What a joke! We needed work done on the car about a year ago and didn't have the money. We had taken the car to Firestone because my FIL uses them a lot. They offered me a cc which is through Credit First National Association... 90 days SAC. I took it. Didn't have to make any minimum payments, but if I didn't pay within the 90 days, I would have to pay interest from the beginning. OK, no problem. Paid it within the 90 days. I have used the card several times since then, always paying it off within the 90 day period. I'm not sure just when the change took place, but I had work done, got a statement, just sort of glanced at it & tossed it aside. Next month I got a statement and noticed a late fee! I called. "Oh, we've changed. You now have to make a minimum payment every month." :-( Thanks for telling me! They removed the fee. My FIL just recently had a similar experience. Had to have brakes on the car, including new rotors. :-( Had just had work done (Why is it that a car starts falling apart around the time it is paid off???) and didn't have enough available credit. The guy at Firestone called and convinced them to go ahead and raise my limit, even though it was 12 days before I was due for a review! Got the brakes. Got my September statement, which showed an oil change along with the payment which had paid off the previous balance. In bold print it says: ********* PAY AHEAD EXPLANATION ********* UNDER OUR 'PAY AHEAD' OPTION, NO MINIMUM PAYMENT IS REQUIRED THIS MONTH. FINANCE CHARGES WILL CONTINUE TO ACCRUE ON ANY UNPAID REVOLVING BALANCE. So, I think, OK, they've gone back to the original agreement. I get the October statement and don't pay real close attention. I'm not sure just when I received it, but the payment was due the day after my dad died. I didn't even give it a thought when I took some time from being at the hospital to rest and to make sure I got my bills paid. So, now, I get the November statement and it shows another late fee. I called them and complained about the inconsistency. The girl I talked to wasn't very nice and said that what had happened was that I had made a double payment the previous month. I explained that I did NOT make a double payment, but paid off the 90-day balance. She kept insisting that I had and that it "explained" the "Pay ahead option" right there on my statement. I informed her that it did not and I had NOT made 2 payments. She finally said it was because I had made such a large payment the month before. (I paid off the balance! What's the deal????) She finally said she would credit back the late fee and we hung up. I looked at my statement again to see what my CL is now and noticed that it was $800 on the October statement and only $700 on the November! I called back. Talked to a guy this time. He looked over the notes and said they had dropped my limit because of the late payment! He read through the notes and commented that my father had died (I had told the girl that) and said the other CSR had not re-aged the account to bring it current, so he did that for me. He also told me that to raise my CL back up to where it was would require them to pull a hard inq so he advised just leaving it alone! He was much nicer than the first one. At this point, I think I'll get this thing paid off and not do business with them any more! They can't make up their minds whether I should pay each month or not! Just wanted to give a heads up to anyone else thinking of getting this card. I did a search and couldn't find much info about it, but did see a link to a BBB report on CFNA with several complaints. Maybe I should add mine.
I dealt with a fellow there by the name of Dennis Miller and he was fair. I'm not home so I don't have the info with me but I'll post the contact info for him later on this evening or tomorrrow morning.
CFNA/Firestone credit card does not report credit limit I strongly suggest that anybody who wants to improve their credit score NOT get a CFNA credit card. I know they are the credit company who provides cards for Firestone and Plaza Tire Service. I would guess there are other companies as well. Before applying for a card please make sure you ask if it is CFNA. The problem is this -- they do not report credit limits to the bureaus. They report your current balance to all three bureaus, but report no limit. An essential part of raising your credit score is having a favorable debt to credit ratio. This ranges anywhere from 20%-35% depending on who you ask. If you have a $1 balance on a CFNA card, your debt to credit ratio on that account is infinitely negative because you're debt is $1 and your credit limit is unreported (which is considered ZERO by the bureaus). I sent a few letters to their customer service department, and their responses were abysmal. I paid off the card just now, and will be canceling it as soon as the payment goes through. I see no reason in keeping a card that I can't use. My credit limit is $1200 and my balance is $159 but since they don't report a limit my overall debt to credit ratio is 75%. My only other credit card has a $200 limit so it's showing my overall debt as $159 and my overall available credit as $200. It should be $159 versus $1400 which would be about 11%. CFNA refuses to do anything about it since they are "not required by law to report credit limits". So much for customer service. I'm glad I paid it off before they got any of my money. I'm going to try to spread the word as best I can that this is a horrible practice and extremely bad customer service. I opened this account hoping to increase my credit score, and it has dropped it by over 20 points with all three bureaus. I've spent a couple years trying to raise my scores and this just set me back a good six months. The inquiry alone will haunt me for two years.
That's true, but it brings up a point about a lot of cards. CapOne is famous for not reporting the limit. They report high credit. Some people used to buy something that took them near the credit limit and then return it after it had billed, leaving the high balance. I don't know if that still works or not.
If you qualify for the card and the transfer, yes. But watch the terms--transfer fee, rate after the intro rate runs out, etc.
