Complaint Rating:

We had an account with Providian for years, and paid our statements on time each month. We had just paid our April invoice then a very rude man called saying he was from the credit card company - which credit card company. He wanted my husband to make a payment over the phone right then. We never pay anything over the phone when we do not generate the call. Who was this man, which credit card, how could we be late on a payment and need to pay right now.

It took a long time to figure out our account had been sold to this SST card company and they were going to up our interest rate and they were very unkind.They wanted to charge us and extra $20 to take the payment by phone - we could make the payment on line but we would need our account number. We did not have an account number since our welcome letter had not even been mailed out yet. He refused to give me our account number over the phone. We were in a catch 22 - I could not pay online with out the number, he would not give it to me, I would not pay him over the phone.

I got a phone number to call SST back to talk to someone else. I asked them for our account number, same answer. I hung up and called back - I did this some 18 time asking each CST to note my account of the call and request, harassing them as much as they did me. Finally I got a guy who gave me our account number since he noticed I had called numerous times.

I made a payment and quickly found another company to role our balance over to so I would never have to deal with them again. I just received an invoice from SST for 41 cents. It cost them more to print and mail it to me that it is worth.

They are a very bad company with employees who think everyone is guilty of some horrible crime when we don't even know who they are and why they are calling us. Oh yeah, I got the welcome letter after I had paid them off.