I got one (well, two actually) of these letters from Capital One:

Important Notice of a change in terms

Due to extraordinary changes in the economic environment, we’re reviewing our existing credit card accounts… we will be raising your accounts current purchase rate…”

Now I would think that I was being singled out if it weren’t for the fact that a call to capital one reveals this new item on their main menu:

If you’ve received a change in terms press 6.

Pressing that button bring you to a brief description of why they have sent these changes in terms to some customers (see above) and then presents this option:

…to begin the process of declining the change in terms press one.

Not that declining the change in terms basically means closing your account. I have never before had an easy time trying to close a credit card account, they always seem willing to raise your limit, lower your rates, or what have you first… Now they seem positively eager, as if the are expecting you to close it and want you to very much.

While they may have just singled a few of us out, this appearing on the main menu leads me to believe that it is more than just a few who have received these. As someone who has held these cards for years, always pays on time and always pays above the minimum payment, having my interest rate jump 50% from 14% to 22% is somewhat startling, especially if it is due to the hard economic times. My first thought is that they want people to default on their cards, but on second thought…

I think that Capital one probably actually wants people to close their accounts. Maybe the conclusion that they came to while analyzing these hard economic times is that people will have less money, so they will charge more money on their existing credit cards, and as that debt gets bigger and bigger they will become more likely to default… So the best thing to do is to get them to stop using those cards by giving them reasons to close their credit cards accounts. The thinking runs contrary to how we expect credit card companies to think, but otherwise it seems like they might be shooting themselves in the foot.

It worked for me, as I have now closed both of them… I’d rather continue paying them off on my current interest rate. So I suspect that, in the long run, this will be beneficial to me. But it still sort of ticks me off.