Well, after reading several dozen reports from others I'm feeling much better about my relatively not so bad experience. However, I feel compelled to tell it anyway.
I had a $800 credit card from Providian which was sold to Emerge who promptly double the interest rate to 30 percent. I was lucky in that I could pay off the balance, but not before having the very embarassing decline on the new credit card the first (and only) time I tried to use it. It took almost two weeks to get through on the phone because apparently EVERYONE who got transferred (over one million customers) wanted to talk to their customer service.
Once I paid the balance, I had to send another check when I called to close the account (another hour on the phone) for a residual interest rate and other various (very suspcious) charges.
I've been rebuilding my credit for over 3 years now and I'm at the tail end of it so what has happened now came to my attention quickly, otherwise I would never have noticed.
I closed my account in December. It's now June and the account still shows as being open with a zero balance and no late payments. After reading other people's stories I feel lucky. I have called again and again asked for my account to be closed.
The service rep said the account was closed in December but she would put the account close through again. I'm going to give it one more month and then start sending letters to every address I can find.
What this tells me is that not only is eMerge doing bad things to good people's credit, but they are clearly incompetent in their computer system practices when they can't even close an account correctly.
What's really funny is I kept the Providian card originally because it was my favorite credit card. Not the best interest rate, but a really great online billing system. And for being a loyal, always paid on time (even paying off the balance) kind of customer, I was treated like dirt.
Take my advice, get rid of your Providian / Emerge card as quickly as possible before these bad stories happen to you.
If you're looking for a recommendation, I'd say Capital One is a great company to go with.
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