My Advanta Bank Corp. Card was good to me at first and I used it for everyday business, vehicle fuel, medium and small business supplies, and some monthly recurring payments, etc. Up until the last steep interest rate increase. I have never paid late, never gone over the limit, have a high FICO score, and I'm a loyal person with all my credit accounts. I accepted the first increase to about 19% again because they started off good to me and I thought it was because of an automatic system feature or setting that does this after a certain time. I thought I would call up customer service, verify my account, make some adjustments to the system, and bring my interest rate back down to a low competitive rate. Sounds easy but that's not what happened.
I called customer service and they told me, in other words, it's not going to change, a letter was sent and that I had a choice to cancel or keep them. I then told them, OK, I'll just keep it, ride it through, and see if anything changes in the next few weeks. When I received my next statement, I flipped out when I saw that the interest rate had again increased to about 35%! I immediately called them up to complain.
I asked the rep why my interest was increased so high. The lady told me that because of credit balances, other factors in my credit report, etc; the same rigamaroo told to various other customers. I asked her if this was all worth losing me as a customer and her response was We understand that you need to do what's best for your company. Wow! I was shocked. I feel like they need to pay penalties to their customers as a consequence for creating this bad business decision.
In summary, I am very disappointed with Advanta. I have since decreased my balance to about $300 to keep it open and see if the bank comes to their senses and makes things right with their customers.in the meantime, I'm keeping the account open to use their resources and manage my account.
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