I received a BT check from Capital One with my first statement from a no-hassle Platinum card that I opened in August. The terms were that if I used the card within 60 days after the data on the check (8/24 in my case), it would be coded as a purchase, not a cash advance. Well, I wrote a check for the entire $20K CL to my credit union, and it bounced. The reason given was that I didn't have that much of a line for a cash advance. Disconcertingly, they had no record of the promotional offer I had received for this check. Fortuantely I kept the statement, including the pertinent passage on it being treated as a purchase. I ended up faxing this to A CSR, and then when nothing happened for a few days (which might be just because of bureacratic delays, I don't know), I did the same to Mr Cooke. He credited the bounced check fees, but wasn't able to resubmit the check and honor it. He further suggested that most checks with very low numbers (like 101) were likely to be coded as CA checks, not purchase checks, esp if they didn't say "purchase checks" right on the check. Moral of the story: watch those capital one checks! Note that they'll do a BT to almost any loan account for you (HELOC, cc, etc.) and code them as a purchase just by calling the CSR.
