A Letter to The Consumerist.

Dear Consumerist:

My name is Mary and I would like to bring to your attention the utter ridiculousness that is Capital One. As we speak, my boyfriend Greg is, once again, on the phone with Capital One’s fraud department. This marks the fourteenth person and the tenth hour he’s spent with the great individuals of Capital One’s Customer Service department.

On February 8^th, nearly four months ago, a charge appeared on his card of $100.00. The charge came out of a Sears, in the form of a gift card, in Glendale, Arizona. We live in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The charge was not authorized, we’ve never been to AZ, and most importantly, Greg has never lost possession of his credit card. Concerned, Greg disputed the charge.

(Currently, Greg is talking to the fifteenth person since this all began)

The following day, Greg attempted to use his card at Taco Bob’s, only to find that it had been suspended, without a single whiff of notification. Ok, he’s pretty pissed now. His account remained frozen for about a week, and Capital One claimed they were “looking into it.” We thought maybe, just maybe, they were doing something about it.

WRONG.

The account was reopened, and the charge was reapplied.

Greg is about to shit a brick (Sixteenth person, by the way).

Greg called Capital One, and asked them to send him the written disputed charge. They did so. Greg then sent Capital One a hand-written, signed letter including photocopies of his credit card and driver’s license. The letter explained as explicitly as humanly possible that the charge was not authorized by him and needed to be removed from his bill. He then proceeded to wait. And wait.

(Seventeenth person, and this one claims to be a supervisor)

After a week or so, Greg called Capital One and spent three useless hours with four useless people, being transferred back and forth over and over again. Finally, someone knew something! A lovely lady told him that there had been a “mass account compromise” AKA, tons of card numbers were lost and they couldn’t do shit about it. Of course, she added that the charge on Greg’s card had NOTHING to do with this, which we found extremely hard to believe since Greg’s card has never moved from his wallet. She told Greg that his card would be permanently deactivated, and they would send him another card in seven days. While Greg was about ready to tell Capital One to shove a stick up their ass, he accepted this.

Meanwhile, in another string of calls, including a deliberate disconnection and a man who said “call back in an hour” and hung up, Greg actually came across someone who seemed to give a shit about his situation. The man agreed that it was a fraudulent charge and told Greg that the charge would be removed from his bill within forty-eight hours.

Well guess what.

It wasn’t.

(on hold now, waiting for the eighteenth person to pick up the damn phone)

So Greg called back again, and was told that the charge was still under investigation, and that it would remain there until it was solved, but it would not affect his interest fees or anything like that.

(Person number eighteen has finally picked up)

So, life went on. Briefly. I’d like to make clear that during this time, Greg did not use his new credit card.

(He’s on hold again; he talked to person number eighteen for approximately twelve seconds)

He checked his online statement, and found, SURPRISE!, the $100.00 charge was STILL THERE. And with the added bonus of a $29 dollar late fee, and a $1.22 interest fee! That made it the third, count it, THIRD time the charge had been dropped and then added.

Greg immediately called them, and two and a half hours later, one of the idiot drones finally told him that the charge had been reapplied (without Greg’s consent, mind you) and therefore the late and interest fees were valid.

(Person nineteen, and we seemed to have moved backwards. This person has no FUCKING idea what Greg is talking about. We’re back to square one for the two- billionth time)

So they told Greg they would send him another fraud investigation letter thing within two weeks. Nothing came, but I’m sure you saw that coming.

That was exactly sixteen days ago. So now, here we are, on the phone. Again. It’s been an hour. Six people. Zero will help him. Even the supervisor (named Fernando, the only person who gave Greg his name) wouldn’t help him.

No one is willing to pay any attention to what Greg is trying to tell them. This was a fraudulent charge! The signature on the receipt from Arizona was three lines! Literally, three diagonal lines in a row! What utter bullshit is that? Greg has successfully wasted about eleven hours of his life, equaling 660 wasted cell phone minutes.

No one knows what he’s talking about. No one cares what he’s talking about. Capital One has, hands down, proven to have the absolute worst customer service department in the history of the world. And for a card whose slogan is “The No Hassle Card”, they have done nothing but. I hope the Consumerist can warn its readers to avoid Capital One at all costs. Their idiotic system has been nothing but a money-hungry, robotic, muzak-brain-numbing bunch of outsourced morons. Fuck you Capital One, Fuck. You.

Sincerely,

Mary (writing for Greg, who is still on the phone with them)