I went online to pay my monthly Advanta credit card bill and was shocked to dicover that they had jacked the APR up to 30.08%. As of last month, it was 12.49% and I've been a cardholder for over 9 years with a perfect history of paying my bills on time. I have never had a late payment or gone over the limit.
I called the number on the back fo the card assuming that this was a huge mistake and the Advanta representative said that the new APR is reflective of the current economy as well as my account history. I told her that I have a perfect record with them and have been a loyal customer and that I have $0 balances on all my other credit cards. She said there was nothing she could do but give me a $200 credit to help offset the $1,000 in interest they just charged me for this month alone. I said that they couldn't do this to people - just hike up their interest rates without warning and for no reason at all. She had no response. I asked to speak to a manager and he provided no further information.
I immediately paid off my account in full, despite the fact that they charge a daily APR and will probbaly bill me for the days of interest past the closing date of 9/12/08. I expect to see exposure of this issue on CNN sometime soon when people start getting their statemets in the mail. I can assume this is happening to a lot of people. This is clearly unethical business prcatice by Advanta Bank Corp and this is seriously going to hurt families across the nation. What can we do to fight this? I hope posting on theis website helps, but what else can we do???
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