Advanta Bank Corp
Ripoff Bogus late charge, refused to waive

After reading many of the other Advanta reports from good small business customers like me, the incident I have to report doesn't seem too hard to believe. When it happened though, I was outraged. I've heard of others being treated this way by banks, but it had never happened to me personally.

I had been a good Advanta customer for about 2 years. Always paid my bills on time and never before had a problem. Of course, I'd never before spoken to their customer service, so I didn't know how nasty they could be.

Anyway, in Feb I hadn't used my card at all that month, but I received a charge for $1.95 from a merchant that turned out to be a bogus charge. That same month, I did not receive a statement from Advanta for the charge. Thinking I hadn't used the card, I had no reason to wonder where the statement might be.

A couple days ago (March 29), I received the March statement from Advanta with this $1.95 charge as well as a $19 late fee. I didn't know at the time what the charge was, but since it was only $1.95, I just went ahead and paid it online. I figured I'd just make a "quick" call to Advanta to explain that I hadn't received the statement and get the late fee waived.

To my surprise, I was not shown any kind of understanding whatsoever from Advanta. The rep on the phone said she couldn't waive the $19 fee. I asked for a supervisor, and she told me the same thing. I explained that I hadn't received the statement. She insisted that it was mailed out and I should have gotten it.

Apparently, Advanta believes that the US Postal Service is always reliable and never makes mistakes. I tried to explain to her that I live in a townhouse where the mail isn't always reliable. Sometimes, I end up with my neighbor's mail, and sometimes they end up with mine. For whatever reason, I never received this statement.

I then tried to reason with her that I had a 2 year history of paying bills on time and that I would certainly have paid a $1.95 bill if I'd received it. All of this fell on deaf ears. I was shocked at the ease by which Advanta was willing to throw away a 2-year relationship with a good customer! I finally just told her to close the account as I have plenty of other credit cards.

I also told her that I refused to pay the $19 fee. She insisted that it would end up on my credit report and that it was an "indisputable" item. Can you imagine, a $19 late charge from a statement that didn't get to my house via regular mail being an "indisputable" item? I told her that if it did show up, I would take legal action.

Later, I decided to look into the $1.95 charge. I found out that this was actually a bogus charge that the merchant is refunding. I called Advanta back to explain that and the rep told me that the decision was already made NOT to waive the $19 fee and it couldn't be reversed. I didn't even ask for a supervisor at this point, I figured it was no use given the way I'd been treated so far.

Needless to say, if this $19 fee does show up on my credit report, I will be disputing it with the credit reporting agencies and looking into what kind of legal action I can take against Advanta.

I would also strongly advise anyone even THINKING about getting an Advanta credit card to look seriously at other options. Don't be fooled by their low interest rate. As others have written, that rate could jump at any time for almost any reason.in my case, you can see that being reasonable is not at all a part of their corporate policy.

The bottom line is that unless you watch everything very, very carefully with these people and make sure you ALWAYS get every statement they send you in the mail, they WILL find a way to make you pay more for the "privilege" of having their low interest card.

Somewhere in minnesota
West St Paul, Minnesota
U.S.A.

Company: Advanta Bank Corp
Country: USA
State: Pennsylvania
City: Spring House
Address: Welsh And McKean Roads
Phone: 2156574000

  <     >