DO not do any business with Advanta! I have been a loyal credit card member for years and always paid my monthly balances in full each month. I never carried a balance! NO INTEREST OR FEES – Ever! In July 2007 I went to pay my bill on-line….. THEIR WEB SITE WAS DOWN!!! The credit card was for my business and with a tight schedule I always paid via their web for the ease and convenience. The bill was due that day, I could not make the payment, and did not have the time to call them or try later that day or maybe the next day. I wanted to make the payment now and could not because someone at Advanta botched a web update.

The Advanta Story from their site: “At Advanta, our focus is on small businesses, and no one knows the needs of small business like we do. Started in 1951 with $30 in seed money in founder Jack Alter's spare bedroom, Advanta has grown into one of the nation's largest providers (through Advanta Bank Corp.) of business credit cards to small businesses, without forgetting what it is like to be a small or start-up business.” OK, Yeah right! Don’t bend over anytime soon because it’s 2007 and you will pay for that seed and growing out of your a**!

When I called (now after the due date) the customer service representative told me he was aware of the problem and told me I could make a payment today over the phone and I did in full as always. I asked him (more than once) if I would be charged for the phone payment and a late fee and he assured me that our conversation would be documented and that I should not have a problem. OK

Well, I received my next statement and I had a charge for $12.00 for a phone payment service fee and a $39.00 late fee. I figured no problem, I would call Advanta and they would see the notes from my last call and credit me for their error. WEB SITE DOWN! I was told that they have credited me for a late fee in the past and they can not and will not waive the late fee but will remove the phone payment fee. Yippee, I wanted to jump for joy but thought the seed I mentioned earlier might fall out and it would smell like the BULL S**T that Advanta has grown to be! Bogus Fees and Charges for their web outage and forget me the small business customer “as their founder focused on?”. Advanta would rather focus on charging you fees for their loss in interest and/or loose you as a customer. The Advanta Story – SCAM YOU OUT OF YOUR MONEY! Advanta Customer service? NO, IT DOES NOT EXIST! No such department.

I hate this company! They did the same to our small business a couple of years ago after they continually increased our credit limit. After several attempts to lower my rate from 30%, they finally brought it down to 19.99. I've been trying to pay off my balance with timely monthly payments which are way over the minimal. Was late by 2-3 days with 2 payments in the last 12 months and now my APR went from 19.99 to 29.99. Contacted Advanta - no help! I'm already signed up for a class action suit again them but I want to know if I should continue to pay off the balance.

I have had my Advanta card for about 10 years. Never missed a payment, excellent FICO, excellent credit. Went to make my end of August payment and found they jacked mhy interest rate from 10.05% to 30.05%. Claimed they sent an opt out letter. Never received it! Payment went up by 3 times and interest up by 5 times! Filed a complaint with the BBB and closed my account. Fortunately got back the excess interest. I am now working with an attorney, Alan Finkel, in Commack, NY to try and file a class action lawsuit against Advanta. I have seen over 200 victims of this same thing. 2 lawsuits have been filed and won already against Advanta in Philadelphia.

In case everyone has not been notified. I was recently was notified by Advanta that they are closing ALL Advanta Business Card accounts as of May 31st. They say a 'trust' that had been funding their business is no longer going to provide funding. Check out their website for more information.
Oh and of course, you still gotta pay them what you owe them.

Gee you would think that with them charging interest rates in the 35+% range, they could make a profit...

Sounds a bit strange...

I have (as of today - that is "had") an Advanta Bank credit card for my very small business. I had it for a number of years, long enough that I can't remember when I opened it. At least 5 years...could be 10 years. At first I used it a bit.

Then they pulled the ole' predatory "change the due date" combined with the "don't mail the statement to the customer in time so that they can have a hope of paying on time" trick. Which of course as expected ... worked perfectly. So I started making a series of late payments. They of course then changed my interest rate to the low 30%s and hit me with outrageous late fee payments. OK... I missed the payments so ... that's what I got. Luckily I never had a balance over a few hundred bucks on it, so it was pretty easy to pay it off in short order.

The main damage was the FEES!

So I paid the balance off and stopped really using the card for my business, since I have an AMEX Business Coprorate Gold card that is the main card I use for that. (Did I mention that my credit rating is around 850?)

I had one recurring automatic payment of $9.95 a month for my business email account that I left on the Advanta card simply for MY convenience of not having to change the autopayment situation. Advanta kept sending the statement so late that I kept missing getting that minor little bill paid, and I STILL had a few repetitve $30 late payment fees on only a $10 bill.

So I paid the account into the plus column (positive balance) by sending about $50-75 ahead of the coming $10 bill. And I kept it that way with a positive balance for a LONG time. I expected that after a while my interest rate would come down. IT NEVER DID. Well over a year like that, I believe. They have been holding about $50-75 of MY money in a positive balance for all that time. No interest. Nice hunh?

Today I went to go online and check my business email. Onl to find that it was declined the automatic Advanta payment on 4/27. My card says "good thru 05/11". I called Advanta's customer service # to see what was up. I KNOW that I am currently $60 ahead of the coming bills. In fact, their automated system confirmed that balance and a payment THAT day before I even talked to a live person.

I got some young lady with a thick Indian accent that said her name was "Trisha" (yeah right...Trisha is a traditional Indian name). I asked her what happened that caused my card to be declined, and remionded her that I had a credit on file about $50 more than the current charge. She told me that they HAD SENT me a new credit card in the mail and that the current card was suspended because of that. She said the new card had not been activated yet. THAT caught me off guard. I had not received that new card, and I told her so.

She said that was why the charge was declined, that my current card was no longer valid. I then asked her what day it was today. She said April 28th. I said I had a card in my hands that said "good thru 05/o9"...which is the END of NEXT month. She just repeated that the current card was inactivated. I got totally ticked off and told her to just to pay the GD existing bill on the currently valid card. She sputtered and said she couldn't. I then asked to speak to a manager. At frst she was reluctant to do so. I had to ask a couple of times. I ended up DEMANDING to speak to a manager to get anywhere.

I then got Shelly who said she was in Salt Lake City. She was easy to understand... no Indian accent. Basically I got the same "song and dance" from her. One this that was different from her was that she used a different tense for the "new credit card" spiel. She did not say that had SENT me a new card. She said that they were SENDING me a new card. To me an important disticntion. That told me that she KNEW AMD EXPECTED that I had not yet received the new card in the mail. But she still insisted that the curent card was no longer valid no matter what it said on the card itself. She made NO explanation for why the descrepancy, and no apology for any inconvenience or confusion either.

The important point here is that I NEVER got the words "I'm sorry" or ANY kind of indication that this was unfortunate out of either of them. THAT was the breaking point for me. Shelly finally told me that to pay the bill she'd have to re-activate my old card (that never should have been inactivated to START with...it was still valid). She then asked me what I wanted her to do.

I told her that what I wanted was an address that I could send a complaint to about all this and the terrible customer service. To her credit she immediately then gave me Advanta Bank, P.O. Box 30715, Salt lake City, UT 84130. I then said, "What you can do for me is cancel my account, and inform the credit bureaus that it was closed due to the owner's request."

Only THEN did she say she was sorry that this ...blah, blah, blah. It was too late for me. I then hung up.

PLEASE do not EVER do any business with Advanta bank!!! Caveat Emptor!