Yesterday, when I opened what I thought was my credit card statement from Advanta Bank Corp. I found instead a letter informing me that my account would be closed effective May 30. Here is an excerpt from the letter:
"Your Advanta Business Card account is funded by an independent trust which owns the balances you owe on your account and provides funding for new transactions. We expect the trust to stop funding activity on our accounts. The trust also restricts our flexibility to fund activity on your account. Unfortunately, as a result, effective May 30th all Advanta Business Credit Card accounts, including your account, will be closed.
This means that you will not be able to use your card or account for new transactions, including purchases, checks and balance transfers beginning on May 30th. We understand that you may have written checks on your account before May 30th and we will make every effort to honor those checks that are presented to us for payment by June 3rd. If you use your Advanta card to make automatic recurring bill payments, you will need to make alternative arrangements for those payments promptly."
Advanta is the 11th largest credit card issuer in the United States. Nearly one million small businesses will be affected by this action. If you are an Advanta customer, please do not delay opening and reading recent mail! If you have automatic recurring bill payments, you have less than one week to make alternative arrangements.
5 comments:
Oh wow! You should contact CNN with this news.
I've had a card company close an used account, but not an active one.
If anyone is interested, check out “The Oprah Effect” on CNBC May 28 at 9PM ET & 10PM PT. Carl Quintanilla will investigate small businesses who have been successful thanks to Oprah, and share the secrets of how they got on the show. Should be interesting!
Here’s a preview: http://bit.ly/lsvZi
I got this exact letter and I was shocked and stunned not to mention disappointed. I have had a very good run with Advanta and am sad to see my account close.
and I ALMOST didn't open it either. Glad I did.
Tracey, I am glad you opened that letter! A little more warning would have been courteous. It took me nearly several hours dashing to the phone in between customers to change all my auto payments and to contact vendors with whom I had orders pending. I think, I hope I've caught everything. It's always good to have another card waiting in the wings.
Whoa! Thanks for shining a light on this. Small businesses (many owned by women) are being hurt by the credit crunch. We need to speak up and out.
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