Advanta Corp. Taking Advanta-ge of consumers with arbitrary interest rate hikes! Salt Lake City Utah

Advanta Corp. is exercising all its apparent rights under corrupt and self-serving lending laws that unduly penalize customers.

When I received an attractive balance transfer loan offer for $20,000 from Advanta, I transferred balances from several other cards to both save money and time. Little did I know that when I reached a certain percentage of my borrowing limit, my interest rate would skyrocket. Then, just recently, my electronic payment arrived one day late, and my interest rate went to 34%! I called the customer service phone number on my statement, where I was advised by the representative that Advanta doesn't accept electronic payments, despite the fact that my payments had been arriving to Advanta in this way for two years. Further, customer service told me I could not have the phone number to the corporate headquarters.

After locating the corporate telephohe number for Advanta, I spoke with Mindy, who advised me that they would adjust my interest rate since the late posting on my account was Advanta's fault, not mine. But the rate change never happened, and when I last spoke with her, she advised me that no rate changes would be available because I had two payments that were just a day or so late earlier in the year. The fact that I always paid more than my minimum due was of no interest to her. Then, on this month's statement, my interest rate went up again to 37%, despite timely payments.

Further, when I ran my Dun and Bradstreet credit report recently, it would seem that Advanta has reported my payments as having been over 30 days late on seven occasions, which is simply not true. I asked to receive from Advanta a history of my payments and postings, and Mindy insisted that the only way they could communicate this information to me was to fax me all my statements for the last year, which she did, and which was comprised of over 30 pages. It should also be noted that on at least three occasions over the past year I had to call for my payment amount because I did not receive a statement in the mail. Today when I called Advanta's customer service department to confirm my payment amount, I was on hold for over 15 minutes before I decided to hang up.

In closing, Advanta is, in my opinion, the leader in predatory credit card lending practices. I do not have any other credit cards, loans or lines of credit with interest rates that even come close to this rate. And they've damaged my personal and business credit rating with erroneous information. Unfortuntaely, Advanta has no motivation whatsoever to respond to my request for a rate reduction or to correct their credit agency reporting.

I intend to contact the attorney general's office in Utah, the Utal BBB and my federal representatives in this matter. I firmly believe, based on the sheer number of complaints against this bank, that a class action suit is in order.

Andrea
Sewell, New Jersey
U.S.A.