Advanta Bank Corp Unjustified Interest Rate Increase - Beware of this Company Salt Lake City, Utah

I am a small business owner, who has suffered the same treatment by Advanta Bank Corp. Since 2005, our business card had an interest rate of 7.99%, and we have never been late, nor missed a payment. Since we have maintained a monthly balance of approximately $1,000. Last month, in August or 2008, our statement said our interest rate was still 7.99%, so we transferd the balance from another card to Advanta's card to take advantage of this lower interest rate. Upon receiging this month's statement (September, 2008) we noticed that Advanta changed the interest rate to 25.08%, without notice, and only after the balance transfer was completed. As many other reports online have mentioned, Advanta's customer service representative was unable to offer any specific reason as to why the rate increase had taken place, nor justify the rate increase. All they could say was that they periodically review cardholder's credit scores and make adjustments accordingly.

My credit score is over 780 and my business's credit history is flawless, since it's inception more than 10 years ago - hardly reason to justify the unannounced increase.

As a small business owner, the only recourse I have against Advanta is to file a complaint with the FDIC. I have done so, but found it difficult to find exactly where / how to do so and thought it's quite important to give a few tips to other small business owners as to where exactly on the FDIC website they need to go to file a similar complaint against Advanta.

On the www.fdic.gov website's main page, on the lower right is a section titled "Top Search Results". Click on Bankfind/Insitiution Directory, and on the Bankfind page, enter "Advanta Bank Corp." in the Name field, then click the find button. Now, here's the tricky part... 3 lines below the company address, is the line "For consumer assistance regarding an issue with this institution, please contact the FDIC directly". Click on the word FDIC on that line and you will be taken to their complaint form. You can also get to the form directly at https://www4.fdic.gov/STARSMAIL/index.asp

If you're a victim of Advanta's recent practices, please do not hesitate to file a complaint against them with the FDIC. The FDIC is supposed to protect our rights, so let's make our voices heard and hope they do something about this issue!