I closed my Capital One No Hassles Rewards MC today. I opened the account in May of 2011 with an initial CL of $500. After 5 statements I received an auto CLI to $750. And there it got stuck while all my other credit cards gradually but steadily raised my CLs. My annual fee was going to be due in the next statement, so I just paid the balance yesterday and closed it this morning. Not surprisingly, there was no transfer to a retention department or anything like that. The automated system summarily closed it for me in about 30 seconds.
It's constantly asked in these forums whether Capital One is a prime or sub-prime credit card company. I propose that it should be viewed from a reverse angle. I think Capital One has prime customers and sub-prime customers, and a set of products and policies aligned to each of the two groups. I suspect that because of my credit scores and history at the time I applied I unfortunately got put in the sub-prime category and accordingly was issued a card with a fixed top-end CL. Anyway, it felt good to close it out. My next higher Visa and MC CLs are $3,000, $5,000 and $6,500, so I won't be missing Capital One. I probably won't be applying for any more of their products either.
