After reading many complaints against this company that sound even worse than mine I will throw my two worth. About a year ago last Christmas my wife was going in for some surgery so I made a payment for November then a week or so later gave them another 1000 dollars so my Dec. bill would be covered and I could be with her. I'm in the hospital with her they call and say I'm late with my Dec. payment and demand payment over the phone. I told them that I had already made this payment and they argued that I made it to soon and they applied it to Nov. so I agreed to pay the min. to get rid of them. Then they charged me a late fee and raised my rate from 7% to 14%.I did finally get them to drop the late fee after a very heated discussion.
I have since used the card and carried a zero balance monthly so as not to be charged 14%.
Today they have informed me that they have canceled my account. I asked them why and they couldn't tell me all they could do is tell me there is a letter in the mail. I'm not crying over losing this card because they have been terrible to work with and until recently their website was a nightmare to figure out, but I would like to let people know this is not a good company to do business with and I hope with the economy being so bad that other credit card companies don't follow this path as well.

In conclusion: I can only assume they are in big money trouble and are dumping people like me who pay off their bill every month and keeping the 25% interest people. Right now they owe me 31.10 in rewards.
Other funny note today I got a statement in the mail telling me what a wonderful customer I am and wants me to start banking with them 24/7 LOL

I had a credit card with advanta and some how due to financial hardship was not able to make payments and wanted to have a settlement to pay off the card balance for reduced amount. After lot of phone calls and uncourteous conversation with everyone at this BANK managed to have the settlement to be paid over a period of few months. Did it as was aggreed on and I tell you these peolpe kept bothering me phone calls after phone calls for the remaing money( over the settlement amount). I paid all that we had aggreed on the settlement letter they sent me with dates to be paid by. They went into my credut history to put down BAD DEBT and many more notes to screw up my screwed up Credit history. Need to have an explaination why they made those notes on my credut history when they and me were in a settlement state. This abnk is a pretty lousy and cheap bait and catch type of bank. God please keep the good people away from these most idiotic banks. I will never nor the peolple I know will ever deal with them. I need to know the name of the Chairman of this bank to see if I can write to him.

Sufferer

I too have been scammed by Advanta.

I had a 2.9% rate, never paid late, always paid more than the minimum, never went near my limit, and out of no where, for no reason, they changed my rate to 29%!

This happened last June, same as the rest. At one point it was up to 35% but I don't understand why they lowered it. I filed a complaint with the FDIC, spoke with Ms Timmons who handles Advanta. They were supposed to reduce my rate to 2.8 but did not comply with the FDIC!

They must be stopped. I am willing to join in any class action suit against them.

I have been a customer of Advanta for 5 years - they just raised my rate from 6.99% to 30.17%. Never one late payment in 5 years and always paid well over the minimum amount due. I overlooked my January 2009 payment due on 1/31/09, they called me on 2/5/09 and I paid immediately over the phone. They then told me that my interest rate would be raised from 6.99% to 30.17%. I spent 40 minutes waiting for a supervisor and he told me that they have zero late payment tolerance and that is the best rate.

Another good customer...paid on time..paid $2800 more than required in 2008 and now my interest rate is at 37.18% from 7.99%. I am a small business owner and this is just beyond belief. Guess this is what I get for trying to pay the card off. A 'major class action lawsuit' should be formed to put this company out of business and return the overcharges to the good customers...