On 10/17/08 I was looking at my credit report on Experian's web site. (I have screen captures and document .pdf's to support all of this).

Within my credit report was an advertisement to transfer my credit card balances. Selecting that link I requested a credit card for balance transfers, entered my credit profile of “Fair" and selected “Get Prequalified". The next screen asked for my name, address, etc. and upon completion was a screen that clearly said “Chase Platinum MasterCard – PreQualified (with a checkmark) at a 0% interest rate for 12 months" and a button that said, “Get this card".

That took me to a screen that asked for all of my contact info, SSN, annual income, etc. It also asked for credit card balances and credit card numbers for balance transfers (I requested $6839 at a high interest rate for one card and $10, 062.82 for a second). I read the pricing and terms and continued. After a brief waiting period a screen came up a said that I was approved.

A couple of weeks later Chase sent me my card stating that I was only approved for $3500 and that they went ahead and transferred $3000 to the first card. When I called Chase customer service, he claimed that it was in the terms that I had accepted that they could go ahead and transfer the funds. To add insult to injury, he also said that I was at 19.4% because of my credit rating.

Instead of being provided the full balance transfer of at least one card at 0%, I was simply given another high interest rate card and consequently another payment to make. This was clearly misleading if not completely false advertising.

I returned to the site going through the same process and could not find anywhere that it suggested anything other than my prequalified for a 0% balance transfer. Chase should comply with their agreed “prequalified" rate (0%), terms (for 12 months) and amount ($6, 839) or cancel the card, remove any fees and return the funds to the original card holder. Ideally this type of entrapment should be investigated as consumer fraud.