Capital One make sure it is NOT in your wallet.

I’ve reached the end of the line with Capital one. At one point in time I had checking, saving, credit card, line of credit and mortgage with them. I finally canceled the final thing I had with them the credit card. Here are the series of events that caused me to do this.

My home equity line of credit was sold. Now this happens on a regular basis so it wasn’t too much of a surprise. But it was sold to a company firmly planted in the middle of the last century. You cannot move money electronically. You have to use checks. The original checks I received from the company were 6 inches high by 9 inches wide. They looked fake. If I received them as payment for something I would wonder if they were legitimate. I placed an order for new checks. I going to use the line of credit to pay for Charlie’s vet bills. It will be interesting to see what shows up.

Next my mortgage was sold. When this happened the new mortgage company sent a whole series of letters with information about what was going to happen. They assured over and over and over and over again that nothing would change. You wouldn’t have to worry about a thing. The only thing you would have to remember is the new address to send payments to and when to start doing it. And yet the new company wasn’t competent enough to pay my home owner’s insurance. They even wrote me a letter blaming me for the fact they didn’t pay it.

Then along came trying to get a copy of a canceled check to prove I’d paid a bill. I first requested the information on line. I made the initial request and a couple of weeks later called back to see how things were progressing. I was told there was a problem with it. I wondered when they were going to tell me about that. I was finally able to get a copy of the check. The only problem was it was just the front of the check so there was no way to prove the check had been cashed. This happened not once but twice. Four months after the first request I finally received something I could use to prove I’d paid the bill.

After all these fun and games. I closed the checking and savings account. At least I thought I closed out the checking account rather than just withdrawing all the money. Turns out for some reason if was not closed and one of the automatic payments I had set up was sent. Which caused the account to be over drawn. A phone call got that cleared up. But one has to wonder why the account wasn’t close in the first place.

I kept the credit card. This is very much a catch 22 situation. If you cancel the credit card, it changes your debt ration if you are carrying balances on other cards and that will reduce your credit score. But if you keep the card that means your available usable credit can bring down your credit score as well. From a little research keeping the card has less of an impact on your score thus the reason I kept the card.

The final straw with Capital One was there decision to lower my credit line. As usual it was an oh by the way we decided this. I decided I had had enough of Capital One. I figure my credit score will take a hit from this anyway so might as well just close the account.

So that’s my experience with Capital One and something to remember about Capital One make sure IT IS NOT IN YOUR WALLET.