Monty Loree: I guess the question point-blank is, are you tripling card holders' rates in Canada?
Laurel Ostfield: We did notify some of our customers last year about some rate changes that we were making. Like I mentioned, we did give them all the opportunity to opt out of those changes.
Monty Loree: Good. That's the answer. So I'm sure it has happened on a very limited situation in Canada. I would hear about it on our site, people were complaining about it. Not so many people complain about it. The other question I've got is from averagejoe on the Canadian Money Advisor discussion forum. He writes, why won't Capital One return people's deposits after a certain point, like major banks do, and let customers continue using the card instead of making them close the account to get the deposit back and make them wait 45 days to reapply again? If you make a customer close an account, you're risking the chances of losing the customer to another institution.
Laurel Ostfield: I understand the frustration that the poster is asking. We do, and I believe we were referring to moving from a secured card to another kind of credit card. Within that process, and we do periodic review of all of our accounts to determine if there are secure card customers who are ready to move on to a graduated product. That's something that we do. It's not necessarily a process that we have customers initiate themselves, but the best advice I can give to the poster is that the best thing to do is make sure you're exhibiting good credit behavior. Like I said, pay your bills on time. Don't go over limit and know that we do always look and see how you're doing, and when the time we feel it's a good time, we'll definitely approach you on moving your card over. In terms of having to cancel and reapply, that is the process that is in place right now. That we do hope that they value and understand we value their business very much and they do appreciate the product that we provide for them, that they will make that 45 days and apply again.
Monty Loree: So certainly you want to reward people for increasing their credit's risk I guess, for being a better credit risk.
Laurel Ostfield: We do really appreciate our customers doing their best to pay on time and be good customers. We do apologize if there's any stress involved if they need to cancel and reapply, but that is the process.
