Katherine S.

TL; DR summary: customer service impossible to contact, inconsistent from one agent to the next. Not willing to listen to you or trust you. Makes decisions for you without your permission and threatens you. And that's when they pick up your call, after hours on hold.

After having one credit card (the first one) from CapitalOne and using it for no problems for 2.5 years, I decided to apply for a second one. Right around this time, they switched their online banking system (summertime 2017 in Canada), and I needed to re-register for an account. Their automated online registration wouldn't approve me, and I got directed to live chat. The live chat agent told me I needed to call, so I did. After four separate calls and waiting as long as 1.5 hours WITHOUT EVER REACHING AN AGENT, I gave up. I stopped using my first credit card, let it expire, and never activated my second card.

Fast forward one year later to July 2018 (the current date of writing this review), I was told by a friend that I should still call to fully cancel both cards. So I do. I call the general account services line, get a representative, she verifies my info (phone number, DOB, etc) and says she needs to transfer me to an account specialist to fully close my account. I thought that was strange, since I wasn't asking her to do anything highly technical or uncommon, but I went with it.

The next person that answers introduces himself as the fraud and security department, which made me a little alarmed. There's a clear difference between "account specialist" and "fraud and security". But fine, I went with it. He asked for my phone number, I gave him the same one I gave to the first agent, and he said it was incorrect. He asked for another phone number and I told him I didn't know what to say, I only have one number I leave for banking. Especially when the first agent already accepted the number I gave her. I tried a few, the one he accepted was an outdated 5-year-old house number. I've only been with CapitalOne 2.5 years, so I started getting more suspicious.

At this point, the fraud specialist started becoming very rude. He said that I didn't pick up phone calls regarding the second credit card and I said of course not, because you guys had an outdated number. I told him that a previous agent had already verified the correct phone number, but he ignored me. He continued to ask for my personal info and there was just something in his voice that made me not trust him. He was talking down to me, the inflexion in his voice, the way he would say "is there a reason for that?" or "how do you explain that?". He got to my address and I said I wanted to explain my situation to him before answering any of his other questions. He sighed, said "Okay" impatiently. I explain it to him (why I stopped using my first card and never activated my second one), and asked him if it was even necessary to cancel, if I could just let it sit as I had been doing. I truly didn't want to keep speaking to him.

His first response: "Your question doesn't answer my question." Why would my question answer his? Why would I ask him a question in the first place? His second response: "I can't answer any of your questions until you answer mine." That's all he said - never said sorry, never explained he needed to be sure he was speaking to the account holder (the question I asked him was a general question, too; does someone in my case need to do this or not? It wasn't even about my specific account anymore, so he absolutely could have answered it). Very vicious, impatient, demanding tone.

I was very unwilling to answer more of his questions at this point, so he said "Is there a REASON you can't tell me your address? Keeping in mind you're speaking to the FRAUD AND SECURITY department?" Capitals used to show his tone. This is a flat out threat. You might hear this from a police officer while they're handcuffing you, not from a customer service rep.

I ended up just answering his questions, because I didn't want him to mark my file and give me a permanent record. And once he got all my info, he simply informed me that he closed my account - never checked with me again (it had been 15 minutes since we started speaking), never read me any disclosures. I was even expressing doubt about whether or not I wanted to close the account (whether I wanted him to be the one to do it), but he didn't take that into consideration.

It's one thing for a service rep to be untrained, incompetent, stressed. But it's another thing entirely for them to outright threaten you. There is absolutely no reason for any service person to treat any client, in any setting, like this. I've never made a late payment and never had a cent of interest, and I stopped using all Capital One cards at the exact same time; there's nothing fradulent about my activities, it simply says "I don't want to bank with you any more".

Fraud department employee's name is Jesse, employee ID oze103. I hope that this isn't fake info he gave me. And I am certain that it was indeed CapitalOne I called, not a scam number. My credit cards were shown as canceled after the call.