I recently received a "special offer" for 0% APR for 12 months from Capital One. The letter stated that if I used any of the three attached checks by the deadline, I would receive this low interest rate for a year. So I used two checks (both of which were attached to this letter).
However, when the transactions went through, one apparently came in as a convenience check and the other as an access check. So they started charging me a finance fee for the so called convenience check. The problem here is that it was not a convenience check. They came from the same stub, attached to the same letter. How can they come in differently? I even verified that I met all the requirements - use by date, etc.
So I called customer service and the woman was very helpful at first. She told me that I was right and that she would have it fixed. "Just check your next statement." Guess what happened?
I had to call a second time because not only did the balance not move over to 0% interest, but now they need to credit me the finance charge for the last two statements. The first woman apparently only "put in a request" and it was denied by the higher-ups. Was anyone going to let the customer know?
Now, I must call a third time to talk to a "senior account manager" because this second woman can't do anything about it.
The moral of the story: MAKE SURE YOU CHECK YOUR FINANCE CHARGES AND QUESTION FEES THAT DON'T MAKE SENSE. And here's probably the bigger lesson: don't ever use the checks that come in the mail claiming 0% interest b/c even when you read the fine print and everything is what it's supposed to be, they still get you. Though I will continue to try to get my money back, this "processing error" is a pain in the you know what. I wonder how many processing errors occur each day.
After reading about how unhappy the company's consumers are, I wonder how they are still in business - maybe they get the first time credit card holders. (They were my first, and after almost ten years, I'm still at the same interest rate (the 0% was too good to be true). My other credit card companies reward me with low rates for my good credit.)
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