Congrats! Seriously, good job. And good luck!

That's awesome, kudos to Capital One. This is what banks should be doing, instead of foreclosing on homes rather help the people by lowering their monthly payments and interest rates, that way they still get thier money and the consumer gets to keep their house.

no supplementary link to the Louisa(?) BOA letter article?

That really is great, but why is C.O. so eager to finally help someone who missed a payment but are happily jacking up the interest rates for individuals who have done nothing wrong? I just got a letter that my card, which I've had for 9 years (never missed a payment, sometimes carry a balance) is going from a 8% interest rate to 22%. When I called to voice some concerns I was told to either accept it or cancel the card. Nice.

@nbs2: Seriously, Capital 1s been dicking me around for a year now it's time to escalate and I want to know that example she's quoting. Please add a link. Pretty Please. With a cherry on top.

Aww, a happy ending. Congrads to R, kudos to Capital One's Exec CS team and karma brownie points to the Consumerist staffers!

Finally, a good news story about Captial One.

Why does it have to be this hard to get what used to be basic customer service? The only people who get service now are those who take exceptional action and get lucky.

Congrats!

@Trencher93:

Forgiveness of fees that are [i]owed[/i] is not "basic customer service," it's exceptional customer service.

I'm not a fan of capital one either. I just this month have started snowballing approximately $60,000 worth of debt and will have all four loans paid off in 2.5 years! Well if capital one wasn't jacking with the terms of my repayment. They put a limit on the amount I can pay over my bill by 3 times the bill. This capital one loan was the third on the snowball and I will not be able to pay this bill down as fast as I could otherwise.

@burnedout: No kidding, they did the same to me. I figured it was because I never used the card, so I closed the account. I was told take it or leave it, so I did. Bloodsuckers.

Capital One is fucking horrible. They took over my bank on Long Island (they bought North Fork). It seems they are doing with checking accounts what they do with credit card accounts. They "do you the favor" of withdrawing larger sums first. Plus, they change the dates on which withdrawals to the account are made. For instance, I made a debit on the account on Friday of this week. It posted on Friday. Then changed to Saturday. Then changed to Monday. What this does it make an enormous withdrawal on Monday, so that if you DID overdraw, you have MORE OVERDRAFTS. But you wouldn't know it because they don't factor the fees in until days after, so your calculations are thrown. You think you've balanced, but then BAM they withdraw $210 from your account, and you short more checks or debits. Their uncollected funds policy is entirely capricious. You deposit a local or a corporate check one day, and when it clears depends on the city issues, size of check and other things that the customer service rep couldn't explain to me.

I'm leaving the bank and switching to a credit union.

@burnedout: Cancel the card. If you seriously want to pay it down, why keep it? Wait three days, you will have more competitive credit offers soon enough. Even if it whacks your credit score, it is only for a short while.

@CoarseLive: I've always been told cancelling cards is bad because it lowers your credit score. Is this true or not?

I think the only reason CapOne did so much for her is that her balance is so low. $300 is chump change, so if they keep her happy now, they'll make a lot more money over the long term and can take a hard line later on when real money is involved.

@dragonfire81: It's true. However, it's not as big a hit as you might think. It really depends upon how many other cards (revolving lines of credit) you currently have. If you have 5 cards in good standing, canceling 1 might not be a big ding. If you have 2 cards, then you could take a major hit.

@burnedout: I wouldn't cancel the card quite yet, but pay it off as fast as you can. Then let it sit and don't use it if possible.

And keep calling Capital One. Ask for a supervisor, your CSR might not have the authority to change the rate. Escalate the matter if need be.

My new goal for March is to somehow work the word "pigpile" into every conversation.

@burnedout: Because individuals who have done nothing wrong are people who can afford their current rate, and might be able to afford a higher rate, making Capital One more money, while people already in trouble might just default and make Capital One less money?

@I_am_Awesome: Yeah but what happened to not raping the customer with fees just because you can? If they hadn't piled on the fees they wouldn't have needed the "exceptional customer service".

@Canino: Good luck pigpilein' that load.

Congratulations on starting your journey towards being debt free. Hopefully the folks at CapOne are out of your life sooner rather than later.

Back when we still "used" credit/consumer debt these guys were a thorn in the side. Now that we are a cash/debit card existence I am thrilled to not have to deal with their ilk.

Keep up the good work OP!

This happened to my father in-law. He had a Discover card. He wasn't financially savy. His credit limit was 1200. He bought some tires and some parts for his farm equipment, around $700. He paid the minimum payment, around $20 per month. Then one day someone from Discover called him and offered him the credit protection service for $35/month and he took it. A few months later he lost his job, but, they wouldn't pay his balance and continued to charge him. But, he still only sent in $20 per month. Soon the $20 per month didn't cover the minimum. Then they started charging him the fee for not paying the minimum balance and upped his interest rate. He kept paying the $20. Eventually it all took him over his 1200 limit then he was getting charged the over the limit fee, the fee for not paying the minimum, and the $35 income protection fee, plus interest. When he died we found out about the credit card. They called and harassed us about it until we found out the true story. He had paid his original $700 debt long ago and was just drowning in fees. We explained this to them and they didn't care. They said they'd come get the estate, we told them to come and get it. They called a few more times, during which time we told them to come get the estate proceeds, ha. They never showed up, the entire family canceled their Discover cards and that was the rest of the story...

