Consumer complaint received 2023-11-10
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem when making payments — You never received your bill or did not know a payment was due
Company: CAPITAL ONE FINANCIAL CORPORATION (CT)

I have two credit cards from Capital One - a personal card and a card for my small business. This complaint applies to both. I was set up for automated notifications to both my cell phone and email account one week before payments are due. I rely on these notifications as I work essentially XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX days per week, and can be anywhere in the world when payments are due since I work domestically as a XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX After a lengthy history of on-time payments each and every month, there came a time a month ago that I received no notification, either via email or text, until the payment was late ( by no more than a day or so ). As it is important to me that all payments are on-time, this was upsetting to me. After making the payment I immediately contacted Capital One 's customer service department to determine what had happened and why I had received no notification. They determined - and relayed to me - that for some reason, the notifications I had set up had cleared and were no longer set. I received an apology, and the customer service representative remitted the late fees ( one from each of the two accounts ). I was also promised that they would make efforts to ensure this did not happen again. 

Unfortunately, it did happen again, one month later ( this past weekend ), when I once again received a late notice without ever having received any of the notifications I had set up ( email or text, on either card ). Once again it was no more than a day or two, and once again I immediately made payment and then contacted Capital One ( on XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX  ) to understand why notifications had failed a second time. The female representative I spoke with set up a conference call between me, her, and a Capital One technical support representative. With regard to text notices, the tech support rep theorized that a software update at Capital One 's end might have cleared the flags. As far as email notices were concerned, with all three of us on the line, the support rep attempted to manually trigger notices and we were all able to determine that they were bouncing. The support representative suggested that the ISP that handles the XXXX email account may be applying an overly strict Spam protocol that was not letting the emails through and therefore they were never actually reaching my computer. They suggested contacting the ISP and requesting that the Spam filtering be reduced to a less aggressive level. Although I have used the same ISP for more than a decade, have not made any changes to my email in years, am not aware of any changes made by the ISP, and have not had any such difficulty with any other vendor, I did subsequently follow through and make that request of my ISP. 

Before disconnecting, I expressed the concern to the customer service representative that since creditworthiness is usually determined algorithmically by computer, I now potentially had four negative flags against my accounts : two latenesses each, however slight, against two different accounts. I expressed that since we had established that these were failures of technology and not my failures, I wanted to ensure that there would be no negative impacts moving forward. The representative assured me that there would be no such impacts. " I'm looking at your accounts right now, '' she told me. " You've been a perfect customer. I'm notating your file concerning what happened here. You're not going to have any problem about this. '' This morning, XX/XX/2023, I received an emailed notice from Capital One that the credit limit on my business card was being reduced from its original {$12000.00} to {$4000.00} due to the late pays on both accounts. This is the exact outcome the Capital One representative promised on XX/XX/2023, would not occur. As you know, having my credit limit reduced substantially by a lender is extremely damaging to my XXXX  score. The effect is to punish me ( and my small business ) because Capital One 's technology failed - after an express promise to the contrary by a Capital One representative. 

Because the failure affected both credit cards, I anticipate that while this complaint is pending, it is likely that the other card will receive the same punitive action, although that has not happened yet. 

I called in response to the notice and ended up being transferred to an individual who identified himself as " XXXX XXXX' with an employee number of XXXX, and a job title of " Accounts Supervisor. '' XXXX made clear that he had the personal authority to return the credit limit to its original level, but refused to do so. He stated that despite the statements to the contrary by the previous rep and the technical support rep, he believed the notices had in fact been sent out. He didn't care what representations had been made before. XXXX refused to transfer my call to anybody else, stating that he was the highest authority who actually spoke directly to customers, and that this ended the matter. 

I made one additional follow-up call to Capital One to obtain the first name and employee number of the female representative I had spoken with on XXXX XXXX XXXX the one who had assured me that there would be no negative impact from the two failures to send me the notifications I had subscribed to. Capital One 's representatives refused to provide that information but stated that the individual 's notes were indeed in their system and could be retrieved and read. 

As the matter currently stands, the credit limit on my small business card remains at its reduced level and I anticipate that the company will do the same thing with my personal card while this complaint is pending. 

As a secondary issue, the credit line reduction notice mentions " The amount of your recent monthly payment ( s ) relative to the balance on this Capital One account. '' After three years of relatively meager earnings by the business due to the pandemic ( but carried by my concurrent employment as a XXXX XXXXXXXX ), I had not been charging significant amounts to these cards. However, we then booked about {$50000.00} in work from a longtime client. I therefore felt free to run up the balances on these cards a bit in anticipation of that income. I was not aware that making payments that were more than the minimum but did not meet some unpublished criteria considered internally by Capital One would justify a credit line decrease. Presumably the reduction would not have occurred but for the late payments, taken in tandem with this secondary issue. 

FIRST : I would respectfully advance the proposition that when a credit card company offers a notification service like this one, and a customer relies upon that system to their detriment, the company should be estopped from penalizing the customer in any way as a consequence of a failure of that system. 

SECOND : It is unfair and unreasonable for a credit card company to maintain a secret set of criteria ( in this case, an unpublished relationship between balance and payment amount ) and use that to reduce a credit limit without advance notice and opportunity to correct the problem. If the bank has a concern about those two numbers, it should be required to publish the algorithm so customers know what their obligations are in advance. Additionally, if such a concern develops, the lender should be required to notify the customer and provide an opportunity for correction prior to taking action that will have a negative impact on the customer or the customer 's reputation or XXXX score.