Craig S.

I have owned and used a Capital One Spark Business Visa card for over 15 years now, and had never had a real problem until I had a problem. I run a commercial sign company. My business was located in one of the epi-centers of the flood zone when the 1000 year flood hit South Carolina. I had 24 inches of water flowing through my business. I had to wade 14 inches of water to turn the power off to the building at the breaker boxes. The flood devastated my business. It has been a nightmare. Countless tools used in production were destroyed as well as a tremendous amount of inventory. There was no help from FEMA who directed me to the Small Business Administration who offered me a loan. No thank you. Thanks to the flood, I was already in a deep enough financial hole. No need to find the bottom and start digging. I spent all my available funding on cleanup. I was completely shut down as a result of the flood. My best efforts allowed me to begin crawling back out of the hole with my first produced product over one month later. I had been diligently trying to pay more than the minimum required payment on my balance to try to pay it down. I called Capital One to tell them I would be unable to pay my minimum monthly payment. The CS rep on the phone was understanding, but the only relief they had to offer was a 3-month distress waiver they could apply to my account which would not allow them to penalize me for overdue balances. Their 18.5% interest on my balance, however, would apply and accrue monthly. I called them the following month to tell them I still didnt have sufficient cash flow to make my minimum payment. They said OK, just try to pay as soon as I could. I told them I would. When I finally had a little I could apply towards my Capital One debt, I logged in to make a payment online. My balance had accrued each month, adding to the previous months balance including their interest, so that minimum requested payment was over $1,000.00. I paid the $400 I had in hand. I still called them every month to update them on my status. It would take 3 more months of diligent work to complete a large project which we had on the books prior to the flood which had also been consuming all expendable cash flow. After collecting, I caught my balance up to current. However, my account was locked down so that I was unable to use it. Additionally, my existing card had expired and had not been replaced. After being passed around to several CS reps, I was finally transferred to one who seemingly had authority to look deeply enough into my account to find out why it was locked down. It was apparently due to my successive months of non-payment. Which, by the way, negatively impacted my credit score even though I was calling them monthly with current updates and status. I asked the CS rep if the same tragic events had happened to her husband and his business and her credit card company had treated him the same way, how would she feel? Her response was That is a personal question and I dont have to answer that. Right! Lets remain completely aloof of the real tragedies going on around us. They have no bearing on you or your company policies. Several months later, I wanted to pay off my balance in full. I called to talk to a head CS regarding a possible negotiated pay-off. Guess what? They dont negotiate balances, even though they will admit that an exorbitant amount of my balance was simply accrued interest. But thats what you signed UP FOR sir she responded strongly. NO, I signed up for a card with interest rates UP TO 18.5%. I didnt sign up to get assigned a permanently-high interest rate. After explaining all of my above extenuating circumstances to this head rep, her best and final answer was We have policies and procedures we must follow. And our policies and procedures do not allow us to make exceptions for tragedies. Can I do anything else for you? I expressed my disdain that a company so large could be so unfeeling and callous in its handling of real tragedies in the lives of their clientele. At the time I was speaking with her, a portion of Louisianna was undergoing epic flooding. As I write this, Hurricane Hermine is impacting the southeast. I wonder how many of those two regions of flood victims will find themselves additional victims of a greedy uncaring Capital One?

When I first listed my vacation rental with VRBO, I thought they were the best thing since sliced bread. I enjoyed about one year of peaceful bliss. There was a shakeup in upper management, and in early 2015 changed with two major players leaving, and others moving up the food chain to lead. They immediately began pushing mandates down on home owners, posturing the company for a corporate buy-out which eventually took place 7 months later when acquisitioned by Expedia. More mandates followed. The straw that broke the camel's back for owners was when VRBO began charging a mandatory variable 4-10% commission fee on top of the rental price, a fee they called a "Service Fee." All the owners were offended as well as at least 50% of the potential renters. It was a dark day to be an owner at VRBO. Management kept trying to ignore pleas to remove the fee. Some were even taunted by Customer Service reps who queried "Where else are you going to go?" meaning there were no other viable marketing options who could compete with VRBO. At the time of this review, all the owners seem to be looking for ANY other venue, and plan to terminate their listing with VRBO. They started out great, but went to greedy. Sadly, it will cost everyone a great deal.

I have been with HA/VRBO for 3 full years now. First year was great. Minor improvements and tweaks made a good site better. In April of 2015, two senior executives left the company abruptly, leaving everyone to wonder what the future of the company would be. Brian Sharples assumed the lead, and begin immediately imposing a one-size-fits-all format upon property owners. They wanted an immediately bookable property platform, so they encouraged all owners to add their "Book-It-Now" feature. We later learned they began tinkering with their internal search engine to penalize those who didn't utilized that feature, making them fall farther down the search results pages, with those who played along being pushed further up the pages towards the top. Sharples was strategically shaping and posturing the company for a buy-out. Seven months later, Expedia acquired HomeAway. Sharples continued to rain down dictates for subscription property owners to reshape their business model. Compliance was rewarded, and non-compliance was punished, all quite silently and undetected using the internal search engine they named "Best Match." In mid February 2016 HomeAway added a variable percentage "Service Fee" charged on the gross rental value (less taxes) which became an immediate offense to both owners and potential renters. It was clear it was a greedy grab for a bigger piece of the already slender piece of the profit pie. HomeAway claims were that their research had shown this new service fee would simply be overlooked as the cost of doing business and paid by renters without a second thought. Current experience at the time of this review by owners from potential guests are proving exactly the opposite. In fact, while writing this review, I had to pause to answer that exact question - "What is this new service fee? I don't recall having seen that before and I've used VRBO in the past" - for a potential renter. The owners are all upset. The future is uncertain, but certainly looks grim for a greedy money-motivated HomeAway. Unless something changes, stay away from HomeAway.