Advanta Bank Rip off Unfair collection practices. Hiking up of interest rates without disclosure to consumer. This bank is a fraud. Write to the CEO Salt Lake City Utah
December 27, 2008
Dennis & Gisela Alter-CEO
7111 SHEAFF LN,
FORT WASHINGTON, PA 19034
Re: Advanta Bank Card
-Accts ending in xxxx
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Alter:
We are directing this letter to you since dealing with your staff has been frustrating and extremely stressful. We fear for our lives not knowing who these thugs are that you employ. The pain and suffering we have endured by your staff's questionable (and probably illegal actions) have made us rethink litigation. We have always rejected a culture where litigation is the only way to resolve things, but it seems suing IS the only way to keep your staff legit and insure they follow California Fair Debt Collection Practices-Title 1.6C. Your staff has even gone so far as to tell us we are in Utah and do not have to follow California Law. That is not correct and is a deliberate attempt to mislead the consumer. You most certainly DO have to follow the law in California as well as every state where you do business.
My husband and I have always had stellar credit. Being responsible, educated people we always paid our bills on time. Due to the Nationwide and perhaps World Wide economic crisis, our business has slipped. We were less than 24 hours late paying our bill with your bank and our interest rate went from 7.99 to a whopping 35.99 in addition to your upping our interest, we were hit with outrages late fees. All this made it impossible to make even our minimum monthly payment let alone ever be able to fully pay off the balance.
We were then turned over to your aggressive collection department who refuse to work with us in finding any rational pay back program. We are called constantly at our small store by your abusive, hostile Collection Manager. Our staff has been told derogatory things about us by your collection managers even insinuating to our employees that there may not be any job for them once Advanta goes after the business. We have been threatened with lawsuits, negative remarks on our credit history and verbal abusiveness to the point that we have to hang up on every one of your staff who calls us.
Additionally, your staff fails to obtain our permission to record our conversation, a direct violation of California law and can result in fines. Please check out the California Supreme Court summary as follows:
California Supreme Court Prohibits Recording Telephone Calls Made To or Received From California Without First Informing All Parties That the Conversation Is Being Recorded
Under a recent California Supreme Court ruling, those who record conversations with California residents without their knowledge will be subject to civil liability. If a business makes a routine practice of recording its calls with California customers without notice, it may be an easy target for a class action lawsuit
(((Redacted)))
Specifically one employee, named Tony Morelli called us at our business and coerced us into payments of $1800 per month stating if we fail to pay, Advanta will come after your business. He refused to allow us any time to consider his offer and threatened us with a lawsuit if we did not agree to his terms right now at this time. We will not offer any other opportunity if you do not accept this offer today. We believe this tactic to be extremely questionable and unenforceable.
Your collector's tactics are clearly not in compliance with the Fair Debt Practices Acts and border on criminal intent. We are not comfortable knowing your staff has access to our personal information, our home address, our children's schools and we are extremely fearful of what that information can lead to in the hands of an overly zealous member of your staff who may have a criminal record or be mentally unbalanced.
If you have any integrity at all you should be concerned about what others are saying about Advanta. We suggest you google Advanta Bank or check out what others are saying on the Ripoff Report. You should be ashamed.
We urge you to come down from your smug high horse, clean house and run your bank with integrity and honesty. Actually live up to that motto Helping you is our first priority instead of helping yourself to the consumer's wallet.
RB
cc: Tony Morelli, Advanta Bank, POB 30715, Salt Lake City, Utah 84130-0715
Rebecca
redondo beach, California
U.S.A.
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2 Updates & Rebuttals
DEC458@MSN.COM
Cleveland,Tennessee,
U.S.A.
Advanta Claims to Be a Small Business Credit Card
#3Consumer Comment
Sun, January 25, 2009
Jet,
I have seen about 4 other complaints that Advanta is starting to report negative information to small business owner's personal credit records. This is interesting considering they claim to be a small business card and you would think they would only report to D&B or Experian Business Credit. But, this shows they are truly a personal credit card because they reported to your personal credit reports. They use most people's personal credit report and FICO to open up the cards in the first place. Sounds like a violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
Jet
Burns,Minnesota,
U.S.A.
The Advanta Scam continues
#3Consumer Suggestion
Thu, January 22, 2009
Wow, Toni Morelli again, we were told that he is the vice president of Advanta...go figure. We have a very similar situation to yours however we have been called at home prior to the 8:00 am our state law allows. We have been screamed at, hung up on, threatened and harassed all this while we were trying to work out something, anything with them, I have spoken with them more then 5 times in one day with other Advanta employees calling in and leaving me rude yelling messages on my voice mail while on the phone with an Advanta rep. We accepted a settlement and started personally making our Forty-seven hundred dollar a month payments based on our understanding that they would "take us for everything and call us whenever they wanted" They even guaranteed me they had not reported to our personal credit only to Dunn & Bradstreet against the corporation. Guess what, they lied, they had destroyed our personal credit, in September 2008 we had a rating of 830 today 577. We continued paying based on our Advanta Credit Manager's promise to produce a letter on Advanta letterhead that we were current and not delinquent based on our agreement and new payment dates. We never received that letter and were told December 30th that the legal department wouldn't approve the letter, so they continued reporting us delinquent even though we were making our agreed upon payments. After receiving a call from a woman named Susan on the 29th screaming at me that this was our bill and we needed to grow up and take responsibility and pay it and then she hung up. She then called my Husband's cell phone which was a number removed by 2 supervisor's at Advanta and told him that it was no longer in her hands and huh good luck. On the 31st we were contacted by Richard (in the legal dept) who again offered us a settlement but we had to initiate a payment "today". On the 2nd Richard called again and we again explained our problem with being able to secure financing as they had destroyed our credit, he assured me that wasn't a problem, have your loan officer call me, I'll give him what he needs. When we checked our credit again Advanta had reported us as a charge off, so we had our loan officer contact Richard who blew up on him and when he asked for Richard's supervisor, Richard hung up on him. He then called me and told me that he didn't care if we paid or not, if we paid it's off his desk, if they take us to court it's off his desk.We are still receiving statements from Advanta, they are still demanding money and making forceful phone calls. They do not send out collection letters because in order to do so they must include our State Attorney General's number on them. I will be working with my state to stop this and I hope I can find an attorney to accept a class action suit against these predators! They have cost us our credit, almost our business and all of our personal savings to the point where we can hardly keep our home and their unfair, illegal predatory practices need to stop!
Additional info: This was a small business card for a Corporation and we were with them for 6-7 years before this housing and economic crisis threatened to wipe out our family operated construction business. The web site payment help is a farse it wouldn't allow us any payment options and then raised our rate to more then 30 percent for 6 months before anything was offered or communicated.
I can't imagine how they must treat people who don't want to pay the bill or don't talk to them...I wonder, do they wait outside with baseball bats?? I know I live in fear and concern.