June 2019 update: Capital One has capitulated. They have issued checks to all affected customers!
Recently I have been in dispute with Capital One regarding a promotional offer for opening and funding a Money Market account. Anyone who has read my website or Google searches my name knows that I am not one to back down when being ripped off by a large corporation. I have gone up against Amazon.com, Bank of America, MetroPCS, and others I can’t even recall, and I rarely lose. It is not that I am seeking being defrauded, but that in America, large corporations basically operate like it is the Wild West, reneging on contractually obligated terms with condescension, glee, and no fear of reprisal or even public opinion. I am seriously considering switching from Republican to Democrat and voting for Elizabeth Warren, as Trump has done nothing but enable the corporate fleecing of individual Americans by gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and many other laws and regulatory bodies.
I opened a Capital One 360 Money Market account # [redacted] on September 7, 2018 using promotion code OFFER500, and fulfilled the requirements of this offer with cumulative deposits as of October 15, 2018. Although the required 60 days have passed, Capital One contends I am ineligible for the $500 incentive due to not depositing $50,000 all at once. However, the terms of the offer were plainly written and do not require the deposits to be made all at once:
Here’s the full scoop on how to earn your $500 bonus: Open a 360 Money Market account and deposit at least $50,000 between 12:00 a.m. ET on September 1, 2018, and 11:59 p.m. ET on October 31, 2018. When you open your account, enter your promotional code—OFFER500. (Please do not share this code with others.) Deposits must be from another bank (transfers between Capital One accounts will not qualify).
My deposits were in excess of $50,000, came from external banks, and were completed on October 15, 2018. I am writing to request fulfillment of the $500 bonus per the offer terms.
Capital One has been nothing but rude and condescending to me. They say on the phone that I’m mistaken, that the terms haven’t changed and always said cycling is not allowed even though I demonstrated orally and in writing that this is false. They rebutted my CFPB complaint which was summarily closed, and I’ve already written up the small claims filing form and sent it to them two months ago but they told me on the phone to go ahead and try suing them. No offer of a consolation $200 like others got, and no offer to be eligible for another bonus in the future (prior account holders are barred from receiving a promotional incentive, even if they didn’t receive a promotional incentive for their prior account).
I am going to go with the Florida and Delaware attorney general complaints, BBB, et cetera before suing, as suing is a hassle with serving the summons on their registered agent and paying a large filing fee. I stated multiple times in letters and on the phone that I know they paid out the $500 bonus automatically to all customers up until September 21, 2018 who did the same sort of deposits that I did, but they wouldn’t admit to this or even address it.
Their attorney is wrong—they are in violation of laws on deceptive business practices and probably the Uniform Commercial Code too. If it was a business account that charges a fee based on deposit volume and you cycled deposits, they would still charge fees on the full totals of the deposits.
A key part of the terms is that it says $50,000 in “deposits must be from another bank” (plural). Also note that another offer, CELEBRATE (PDF), uses different terms “$500 bonus — you maintained a daily balance of $50,000 or more for the first 90 days following the Initial Funding Period.” But, both OFFER500 (PDF) and OFFER200 (PDF) do not require the 90 days balance nor mention of balance or withdrawals disqualifying one for the incentive. I brought this up on phone calls and in writing and they don’t even respond or address it.
My CFPB complaint was answered by an employee named Jonathan who signed and printed his response letter both with only his first name and would not give his last name on the phone. I then complained by email to Kleber Santos, President, Retail & Direct Bank at Capital One, who referred the issue back to Jonathan. Jonathan called me and was most patronizing and rude in explaining (incorrectly) that I misunderstood the terms and that Capital One will not be paying anything, and he told me to go ahead and try suing them when I brought up the possibility of a small claims lawsuit.
In the CFPB response letter, Jonathan lists all of my deposit and withdrawal activity and states:
As a result of this activity, your 360 Money Market balance didn’t reach at least $50,000.00, the balance requirement necessary for earning the $500.00 bonus. To successfully earn the $500.00 bonus and have it post within 60 days after completion, your 360 Money Market needed to be externally funded and have a total balance of at least $50,000.00 by October 31, 2018, at 11:59 PM ET.
As a result, we will not be honoring the posting of a $500.00 bonus to your 360 Money Market.
