Complaint Review: Advanta Business Card - Salt Lake City Utah

Thank you for contacting us about the terms of your Advanta account. Your Advanta rates are based on a variety of factors including information about your Advanta account, such as credit line utilization and payment history and information we obtain from credit bureaus about your personal and business credit. The information we obtain from the credit bureaus can include your activity on any other accounts you may have including mortgages and other credit cards. In addition to factors such your account history with us and your credit scores, our evaluation also considers the economy. Given the current difficult economic environment, we expect accounts with similar behavior and credit profiles to your account to now have a greater likelihood of defaulting than before and your new pricing reflects that higher risk. Our lending criteria are more conservative and may differ from other financial institutions. These changes do not mean you have bad credit. It means that based on our criteria, this is the APR (interest rate) we are able to offer for you to obtain credit from us with your business card account. As a result of our review, your Annual Percentage Rate is now LIBOR + 27.59, currently 31.310%, for purchases and balance transfers. The cash and convenience check rate is now LIBOR + 31.59, currently 35.310%. We appreciate the opportunity to serve you and your business needs. If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to contact our Customer Service Center. You can visit us online 24 hours a day at www.advanta.com or call us toll free at (800) 705-7255, Monday - Friday 8:00 am to 8:00 pm and Saturday 8:00 am to 5:00 pm Eastern Time. Amy B. Account Manager Advanta This supports what Business Week says in one of their articles. If you have a high balance, even though you have always paid on time, never been late, have excellent credit, and a good FICO, they're using the economic crisis to screw over anyone running a lot of credit and making payments, no matter what the amount. I wish someone could file a class action lawsuit against them for lying by stating they sent out notices of the change in terms and did not give any of their customers a chance to close their card and opt out before they screwed all us over with the higher rates. Fortunately I have enough resources to pay the theives off in the next 10 days.

I was reading on Business Week, one of the other big banks is doing the same thing. Apparently if you have carried a balance for several months, only made the minimum payments, and have a lot of other debt, the banks are now jacking your interest rate, probably hoping you will go away, because you are a higher credit risk long term even if you do have excellent credit and such. They did the same thing to me and I was actually paying more than the minimum balance. Somebody in Washington is supposedly working on new laws or standards where they will cap these stinking high rates to something more reasonable like they used to have when they capped them at like 18%, but they say the banking industry is going to fight it tooth and nail. I doubt we'll see any relief. I still wonder if they have done something illegal and broken usury law because they keep claiming to everybody they sent out a notice of the change in terms which would have given most folks time to opt out. But this "magical" letter has not seemed to arrive to anyone. Somebody need to sue these buzzards. Wish I could afford to.