@CoarseLive: Wow. Capital one bought out Hibernia in TX/LA and they've been just great here. Good service and their branch bankers have a lot of discretion in clearing deposits, reversing fees, etc. (The local branch can override the computer- what a concept!)

This seems like a good example of why you should have more than 1 credit card. She could have just transferred the balance to another card and told Capital One to 'eff off.
I would have called them after the first late payment charge and gotten them to reverse it, then transferred [or in my reality] just paid it off.
I refuse to allow this sort of situation to happen. I have never had a rep turn me down on a request to reverse a late payment fee.

Glad it worked out for her. If she had canceled the account how would that have worked? I know that if the interest rate would be going up, canceling freezes the account at the current rate. But what about the hellish fees? Would C.O. still be adding those every month?

@nerevar: Whaaaaat? How can they limit the amount you can pay to 3x the bill for a credit card? You must have a different type loan or something. I would think that you could pay any amount of money. Now they may limit automatic transactions or something but then why not use that paper check thing for the rest of the amount over 3x your bill...

Please explain. Thanks

@mwc5446: I am sorry to hear about your father. He should have stopped the protection service as soon as they didn't help him. Alot of older and less knowledgable people got caught by this. I remember reading some gov't testimony on how Discover or another place had taken some lady for about $12,000 over the course of 8 years for an original debt of about $2000 because she actually tried to pay it occasionally or catch it up. She would have been ahead if she had even walked away and it was written off...

@burnedout: happens to me too. pay on time and in full, high fico score, yet my interest rate is somewhere around 19%. i think that's way too high for what i would think would be a good customer. sure 19% never bothers me because i pay it off all the time but i am thinking of a what-if scenario down the line where I may need a few months. Why should i be penalized so heavily when i have 10 years of being a perfect customer. i have called to request it being lowered and it never goes anywhere.

"LIFE-CHANGING" - wow.

Maybe higher interest rates and more fees will help break the terrible fever of credit card madness in our country. Easy credit caused the fever. Hard credit will kill it.

@kwsventures: Right there with ya. It is unfortunate that some of our friends, family and neighbors will suffer. Paying cash for something one can afford has no downside for our family and our family tree.

@burnedout: I just got one of those notices, too. I pay off my balance every month though, so I'm not super worried about it.

It sucks for people who can't pay their cards in full every month though. I've had the same thing happen to me that happened to the lady in the article in slimmer times. Credit card and phone companies both will do everything possible to screw you when you're down.

I'd thought I'd chime in support of Capital One. I can't dismiss that many people have had problems with their customer service, but I possess a CO credit card because they are the largest credit card company that does NOT charge foreign transaction fees.

If you're traveling abroad, get a Capital One to avoid the 1-3% fee most card companies tack on (unless you can afford it, go with American Express for the rewards program).

I finally just decided to "take one" for the team and dump my savings into my CO card to get it done with.

I don't have emergency funds at the moment, but at least I'm done with that credit line, and it feels pretty good.

@econobiker: He says "loan" rather than CC, so I suspect this is either an auto loan or an unsecured loan. On the other hand, traditional loan contracts don't usually have the clauses of "we can modify any of this at our will" that CC contracts have. So I still think we're missing part of the story here.

@veronykah: If she only had a $300 limit, she probably doesn't have many opportunities for a decent CC.

@bwcbwc: @bwcbwc: yeah it wasn't a credit card, it was an auto loan. i wasn't planning on repaying ahead of schedule so i didn't look into it. i guess they weren't technically jacking with my terms, since i agreed to them at the onset.

i've never heard of limiting the amount over your payment, unless it dings you with a fee. i probably need to look into it more. weird, their website isn't working right now.

Here here. I'm not advocating CO to be the best cc ever, but I've had little problems with my card with them (*knocks wood*) - certainly no worse or better than my other cards. I've been a responsible bill payer, and careful not to spend above my means. With the savings on foreign transaction fees, they have undoubtedly helped me save dollars over the years.

@nbs2:

This may be the link:

[consumerist.com]

Gods forbid you need a chargeback with them, I am dealing with it now and they require paperwork even if your transaction was online, and all the onus is on you to prove you were erroneously charged. I will never use my CO card again.
My State Farm Visa CSR handled the whole thing over the phone and called the scammer and got them to reverse all their charges and fees when my previous phone conversations with said scammer got me nowhere.
Two different charges/scams but very different results from the CC CSR's. I buy everything online so having been scammed twice is not a big deal to me, it just teaches me what websites not to trust no matter how great they are "rated". And obviously which CC's are worth having.