I would have never thought it! Would you?
It is very important to read EVERYTHING that is attached to your statements and anything extra they mail separately. That's how they slipped it past me without my noticing. I thought it was just another yearly privacy statement and dismissed it. What they sent me was a notice that they were going up on my interest rate. Not just one percent but many percent!!!
Like I said, I had NEVER been late, never missed a payment, and always payed more than their minimum payment so what was the problem here?
I call them and they tell me that they are afraid that I will not pay! No lie! How can they go up on my interests on the thought that I would not pay? They had no answers for me. Not only did they go up on my interest rate, but just a few months previously they had given me a credit limit increase. Why would they give a credit increase to someone that you feared repayment from? I had never asked for a credit line increase by the way.
I knew I had to ditch this dirty company asap! Fortunately for me, I had another credit card company that I had cards with. They had a balance transfer feature (most do) and paid every penny back to this dirty company. They no longer had to worry about me paying them now huh? I called them and canceled them! I'll NEVER use them again!
Ok, now listen to this.. This SAME thing than happened to this new company that I went to use. The difference is, I caught them before the rate went up by catching it in my paperwork. I paid the bill off QUICKLY and than I decided to cut them off too. I told them that I wanted to cancel my account. At the time I had 2 accounts with them. They begged me to stay with them because I had done business with them for 6 years at the time and they KNEW that I had never paid late or missed any payments.
To suffice me, they combined my two accounts into one so I had one bigger credit line instead of two smaller amounts. They gave me a check up to my credit limit at 1.9% until the balance was paid in full. They also decreased my interest rate. You know how little interest that 1.9% is? I am still to this day paying the note off from this balance. As you could imagine, at 1.9% it's not my pressing bill. I'd rather pay a higher interest note off before this one. ;) I ended up using them! I owed on some land at 12% interest and used the 1.9% to pay it off.. Now I'm saving 10% interest and the property legally belongs to us! Now you see what I mean about using them?
I wrote all of this in a warning that they can target anyone. Just because you are doing everything right doesn't mean you won't get penalized. We have to make sure that we use them and they don't use us. If your options aren't open on what you can do, you may find yourself pinned into something you don't agree with.
As for now, I don't trust any of them. I keep in mind that I am using them. Try not to pay any interest at all by paying my bill off each month we charge. Otherwise I use them for lower interest on things I may be paying higher interest on at the present time (like the property we were buying).
I hope y'all learned a little something from my experience! Don't trust'em!!!
