Friday, June 22, 2007
Canceling Capital One is a lot like canceling AOL
I called Capital One the other day to close out a credit card I had with them. The card was paid off last November and we don’t use it anymore. It turns out closing out a credit card with Capital One is a lot like closing out an America Online account, only worse. After navigating one automated menu to another, I finally got a real life person.
Even though I selected the option of closing my account, he still asked me what he could do for me. I told him I wanted to close out my account. He asked me why I wanted to do this as though it was any of his business. I told him because I wanted to. He asked what I thought was the most important feature associated with a credit card.
I told him ones that were easy to close.
He proceeded to tell me about some other cards they offer that have airlines miles or cash back gimmicks. I told him I was not interested and I just wanted to close the account. He then told me that before he could close out my account, he was required to read something to me. I told him that I wasn’t interested and that I just wanted to close the account. He told me that he could not close my account until he read to me. He proceeded to stumble through a prepared statement from Capital One. When he got to the part stating I would be charged all applicable fees until my balance reaches zero, I cut him off. I reminded him that my account has been at zero dollars since last year. I was about to tell him that I even destroyed the cards last year when he interrupted me to say that my account had not been paid off since last year. He said that my account had not gone to a zero balance until November 2006.
I pointed out to him that was last year.
There was a long pause on his end of the line. I imagined him looking at his calendar with his head cocked like a dog hearing a strange noise. He finally admitted that I was right. Before I could celebrate my small victory, he started to read to me again from the very beginning. When he again got to the part about my account continuing to be charged all applicable fees until the balance reaches zero, I cut him off again and asked to speak to his supervisor.
After being on hold for six minutes, a woman came on the line informing me that she was a supervisor and she asked me how she could assist me. I told her that I wanted to close my account. That my account already had a zero balance and I no longer wanted it to remain active. She told me that she was required to read a statement to me. She then proceeded to read the very same retarded statement the other representative did, except her reading skills were even worse then his. Not that I knew that was even possible.
She couldn’t even pronounce the word applicable. She tried three different times to get it out, failing miserably each time. I think I made things worse by asking her to repeat it.
If I cannot close out my Capital One account unless one of their representatives reads something to me, Capital One ought to hire people that can read.
When she finally finished stumbling through the prepared written statement from Capital One, she advised me that my account would be closed in 30 days. I told her I wanted it closed out immediately. She said that was not possible. I asked her why. She said that it was a rule of Capital One. I asked her for a confirmation number or something similar to show that I had indeed called to close my account. If I learned anything from America Online it was to always get a confirmation number when canceling. She informed me that a confirmation letter would be mailed to me. Fine. That’s not what I asked for, but why be picky?
Before hanging up, I asked her to try to say applicable again. I got the feeling she didn’t think it was funny.
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I had a Capital One credit card that I canceled, and it only took me 5 minutes. They had to read that statement to me too, but if you have a zero balance, then obviously there won’t be any fees charged to you. You caused the situation to go longer than it needed to be because you were trying to be belligerent.
Then ‘obviously’ they shouldn’t have read the warning to me about paying off my nonexistent balance. It was retarded. I shouldn’t have had to listen to it. They purposely made it difficult to cancel my account - like AOL.
You wrote:
Capital One ought to hire people that can read.
I say: This is a common mistake made by people WHO aren’t as smart as they wish they were…
BTW, it would be more useful if you’d turn your tongue against the owners not the workers…
Henri–
The owners… that hire the workers?
Heh,heh. I recently closed a CC account with Wells Fargo. I’d had the card for almost 30 years. — I moved to an area with no Wells Fargo retail branches. — When I called to cancel all my accounts I got a “retention specialist” who followed a fairly long script trying to keep me from closing the CC account. They gladly, and quickly, closed the other accounts. — I guess we know which lines of business are the most profitable. Eh?
As a footnote, I’d say that overall I got good service from Wells Fargo over the years I was their customer. If they had a branch near where I live, I’d still be their customer.
Why didn’t you just send a letter?
You acted like a prick to those customer service reps. Impuning on their reading abilities is just pathetic; they human beings and deserve to be treated as such.
Henri is right. You shouldn’t pick on the drones at the bottom as they execute the policies of management. If you don’t like the way their call center is run, write a letter to someone that can do something about it. And Joel is right too. If you’d just pretended to listen for two minutes while they went through their script you’d be done with it.
Signed,
Happy Capital One Customer
Bah,
The mistake YOU are now making derives from your brainwashed consumerist belief that owner-exploiting-worker socio-economic systems are the only possibility. In a sane culture, workers are indistinguishable from owners.
But thanks for thinking.
Why should we pretend to listen to dummies? capitol one obviously knows that their COMPANY is represented by their REPRESENTATIVES. In other words these people are seen as the company.
