Consumer complaint received 2017-12-29
Product: Credit card or prepaid card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Struggling to pay your bill — Credit card company won't work with you while you're going through financial hardship
Company: CAPITAL ONE FINANCIAL CORPORATION (WA)

Capital One acted in bad faith when we were attempting to negotiate an agreement to pay off a bill that had become seriously past due after a major theft drained our cash. 

Here is the sequence of events : 1 ) I called the phone number thats shown on the web site for making payment arrangements. I spoke with an agent named XXXX about our situation, and mentioned that our primary concern was to make arrangements that allowed us to preserve as much cash flow as possible so that we could begin replenishing the cash reserves that had been wiped out by the crisis. I was also up front with Will from the beginning of the call that I was only calling for information about the options and that I would not be able to make a commitment until I had the complete picture from all of our creditors, so that we did not overcommit to anyone. 

2 ) XXXX said that Capital One would accept a long term payment plan that would cap the interest at a rate of 7.9 % for a payment of approx. {$350.00} over 60 months. The card would be cancelled, but that was an acceptable trade-off for us. 

3 ) During this call, XXXX did not say anything about this being a one-time offer that I had to accept immediately or that there was, in fact, any formal offer on the table to accept or reject. I took away from the conversation that this was something we would be able to arrange when we were ready. We had similar information from other credit card companies, so the offer made sense. 

4 ) After reviewing the full situation with my assistant and my partner, we decided that the long term plans we were being offered were the best solution, and I called Capital One back, thinking that this would be a short, easy phone call. Thats when things started to go awry. 

5 ) I made my 2nd call. The 2nd person said that the offer XXXX had made was not available. To her credit, she recognized immediately that something had gone wrong and put me through to a supervisor before I requested it. 

6 ) The interaction with the supervisor was a different story. She tried to explain, over and over, that the offer XXXX had made was something that Id needed to accept immediately which was not what XXXX had said. She basically said that there was nothing she could do. She put me on hold to talk to a supervisor and then came back to say again that there was nothing that could be done. 

7 ) She gave me no options except to call back, in the hope that the system would reset itself and Id be able to get the offer, or a similar one again or to see about working with XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX 

I have been unable to reach anyone at Capital One who has the authority to resolve this problem directly. I do n't blame the supervisor ; I think Capital One 's systems set her up to fail, by not giving her any options or even the ability to put me through to someone who did have the authority to take action. 

We are concerned because the account is seriously past due, we want to resolve it, and yet Capital One 's systems seem to have broken down so that we can not.