud department) 11:45-12:07
Talked to Michelle (Account Manager) at 12:10
Hung up 12:35Not one of these representatives explained why I was being transferred or told me I was being put on hold before they did so. Michelle finally helped me. She claimed she removed the 3 late charges attached
to my account and accepted a payment via check right there on the phone. Thing is, I checked recently: no payments have been made. They don't want me to pay them! I also asked Michelle to reactivate snail mail bills so maybe I'll start getting those...They refuse to let me pay! Anyway, thought this might be interesting...
Keep up the great work Consumerist!
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Comments:
I thought this was about that dude from Baywatch
I was thinking Matt Hasselbeck, maybe a Seahawks-Capital One partnership...
But they should be careful, you don't mess with the Hoff!
In the early 90's I was in college and racked up some credit card debt, a typical story. All told, several thousand dollars across several cards. Eventually I received an inheritance, which I used to settle all my debts.
I was able to satisfactorily settle every debt except one: Capitol One. Through dozens of phone calls and many hours of phone time, I finally did settle and sent them a final payment.
Regardless: they continued to put a "unpaid, write-off" black mark on my credit report for SEVEN YEARS, despite all my attempts to prove to them that THEY agreed to a settlement, I made good on the settlement, and it should be noted as such. Nope, every year, they would renew the black mark on my credit.
The whole experience with Capitol One left me with a highly disgusted opinion of Capitol One. I swore never to, and have never since, done business with this collection of idiots and "GIMME DA CASH!!!" morons. They are interested in only one thing: screwing you. That's it. Nothing else. Don't ever trust Capitol One.
Sorry, Reader Matt!
This seems about par for the course for CapitalOne's fraud division. I had some fraudulent charges posted to my account and the "Investigator" assigned to my account found all kinds of reasons to deny my claim. First, they denied it because my stepfather has an account with one of the vendors that accepted a fraudulent charge. Then, it was because the people who moved into my previous address have an account with another vendor that accepted a fraudulent charge. In both cases, they did not bother to check that the account, to which the payment posted, matched anyone to whom I am associated.
When I was finally able to talk to a supervisor, he told me that he would review my case and contact me within twenty four hours. To my surprise, he called me back within two hours and approved my fruad claim and cleared the charges like it was nothing.
Hate to do it buddy, but I'm calling "BS" on this one... I just called Capital One right now and got thru to an operator in less than 2 minutes. Hung up and did it again in about the same time. So your accounts of "hour long holds" don't jive... Sure makes a dull story more interesting though.
So the moral of the story is to go paper...did i read this story right?? hahah
@DeltaPurser: And that disproves someone else's experience (and that person wasn't calling at the same time you were) how?
@DeltaPurser: I think you're missing the point that he was later put on hold, he didn't reach those hold times immediately.
Maybe this could've been avoided if the new card had kittens. Especially WAR KITTENS.
@numindast: By saying "settle" instead of "paid off" do you mean you/they agreed to a payoff of less than the full amount owed?
Settled for less than the full amount is a write off in the minds (and books) of many creditors/lenders.
And this is why I have my credit cards through my bank. If there's a problem I can go down to the bank or call my banker and have them clean up the mess. CapitalOne does too much advertising for me to feel comfortable with going for any of their products.
See if you can transfer your balance to another card, and start paying the new company... I wouldn't put up with that shit, ruining my credit! (anymore than it already is... f*ckin divorce.)
You rent servers from Sago? Wow. Their bandwidth is shit. In my opinion the only host worth using is The Planet, but I'd take anything decent over Sago (Softlayer, etc.).
Capitol One doesn't see customers, just numbers.
Interesting that this comes up since Capital One is the one credit card company I absolutely will not do business with. I am kind of surprised that they are not aware that they are running their reputation into the ground... you would think a corporation like this would know better.
This is standard practice for Capitol One. They will not talk to you i you are past due; when you input your acct# or SSN, you are sent to collections.
Way to treat people like numbers, C1.
@DeltaPurser: You're also calling at 9pm, he's calling on his lunch hour, the same time everyone else that needs to talk to the fraud department and has a 9-5 calls.
Funny, I just logged into my capitalone acct online and this story finally convinced me I really don't need the card anymore. lol. Thanks consumerist for posting this. Sorry matt for having to put up with such idiocy.
LMFAO, funny thing about capital one is if you call customer service and tell them you changed your name because of marriage they'll change it on the account and issue you a new card no questions asked, don't even want you to fax proof. I don't have an SSN on my capital one card, so this was quite interesting to me as I could just change the name and let that name and billing address go to collections when I don't want to pay the bill -- not that I'd actually do that, but it was "no hassle" making account changes w/o any verification.
@numindast: Moral of the story: When you agree to a debt settlement with a CC company or collections agency, ALWAYS have them mail you the terms in writing before making any payments. Then keep copies of your canceled checks. You can present them to the credit bureaus if needed when/if the company will not acknowledge that the debt is paid.
Good luck with Sago, I was with them for a number of years prior to moving to Layered Tech. Sago, due to their business, apparently has a large quantity of fraud, or at least that's what I've been told unofficially. They now require drivers licenses to be faxed in.
If the browser you are using gives you a 404, try a different browser. I for example cannot load www.nbc.com on IE, but can with Firefox. Also I was unable to make a purchase using IE, but when I went to the same site in Firefox it worked fine. It's always good to have a backup in the event that it is on your end.
One thing that annoys the crap out of me is that when they act like they're being generous by lifting charges that ended up on your account because they're so damn hard to get in contact with. Then, the next time you ask to remove charges they tell you "we see here that we did this favor for you six months ago, sorry but we already did you this favor once." It's pointless at that moment to try to explain that in fact it wasn't a favor at all but rather their own f**ked up CSR system that i consciously designed to make customers wait forever to get in contact with somebody that can actually do something for you.
God I hate the credit card system so so much. I am so glad I am debt free now and the only reason why I use cards at all is to once in a while charge something (and immediately pay it off) just to register activity for the purposes of my credit score.
The whole system is whacked, which is why I love the very last scene of 'Fight Club'.
And I love how polticians make promises to cap high interest rates: at 30%. 30%!!!
Seriously, if you are a 30% APR risk you shouldn't be getting credit, period.
@DeltaPurser: I had a bit of a nightmarish situation wtih them, and ended waiting on hold for at least 30 minutes is par for the course. I called them once a month, and it was usually the same ordeal.
I've been on hold for over an hour in one instance. I find that on weekends, they're a little quicker to answer, as well as friendlier over the phone.
I cancelled my Capital One Big Hassle card over a year ago. Their CS is the worst in the industry, and that's saying a LOT. And the mileage program is worthless. You're better off getting cash back with another card and not being locked into overrpriced mileage
if you get timeouts or 404s - remove/clear your cookies.. That and make sure the language in FF is not set to */* or cleared - but one can set it to use any.. ie: accept language field..
Hate to be a spelling nazi, but "hassel"? Come on...