#2Consumer 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,#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.