Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Run like hell?

OK, not sure exactly what is going on with Capital One. This blogger has always had excellent service from them, but a recent series of transactions has him wondering.... It started off with a phone call from Capital One, they had noticed some suspicious transactions and were calling to check. Great! Especially since these were fraudulent transactions. They said they were suspending the account and would be sending me a new card. Wow, they're looking out for me! Unfortunately things went downhill from there...

A while later I received a replacement card (the middle one on the picture above). Imagine my surprise when I saw that it had the exact same number! True, the 3-digit number on the back was different, but I had expected a new number. Oh well, if that's how they want to do it.... In no rush a couple of weeks later I called the 800 number on the sticker to activate my card. After following all the prompts the system told me that I needed to enter my new card number. Well I was, or rather I was entering the "new" old number, but it wouldn't accept it.

I called Customer Service, and they told me that I had to activate my new card. I had a hard time explaining to them that was what I was trying to do i.e. activate the new card - new because I had just received it in the mail, and it also had an activation sticker on it! Very patiently (and this was very annoying, because by now they must have assumed that they were working with an idiot, i.e. me, since from their tone I could imagine them rolling their eyes...) they explained that I would get a card with a new number and should activate that. Hah! Attempting to emulate their equanimity I explained back that in that case they should actually go ahead and send me a new card, since by now it was almost one month since they suspended the account and the only thing I had received was the card that wouldn't work. They said they would send out a new card immediately.

True to their word they did, and the next week I received a Capital One Mastercard, and yes, it had a new number. Huzzah! Well, perhaps not... This one (the third card, on the right above) did not have an activation sticker?!? So, did this one not need activation? Strange! Assuming that it did, I called the activation 800 number. After all, I'd prefer to find out via the phone that I did not need to activate, rather than find out I should have activated while trying to buy something at the store!

Imagine my annoyance when I was routed to the Collections Department, where I was asked if I would like to make the minimum payment ($45) since I was past due. I informed them that I wanted to pay off the entire balance (as is usually my wont), a grand total of $56.55! So now the payment is scheduled, and I am assure that my card will be activated tomorrow.

OK, so I agree that the bank needs its money and should be paid on time. However, the reason they hadn't been paid was because of their snafus related to this card replacement. Although I still get paper statements I make my payments on-line, and all this time I could not make a payment since my on-line account was restricted (I could log on, but could not transact!)

Bottom line: this episode started off with substantial good will generated by Capital One doing something good (i.e. proactively saving me from fraudulent transactions), but this was subsequently frittered away by a number of petty (in the grand scheme of things) annoyances - the old new card (or was it the new old card!?), and then getting the impression that one was an idiot, and a delinquent one at that.

Perhaps time to sell stock...

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