As a company you decide how your company is perceived by those you hire to represent your company. Let’s face it, there are a lot of stupid people out there and I’m of the opinion that the bulk of them are “customer service reps”. If not, why would there be so many horror stories.
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck……
I’ve been there
Obviously Captial One is trying a set of annoying tricks to delay or turn back people from canceling cards. This ranges from forcing the customer to ask for the same thing over and over, to asking a bunch of intrusive and time-consuming questions, to walking the customer through a gauntlet of “offers”, to reading an irrelevant prepared statement.
The offensive underlying policy — the real point of the article — is made even worse by incompetent customer service personnel.
But really, if it weren’t for Capital One’s policy of making it hard to actually close an account, there would be no post here at all.
You know the terms and conditions you sign when you open accounts?
There are terms and conditions to close them. They can either read them to you over the phone, or mail them to you, make you sign them, and mail them back.
This is like getting pissed at a surgeon for explaining the risks of an appendectomy in compliance with informed consent. It’s just something they had to do.
I hated my cap 1 card but was able to cancel it in about 5 minutes by not acting like a toolbox to the CSR.
Send certified mail closing the account to the address listed for disputes on the zero-balance statements you receive. Enclose a copy of this post (albeit, I’d not mention that I had posted it - only that the company refused your oral request. Send a copy of all of this to the Consumer Protection Division of your State Attorney General (regular mail is fine) with a cover letter saying that you require their assistance resolving this. Send another exactly the same to the FTC (www.ftc.gov) BY US POST and ask for assistance from them.
Frankly, the terms of your agreement with Cap1 REQUIRE that you send them a written cancellation and until you do you haven’t “cancelled” the account. Keep those little white slips changing terms and the original agreement for every credit card you ever own - or you will be their victim.
The letters to the state A/G and FTC will result in a letter from those agencies to Cap1’s legal counsel - your account will end.
THEN - request a free copy of your credit record (IN WRITING - not on the web) and put it away showing that the account was closed by request of the consumer. If they say anything else, you need an attorney that specializes in consumer protection. Don’t worry the Fair Credit Reporting Act and Truth in Lending Act provide for an award of attorney’s fees and costs - BUT, you have to have the documents I just suggested - including proof of delivery (Certified Mail green card) to Cap1. It’s a good case if they lie on your credit report with the proof that you cancelled the account.
Why shouldn’t you request a “free credit report” on the web? READ THE AGREEMENT - all of the ones that I’ve read have the consumer waive (give up) all rights to sue in exchange for the “free report” - but federal law gives you the right to one free copy from each of the three reporting agencies every year and another free copy if you are denied credit based upon a credit report. You waive nothing by asking in writing. They do tend to try to blow you off - so keep at it and don’t pay for a copy or sign a waiver.
G-man, so if I refuse to sit idly by while being forced to listen to a prepared list of conditions that don’t apply to me, they can refuse to cancel my account? I doubt it. I shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to cancel a credit card that has been paid off in full since last year. I shouldn’t be forced to listen to special offers I don’t want and don’t need. It’s people like you that empower credit card companies to get away with this crap.
And if I had a surgeon that couldn’t pronounce ‘applicable’, I wouldn’t let him or her cut on me.
lolo… Try canceling your satellite television service! They transfer you to someone who sounds like Big Nurse in “One Flew Over the Coocoo’s Nest” and make you question your sanity. Then, they offer to charge you “only” $5 per month AFTER YOU HAVE CANCELED so that you can instantly turn it back on if you can’t handle being without it. It’s nuts.
I canceled Capital One after my husband died of cancer. While he was dying, he couldn’t work, naturally. So, we had that coverage for catastrophic emergencies that are supposed to make payments on the card for you when you have an emergency. So, Capital One paid themselves late each month and added on a monthly charge. By the time he died, they had added on $700, almost doubling what the balance was in the first place. Needless to say, I will NEVER get another card from those evil greedy bastards.
This is just petty. Not the same as the AOL fiasco. I agree with you about cutting reps of when they start sharing special offers, but had you just listened to the cancellation statement, I can’t see this conversation lasting more than 3 minutes. Find something serious to blog about next time.
Thank you for closing your Capital One account. Please write down your confirmation letter. Your confirmation letter is: H.
I love some of the “consensus” here. Because you wanted the phone agent to do something silly like “close my zero balance account,” *you’re* made out to be the jerk.
I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment. This pushy nonsense called “retentions” is getting massively irritating. “Please cancel my account” should be a painfully simple process. It really feels like these companies honestly reason that since you’re eager to quit anyway, there’s not much for them to lose by badgering/pestering/begging you to stay (i.e. if you’re angry enough to leave in the first place, it’s no love lost if they cheese you off further when you try to cancel).
