@SouthJamaica wrote:
@RonM21 wrote:
Anyone agree with me or disagree? Am I missing something? Thoughts? I'm all ears right now. I have no problem if someone tells me I'm wrong here. I just want to hear viewpoints on this, and also know if I am handling this correctly, and how to move forward if it does not work out.
I don't think it's right; a PC should not have resulted in a new account.
I had a similar situation with another credit union, but I knew what was going to happen and wasn't blindsided. I wanted to PC a card. They said it could be done but the old account would be closed, and a new account opened. I wasn't thrilled but I was willing to do it.
But in other PC cases I've had, there was no closure and opening of accounts; there was just the change. It seems that banks have an easier time than credit unions in handling PC's.
SJ, that is an interesting point, because while going back and forth with them, it took me several times of explaining before I think they understood what I was trying to say about the conversion or PC type sitiatuion I thought it was. They were so focused on the HP that they thought I had from apping, which I didn't do, that they weren't understanding. So, maybe regular banks do have an easier time with this sort of thing.
@Anonymous wrote:
I am not leaving PenFed anytime soon. They are infinitely better than my third credit union, Security Service FCU.
I too belong to NFCU, PenFed, and SSFCU. I have been with SSFCU for going on three years and they have yet to offer me any credit products and wanted a co-signer when I was shopping car loans this past summer. I am about close my accounts with SSFCU as I just do not see any benefit of staying with them other than there is a branch three blocks away from my home.
@Anonymous wrote:
@Gmood1 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:I think most others have already answered your questions, so I will probably not add much. I do not want to add salt to the wound, but it has been fairly well documented here that PenFed does not do product changes without opening a new card-yours wasn't technically a PC but it was within the same parameter. I realize you were told one thing by the CSR but....we honestly cannot trust CSRs unfortunately.
1) PenFed is, at least in my opinion, garbage. Maybe not garbage, but outclassed and beaten by lots of other CU's, especially NFCU.
2) Never, never trust what a CSR says. If what the CSR you are speaking with causes you to question things, hang up and call again, or turn to social media to get a senior representative to help you. I learned this the hard way with Citibank.
3) Did I mention that PenFed is bleh?
Sorry this happened to you and I hope it gets resolved. And your posting is a good warning to others.
Wow CoNative...tell us how you really feel. 😂
Well, we are all allowed an opinion about these financial institutions. I certainly have a few choice words about some of them I've dealt with in the past.
I hope potential members at least take the time to check them out.
Having been a member of at least 13 CUs and 11 banks. I can say without a doubt IME.
They are far, far and away from the bottom of the pile.😆
But that's just my perspective from the few I've experienced.
I remember a person at Penfed, telling me they did a HP as well. Though it wasn't.
I guess she assumed it was, because she could see all of my credit history. This was the person that calls you after submitting the questionnaire. Not the normal CSRs.
LOL Gmood1. I was going to give you a hard time about one of your earlier postings but decided not to. You are correct, PenFed is not the bottom of the pile...but they seem to have gotten worse since I joined them nearly 10 years ago. The Promise card is absolute garbage...no rewards, 11.74% APR on a CU card with no rewards seems high (or maybe I am spoiled-but when BofA, Capital One and Citibank give me better rates-and the former give rewards as well-it is shameful for the CU)-about the only thing its good for are the 0% balance transfers with no fees and its high credit line (which I really do not need). I used to like them, I really did. I liked the no HP offers; the relatively low interest rates, but lately I don't know. Their policy to not allow PC's, their awful checking accounts, dreadful-cheesy commercials "great rates for everyone!" and the CSR that hung up on me when I needed to update information etc has just left a bad taste in my mouth. I think honestly that NFCU and USAA have just spoiled me and PenFed falls short.
I still do recommend PenFed to folks who cannot join NFCU but boy, if you have the golden ticket to NFCU, PenFed just doesn't compare.
Some good things about PenFed are of course the no HP pre approvals; relatively good auto loan rates, excellent personal loan rates (if you have excellent credit) and they are like Amex in that if you prove yourself with your first product, they trust you completely with future ones. I am not leaving PenFed anytime soon. They are infinitely better than my third credit union, Security Service FCU.
PenFed needs to own up to this issue that they caused Ron. That would go a long way in terms of customer service.
CONative, I appreciate your sentiment towards me in them owning up to this issue. My thoughts exactly about the customer service when I asked them how is this fair to me? I told them maybe there was miscommunication on both ends, and if so fine. But we can't at least make it right? Heck, I'd even be willing to start from scratch, which is go back to my Cash Rewards card and act like this whole thing ever happened. Cancel everything else after that out if need be. These were my thoughts at the time of the phone call.
@AverageJoesCredit wrote:
Lol, try PCing a card with WF, Fun for the whole family
Haha, AJC, it was too easy to slide that line in lol
@Anonymous wrote:Well I think everyone else has covered all the bases. Hopefully you can get this sorted out. I had Amex mess up my reports earlier this year and never got it sorted because of all the hoops they wanted me to go through, I just decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.
Definitely will avoid PenFed though, I’ve been reading some rather disappointing things about them to say the least. I am very thankful that my grandfather’s service got me in with NFCU.
Although I will say that I have SSFCU and if PenFed has messages (email or text) when transactions hit your card, they’re already miles ahead of SSFCU’s absolutely horrible credit management system... I check my accounts multiple times a week so I don’t have to worry about it but it blows my mind that we are about to go into 2019 and SSFCU doesn’t have transaction alerts for their credit cards. There are other annoyances with them too but that would be a whole other thread.