At every step in communicating by phone and in writing to Capital One and the CFPB I have explained the mismatch in terms, including attaching a PDF file each time of the terms as displayed when I opened the account which do not contain the language about the balance of the account needing to reach $50,000.00 at any single point in time. As the terms were in actuality written, there is only a requirement that deposits between September 1, 2018 and October 31, 2018 sum to $50,000.00 or more and come from external banks. The terms had no mention of intervening withdrawals not being allowed. Capital One will not address this nor will they address that they were in fact paying out bonuses to all customers up until September 21, 2018, and made no attempt to retroactively debit the bonus from these customers.
Why “Crapital” One is a fitting moniker
Online, Capital One is derogatorily referred to as Crapital One, and this is well deserved. Capital One loves suing its customers in small claims court—they sued more than 500,000 individual customers per year in 2008, 2009, and 2010 for debts much smaller than most credit card issues would sue for. It is no wonder they are not afraid of being sued, as they obviously have an expansive network of attorneys and paralegals to handle suing individual customers en masse. In small claims court, they are almost universally the plantiff rather than the defendant. This is in diametric opposition to common perceptions of small claims court being a venue for consumers to seek financial justice against large corporations. The Center for Responsible Lending has challenged Capital One in an amicus brief to a federal appeals court regarding Capital One’s “misleading overdraft fee practice” to deduct the maximum amount from customers’ deposit accounts. It should not be a surprise that an overdrawn Capital One account, even by just a few dollars, will invariably cascade into hundreds of dollars in overdraft fees that Capital One is happy to sue their customers in small claims court for.
Capital One should be avoided. ING Direct was a fine bank before Capital One acquired them, rebranded as Capital One 360, and changed the modus operandi to ripping customers off rather than helping them. If you, too, are a victim of Capital One, I suggest emailing their executives, and complaining, both publicly and in private, through regulatory agencies, the court, social media, personal websites, et cetera. Not only do they systematically prey on subprime customers in an organized fashion—they brazenly act in bad faith against detail-oriented, rule-following customers like myself.
The simple solution would be for them to honor their terms as written for past customers and adjust the terms for future customers. But no—Capital One continues their bait-and-switch scheme even after the backlash they are experiencing on the OFFER500 debacle. They continue to offer a similar promotion, OFFER200, which substitutes a $200 bonus for $10,000 in deposits with otherwise identical terms:
https://www.capitalone.com/offer200/ (PDF)
Here’s the full scoop on how to earn your $200 bonus: Open a 360 Money Market account and deposit at least $10,000 between 12:00 a.m. ET on between December 12, 2018, and 11:59 p.m. ET on March 31, 2019. When you open your account, enter your promotional code—OFFER200. (Please do not share this code with others.) Deposits must be from another bank (transfers between Capital One accounts will not qualify). If you have or had an open savings product with Capital One after January 1, 2016, you’re ineligible for the bonus. This offer cannot be combined with any other Capital One Bank or Capital One 360 new account opening offer. Bonus is only valid for one account.
When will I actually get my bonus? Capital One will deposit the $200 bonus into your account within 60 days after completing the above conditions. If your account is in default, closed, or suspended, or otherwise not in good standing, you will not receive the bonus.
They could easily stipulate that the account must attain a $10,000 balance during the promotion period. Their employees and executives erroneously purport that the terms say that, which they do not. As written, one who does not have $10,000 on-hand should be able to receive the bonus by making deposits from another bank and withdrawals to another bank (e.g., “cycling”) of smaller amounts which in aggregate sum to $10,000 or more of deposits during the promotion period. Although the terms say “transfers between Capital One accounts will not qualify,” they do not say that transfers between Capital One accounts and external banks do not qualify. Moreover, they were paying out such bonuses programmatically and automatically to customers who cycled deposits up until September 21, 2018, when someone in marketing or loss prevention must have noticed they could be saving quite a bit of money by not doing this. But, where is the requisite change in terms? Nowhere to be found, even in Capital One’s new promotions, which makes this nothing less than a bait-and-switch. Theirs is a deceptive and misleading business practice in violation of contractually obliged terms—terms which Capital One could easily adjust and currently are quite concise and clear—in opposition to their contentions to the contrary. Shameful.
June 2019 update: Capital One has capitulated. They have issued checks to all affected customers!