Who Hijacked Our Country

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Sleazy Bankers

Capital One, one of the nation’s largest issuers of credit cards, is being sued by the State of Minnesota for false advertising, consumer fraud and deceptive trade practices. They’re accused of using bait-and-switch tactics by promising fixed interest rates to consumers, and then jacking up their interest rates by up to 400%.

40% of Capital One’s fixed rate customers in Minnesota have had their interest rates drastically increased. The tiniest error by the consumer – if your payment is one day late, for example – can cause the interest rate to skyrocket.

Another Capital One tactic is to lower someone’s credit limit without notifying them, and then penalize them with higher interest rates when they unknowingly go over their credit limit.

They also constantly check their customers’ credit reports (often monthly), and if they find a late payment on any other (unrelated) loans, they’ll use this as an excuse to raise the interest rate, even if the customer has a perfect payment record with Capital One.

Now, where are all of our moralists and self-appointed guardians at a time like this? Didn’t the Bible mention something about Jesus driving the moneylenders from the temple? When a giant corporation – with godlike power over the “legislators” who are supposed to be “regulating” them – cheats millions of its customers, where’s the outrage? Corporate sleaze never draws a peep out of the sanctimonious types who go absolutely berserko over gay marriage, marijuana and abortion.

I guess everybody has their priorities.

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

My wife had a Capital One card, and they did the same to her. She went from a ridicules 8.9% rate to 29.9 in a blink of an eye. She transferred everything to another card and cancelled Capital One. Did you hear that they were big contributors to Kerry's campaign?

January 5, 2005 at 9:21 PM  
Blogger iratesavant said...

One cannot worry about such triflings as economic ruin when there are legions of homosexuals at the gates, desperate to turn us all into sodomites.

January 6, 2005 at 9:04 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, every credit card company does the same exact thing. Providian withheld customer payments to their account until they were past due. They could cxharge late fees to those accounts. MBNA has lowered my credit limmit without telling me...this after years of raising the limit to unreasonable amounts IE $50,000. All credit card companies routinely check every customers credit rating. The minute there is one late payment to any utility company or any other "accounts payable" you receive in the mail every month. The minute your credit risk increases all credit card companies are quick to downgrade you...

January 6, 2005 at 2:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I hate the way credit card companies do business. They are so dirty. That's why I have no credit cards.

-Charone
http://screwyou.thezeroboss.com

January 7, 2005 at 1:36 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This has happened to me several times. It helps to pay online. This month, Chase nailed me because after years of the due date being the 28th of the month, they rolled it back five days. I didn't get my statement because mail was delayed in the big snowstorm here. So when I logged on yesterday (24th) it was already too late. So I have a balance of $22800.00 at 29.5% interest. I had a perfect payment history for several years. This is exactly what's wrong with America. Everything they do is legal, but certainly not moral in many of our minds.

January 25, 2007 at 5:19 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home