End of my mini rant lol. Hopefully it gets sorted!
Thank you Saeren. It is a bit of a mess at the moment. I am glad that at least I do have NFCU, so that is a positive here. I guess your experiences with SSFCU speak to how we all can have different faults that we find with different lenders, based on what we have been through.
@RonM21 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:Well I think everyone else has covered all the bases. Hopefully you can get this sorted out. I had Amex mess up my reports earlier this year and never got it sorted because of all the hoops they wanted me to go through, I just decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.
Definitely will avoid PenFed though, I’ve been reading some rather disappointing things about them to say the least. I am very thankful that my grandfather’s service got me in with NFCU.
Although I will say that I have SSFCU and if PenFed has messages (email or text) when transactions hit your card, they’re already miles ahead of SSFCU’s absolutely horrible credit management system... I check my accounts multiple times a week so I don’t have to worry about it but it blows my mind that we are about to go into 2019 and SSFCU doesn’t have transaction alerts for their credit cards. There are other annoyances with them too but that would be a whole other thread.
End of my mini rant lol. Hopefully it gets sorted!
Thank you Saeren. It is a bit of a mess at the moment. I am glad that at least I do have NFCU, so that is a positive here. I guess your experiences with SSFCU speak to how we all can have different faults that we find with different lenders, based on what we have been through.
There is definitely no one-size-fits-all when it comes to financial institutions. Even NFCU has people that say they have terrible experiences with them while PenFed was amazing to them so as with everything in life, it’s good to have the freedom to pick where we do business but I really do hope that PenFed sorts the mess they made out for you. In my opinion, they never should have said that they can’t give you a CLI on a card they are discontinuing because that’s what grandfathering is for. You don’t dump members off of a credit product they are happy with and managing appropriately just because it’s a minor inconvenience to have to keep your underwriting rules for that product available to service your members who are happy with it.
@RonM21 wrote:
By the way, nobody else thought the situation about them alleging they Hard Pulled was strange? Especially seeing as how they never did one? And I quote "We hard pull for all new cards." They even argued the HP was a reason for my drop in score, yet they never HP'd nor have I gotten an alert that they did. Plus I was talking about Experian lol.
Sorry about the confusion Ron.
Try not to let it get you down- You have great scores and they will recover quickly..
What's done is done- sorry. And Congrats on the new card..
That said; If you had an offer & accepted the Promise, there is no HP.
I got an offer a while back & opened The Power Cash Rewards with no HP-
As always the CSR's are just not as knowledgeable as they should be. Offer vs app that's probably where their confusion is.
Hang in there.. This too shall pass..
@RonM21 wrote:
@NRB525 wrote:
Sorry to hear this happened, but thanks for sharing your experience.
You said you had an online SP CLI offer? And there was no link to just click through to accept that offer? Reason I ask is I have taken some of their BT rate offers on my Promise card, but I have to call in to complete the transfer. So the missing technology, plugged by a CSR would make sense.
My personal approach to CSR is now “I only give you one task, never two” because of mix ups like this. For example I like to think that at the point the CSR said the CLI could not be done, we are phasing out the card, I might say thanks, that takes care of it for today.Great question NRB. I did not clarify. I did not have the actual CLI increase button. This was one of those situations where they offered different cards, etc, and I chose or "wanted" to just take the amount they were offering for a different card added onto my current card. That was what they said normally would've happened, except they couldn't on this card.
You're right, I should've just been done with it as soon as they told me that. It would've eliminated this issue. In fact, had I been thinking, I would've questioned why they never reached out to me to let me know this card was being phased out. That alone would've made me stop right there.
I'm surprised nobody picked up on this. OP was not offered a CLI on the soon-to-be-discontinued Cash Rewards card. He was offered a different card as a new account with a credit limit of $2800. If he had simply accepted the offer, the new account would have been reported to the credit bureaus. OP tried to beat the system by asking PenFed to change the terms of his offer to a $2800 credit limit increase to his existing card. When PenFed said they couldn't do that, they agreed to close the Cash Rewards card and open the Promise card for the combined amount of the old Cash Rewards credit limit plus the $2800. And that's where the misunderstanding arose.
Those of us who have done business with PenFed for a long time know two things are almost always true:
1. PenFed does not do cardholder-requested "product changes". They close old accounts and open new accounts and report the new account to the credit bureaus.
2. PenFed does a hard pull on cardholder-requested credit limit increases.
OP's request triggered both of those PenFed "rules." I have been with PenFed for 25 years, and I have also run afoul of both rules. Now I know them, and I'm able to work within their system. I learned the hard way, and so must OP. These two rules are pretty well documented here on myFICO, so a little research would have provided ample warning to OP that his counterproposal to PenFed was a non-starter.
The Cash Rewards card is one of the oldest PenFed rewards cards. They gutted all the benefits other than the gas category when they introduced the Platinum Rewards card (the one with the points that are worth less than a penny). It was pretty clear that the Cash Rewards card was on life support. PenFed took it off of their credit cards page almost two years ago, so there have been no new cards issued, but they have not yet taken action to close down the existing accounts. OP didn't realize that the customer service rep was describing a future phaseout of the card. As of now, it is still alive (barely) and a much better card than the Promise.
NRB525 is absolutely correct in saying that we should never ask a customer service rep to undertake two tasks at once.