The only suggestion that’s been posted in the comments here that made any sense at all is the whole “write them a letter instead” one. A couple years back I dove into a free AOL trial (for some related “freebie” in exchange for doing it) and then dutifully called to cancel about three weeks later. The stories are not exaggerations: they really do *argue* with you. The phone conversation went round and round for almost thirty minutes (glad it was their dime, and not mine).
Nothing actually got done until I mailed a polite, firm letter. It complained about the cancelation process but also explicitly stated my desire/intention to cancel. I received written confirmation back a week later apologizing for the trouble and providing a cancelation confirmation number.
On a phone, you can be interrupted even when you don’t want to be. A letter is far more effective: there’s no “active discussion” going on. Your letter expresses your intentions. There’s no arguing with that if you’re following the instructions laid out in the terms and conditions. If the company still ignores you and you can prove you mailed the request and followed the instructions you were supposed to follow, you’ve got some major ammunition to use if they ever try something sneaky (like assessing fees, etc., that could not have been accrued if the account had been closed per your instructions).
I’ve all but given up on trying to fix this kind of stuff by phone. Mail it (certified if you expect trouble) and follow up; don’t bother with the phone.
Sorry bru, but this is what extreme capitalism gets you….
What do you really expect?
its actually better for your credit score to just keep unused cc account open.
Would it be great if when you wanted to cancel your credit card that they said, “Okay, done!” Absolutely. However, even if you cut them off when they make special offers that you don’t want, they still have to read the parts about what happens if you try to use your card after this point, or what happens to your remaining balance - if you have one - from this point on, etc. Once they’re done with that, you’re done. It’s a simple process if you just let them read through it, like I said, about 5 minutes tops. This is not comparable to trying to cancel an AOL account, this isn’t even worth being on Reddit or anywhere else, and I think THAT’s why people are being galvanized - because this isn’t a case of corporate violations of personal rights… it’s a case of impatience.
Joel, I never cut them off when they made special offers. I only cut them off when they presented something that was factually incorrect - That my account had a balance. They did NOT say that IF my account had a balance.
It’s not a matter of using my card after I called to close out the account. I called to cancel the card and to close out the account.
And yes, it was very much like closing out and AOL account. I had to listen to special offers that I did not want. I also had to listen to things about my account that were not true. In the case of AOL, I had to hear about how much I had been using the account even though I no longer had the software even installed on my PC. In the case of Capital One, I had to hear how my account still had a balance even though it did not and had been at zero since last year.
You are right about one thing. I am inpatient. I want my Capital One account to be closed immediately. I don’t want to wait for 30 days to pass. There is no good reason for this to happen. I paid it off in full over eight months ago.
I agree with the author. When I say “close my account” then that’s what I mean -not “what other crap can you sell me since I obviously don’t want to use any of services anymore”.
I had closed (or at least very much though I did) a credit card and all of a sudden a year or so later I get a statement with a $32,0000 cash advance charge! Long story/short - I kind of freaked out, called them - ended up someone had hacked their system. At the end of it all she said “Would you like to re-open your account?”
ED-U-MA-CATION - PEOPLE ED-U-MA-CATION!
Welcome to the unethical world of Capital One.
It’s July 2007, and I was treated like chattel by this heartless corporation. The mercenary representative: Ernesto, employee # UNX 232.
As soon as I found that my rate jumped from 5.99% to 11.90% i called immediately and insisted that it be brought back down. I too was told that it’s too bad, that I missed their notice. I said I never got one, which I didn’t. They told me it wasn’t sent with my statement. Also Ernesto told me that this has happened to thousands of customers and him too. But he informed me it was too late. Then, when I said I want you to specifically tell me that you refuse to revert my interest rate back to its original rate, he said he’d have to terminate the conversation if I was recording it. too funny–I wasn’t recording it, but in theory they can record it.
Now, I’m stuck paying this unethical rate until my balance will be down to zero. Is there any way this uncaring mercenary company can be held accountable? Is there at least one attorney general who cares?
Keep posting and please start posting as many warnings as you can about this vipers.
Bob
I’m on the verge of getting legal help in dealing with Capial One and I dislike lawyers.
I’ve had a charge dispute with them since May and am getting nowhere. I order a product from a vendor on-line and the product never showed up so I reported it to C1. They credit my account for the full amount back in May then today I find out they charged my account for the same amount because the vendor said they credited my account. I looked at my statement and the vendor did credit my account for the full amount in May but they also charged my account for the exact same amount on the same day. C1 can’t seem to understand that I’m still out of the money. I’ve tried to speak with someone in the investigation department but was told they “don’t have phones”. So much for customer service. I’m closing my C1 account as soon as I get this dispute resolved.
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