I don't have or love Cap 1
just realized their more suited to the sub-prime market
No matter if they offer CC's for people with Excellent credit
That's why I had to give my Cap 1 card the boot!!!
@Anonymous wrote:I love Cap One! They're the best! They rock the house! Best CCC ever!
Please don't ever do that again. 
LOVE them! Have always treated me right even when I was not so good to them, I have nothing but good to say about their loyality and products!
@Anonymous wrote:
@NRB525 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@NRB525 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
The problem lies within the transition between a subprime customer to a prime customer.This right here.
THIS is why many of us dislike them. Even I used them to start my journey. Many of us did. Credit steps is a fantastic program. The rewards program is slick, just works, and super low hassle.
But, when you start raking in the Amex ,citi,chase, Barclay cards and start landing serious limits, Capone does not keep up. You want to stay loyal to them, but they force you out.
I was gone as soon as I laned my first amex. I begged them to drop my annual fee at the end of the year, or upgrade me. No dice. I closed the card and have been giving my non category spend to everyone else at lower cash back. Now I have double Cash. I honestly loved the fact thset they gave me a chance with my first card, I was upset when they showed that they didn't want my money.
To them they treated me like I had no credit history at all and bad credit when to this day I have never been denied a card. I'd like to say I'm a prime customer, but Capone never decided to acknowledge that and upgrade me so that I stayed with them.
To this day I miss my no hassle cash back with no redemption threshold. The purchase eraser was a great idea.
I hope one day they figure out how to be like a prime lender. They have great cards, mediocre CS, and poor customer market segment transitions. They spend lots of time training good credit customers with credit score tracking, credit steps to build good behavior, a first card, and then leave us rot. They spend money on making prime customers for other lenders.
Get a cap one with credit steps. Get your CLI in 6 months. Apply for another lenders card with your flawless 6 month history, close cap one because you are in prime world.
Its a shame.
Glad to hear you had a good experience getting started with Cap One.
Did you ever outright app for another CapOne card like the Quicksilver or Venture or Venture One? If not, you were doing it wrong. CapOne doesn't seem to grow the starter cards from 3 digit to 5 digit limits, they need you to app like you would app with Chase, Citi, BofA, any other cards when you have an improved history.
If you go back and app for a real CapOne card now, you should see a better card and limit. I'm not saying it is right, but it is the way they seem to work.
Thanks! They were good to me, but its too late.
First, I had a 5 digit limit with them. I started with $300 and got bumped to about $1400.however, after that I got nothing.
I understand what you are getting at. I had a starter product and needed to apply for a better product. But really what are you applying for? I already had 1.5% cash back with a starter card.
Your options are
1. A card with 1.5% cash back and no AF
2. A travel card with 1.25 miles per dollar with no AF.
3. A travel card with AF at 2 points per mile
That's it.
Taking another triple pull to essentially upgrade to a card that I already have seems punitive.
A triple pull to upgrade to a no AF cash back card with the same perrks I already have is ,well, insane.
On top of only offering essentially 2 rewards products, upgrades seem to just remove fees. Hard pulls usually net you card benefits on approval. Capital one pulls just remove fees.
Their system makes moving through the product line a bad idea.
Let's say you took their secured card, improved your credit, got their AF card since you really needed to build up about 6 months history to get it, and then after you have better history you apply for the No AF rewards cards ( or venture) that require better scores. You just took 9 hard pulls to get a marginal rewards card.
Furthermore, their concepts on AF is inconsistent.
The 1.5% cash back card with the AF is the same as the non AF card. The AF is a penalty for not having good enough credit
The 1.25 miles per dollar card with no AF is different as the AF version offers you more miles per dollar.
Capital one is a great starter lender, but If you get caught up trying to upgrade your experience with them since they keep feeding you cards, you won't end up in a good spot. With the possibility of racking up 9 hard pulls in 1-2 years, you end up stuck with them until the HPs fall off so other lenders will even touch you.
Their system, if you stay in it, really damages your report with all the hard pulls. If you start down the capital one road, its a long one. When you reach the end of the card progression in a year, you have 3 HPs on every report. And a history of high utilization until you reach the end and finally get a passable limit.
The HP fade fast. By the time that year is out most have lost their impact. The first few 3x HP for the starter cards are just the cost of getting in the game, when AMEX, Chase, BofA, Citi would not touch a rebuilding applicant with a 10' pole, so is irrelevant to later arguments.
Which card did you have that was 5 digits? $1,400 is 4 digits?
You're always free to decide on a card, but the arguments about different rewards levels don't add up to a lot of difference in value. To get lucrative points or miles, an AF goes along with that, reducing the value of the points or miles substantially.
I'm not trying to be argumentative, just trying to counter the idea that CapOne is any worse than any other CCC at the basic level of CC functions.
First off. The typos in my post are terrible. That's what I get for posting at work.
I had a four digit limit. Correct. 5 was a typo.
I didn't say, or at least didn't try to say, that Capone is complete crap tier. Its not. We have other lenders for that job of holding down the bad tiers.
What I'm getting at is this. Capital one has a strategy that makes money off rebuilding and first starts. They aren't a lender for those with established credit. The rewards are weak. Period. The only saving grace is the simplicity.
At a base level of function, capital one is close but not as good as other companies.
Lerts go into what " base level of function" is.
1. Customer service
2. Customer retention
3. Fraud and conflict resolution
4. Product line up
5. Customer experience.
To me those 5 items delineate good lenders from bad.
1. Capital one customer service is hit and miss. Sometimes you Get a rep from India reading a script, sometimes you get Betty from Montana. Betty is helpful, India guy isn't. You can say this about a lot of companies, but item 5 is the killer.
5. As a Cap one customer it would seem that all calls would be rather adversarial. I'm the kind of person who can sweet talk someone into explaining something to me.I had to do that frequently. If I didn't push the CSR the answer would be typically just a " no we don't/ can't do that. " . With no explanations, it at first glance seems as of the CSR doesn't want to help you. After forcing them to explain a policy I usually understood why they couldn't help me. Without beating the customer service out of them, they seem like unhelpful jerks rather than just being over restricted by policy as they typically were.
Talking to CSR s who don't know how to smoothly reply and explain either why they can't help you, or what they can do makes for a crap experience.
2. Customer retention- my previous posts speak to how weak this area is. Quick recap: unless you want to burn pulls, you will be looking at other lenders for a second card. Burning 3 pulls per card is not normal. Other lenders offer starter cards that have few rewards and at worst are double pulls.
3. No experience here. By law I assume they are at par with other lenders.
4. Product line up is strong for rebuilding and credit new comers. Beyond your first card orafter your rebuild phase its all garbage. Annual fee or not. Only saving grace is simplicity.
Remember I'm talking about how lame they are as anything but a first card, or for rebuilders. I agree they work well as rebuild safe harbors. They take the battered and broken. They take newbies. This is good.
Compared to other lenders, its piss poor service, but that bad service is better than no service. Their base is weak. They are a basre minimum company. At core, its a solid card issuer. They offer no hassle. But also no frills and next to no friendliness.
After you make it out of the starter card phase or finish a rebuild, its clear that the road ends there. No CLI for the most part unless god looks down upon you, PC to other products is very rare. Etc
They function well at base, but its not polished. Its like a beater car. It works, but your next car isn't going to be another rust bucket with slightly more paint left on it.
Its hard to say they are " as good as any other lender, " when tons of other lenders offer better serving and flexibility.
I've said this, time and time again. 
Pretty much this is them. I chose to go with one of their prime cards as a way of redemption. They only got 2 HP's out of me.
