I received a letter from Capital One stating that they had not received a payment from me and that as a result, they would be increasing my account's purchase APR and monthly membership fee if I were late again in any of the next five monthly billing periods. They also charged me a $29 late fee.
I thought I had sent them my payment on-line, however I went ahead and sent them another payment on-line again and a few days later, my bank sent me a letter stating that my on-line payment to Capital One had been rejected by them for an invalid account number.
Thinking that someone had mis-keyed the account number at Capital One, I contacted them to let them know that they had rejected my payment and that someone must have "mis-keyed" the account number and returned it to my bank since my second on-line payment to them had gone through just fine.
I faxed them copies of my on-line confirmation numbers showing I had in fact sent my payment to them but they refused to accept responsibility and told me it wasn't their fault at all but that it was my bank's fault for submitting the payment to them under the wrong account number. They were very sorry but there was no way they could take the $29 charge off of my bill or remove the late payment criteria.
I contacted my bank and they assured me that they have the proof that their payment to Capital One was sent with the correct account number.
Now it seems to me what a great scam this is. Of the hundreds of thousands of credit card customers out there that are having their interest rates raised to ridiculous percentage rates and if only 1000 customers were charged $29 late fees a few times, you can imagine the money that this credit card company is swindling people out of.
Just reject payments every now and then, blame it on on-line banking (they did try to encourage me to set up my on-line payments with them and not my bank), and they are making hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I don't understand why our lawmakers are letting these credit card companies get away with ripping people off.
If someone would investigate this, I am sure they would have all the proof they need for a class-action lawsuit.
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