The Franchise

Source? because I'm not finding anything about such a change.

According to the rep, they discontinued this program at some point - so the card will never be considered for an unsecured card. This seems to be substantiated by the fact that the descriptor page returns 404. Since they never put up any announcement about this, it's a bit disheartening. But hopefully folks will see this before applying for the card, if it's the primary reason for doing so.

So, update. I won't bore you with details, but first chance I get, I plan to make a final payment and then close this account out. I was totally not pleased with the "customer service" I received, and due to this transition things were not done correctly at all. I'm not sure if someone dropped the ball on payment handling or what but, I was not pleased. I can tell from the interaction that this card will end up being poison. What I will say is that the minimum payment on the card skyrocketed 300% for no apparent reason and they tacked on nearly $100 from something. I plan to do the final payment, close the account and then start investigating to find out where this stuff came from. Without a fee schedule I'm literally flying blind, and I don't appreciate it.

The bank - at least my bank - won't let me set a payment that exceeds my balance. It can't ever happen. In fact, they won't let me do a payment at all if my balance is under $500. I don't schedule payments, I kick them off manually. Then I get a notification immediately thereafter confirming the amount, and an email sent to me confirming a second time. If for some weird reason the bank does an error and issues a payment with the right amount but the ACH is sent with a faulty amount, they accept responsibility and correct the problem with a single phone call. The money is put back in my account immediately. If some other creditor screws up and debits $500 instead of $50, and I have $600 in the account that is allocated to 6 creditors: #1: I won't know there's a problem until the money is already gone. #2: if other creditors try to debit they will get either paid or bounced. Either way, I'll get nailed an NSF fee for every one. I then have to lodge a dispute with the bank to do a temporary recovery, but it doesn't negate the fact I got NSF activity. #3: for the ones that are bounced, the creditor who tried to pull will come after me with a vengeance and in some cases charge a fee. They won't remove that fee, because the bounce was valid. That's way too many hops to deal with. It's reactive logic rather than preventative. I'd rather avoid the issue by doing it at the bank level, who won't even issue a payment where money isn't available AND won't let me even go there if I don't have a buffer of cash on hand. Didn't say it was outrageous. I said I'm sharing it for others.

So with my move up north I had to spend every dime I had...and some I didn't. My Discover card took the hardest hit. I'm still paying it down. I got some auto calls to call 800-951-0462. On a day where I was stuck working at home I called them back. I got a lady who was basically pushing for the DirectPay to be activated. I have moral reasons why I refuse to allow other companies to debit my bank account; all it takes is a system glitch adding an extra zero or forgetting to put a decimal and my account is wiped with no quick recourse. The risk is too great. So I do all of that through my bank. I guess Discover doesn't really care for that, because here's what she offered me in exchange for the DirectPay to be activated. 5% interest rate reduction, permanently. This tempted me, but frankly, in terms of dollars and cents, it'd be like a few hundred bucks a year. A $50 credit applied to the account. Considering the various protection charges would eat that up, I found this almost laughable. It's a Discover More card. Don't know if there's something about my specific card or what that allows the the flex, but anyway, thought I'd share it for others.

Fancy front of the card for sure. It didn't come with a fee schedule or terms or anything, just the card. Almost as if they're treating it like a renewal. CreditKarma indicates that Hooters was removed, presumably in favor of this line. The card mailer indicates that they do credit line increases. I know Hooters in particular was quite generous with the increases, if it was Merrick making the decisions then I have no concerns. I plan to keep the actual Hooters card around as a fond memory of a card that quite frankly was central to my bankruptcy recovery. I know a lot of people have negative feelings about them but they were very good to me. They were one of the selective few "good" cards that was willing to take a chance on me, and with my increased income they made a lot of money off of me. I thought about just not accepting the Merrick card, but it's now my longest tradeline and I'd really hate to lose that history after working so hard to build it.

Your inquiry counts are low...but are you sure you didn't apply for any other branded Discover? If not you may need to call them and find out where they see an application for you being generated from (i.e. online, etc).

Give it time, given the new debit card fee structure. Give it time. Anyway, I've always had Direct Deposit and Bill Pay with Citibank because quite frankly, they've been good to me deposit-wise for the most part. They're not perfect, but I have never had a major issue with them unlike Wells, Wamu, Chase and BofA who all screwed me in one way or another. And their Bill Pay app is quite excellent. I don't schedule payments though, I do them manually and make sure they get done when they need to get done. So this does not affect me at all. When I was a young adult I never understood how to manage a checking account and was never taught what NOT to do. Once I learned the hard way, it became a no-brainer to do both. Thinking back on all of the thousands of dollars I basically threw away on check cashing places irritates me to this day.

Having worked in the industry, let me help you a bit. They didn't "ignore" your dispute. They invoked what is referred to as a "Frivolous" verification. In other words, if they did leg work to investigate, found no issues, then you dispute again without documentation, they don't have to do any other actions besides notify you of what they already told you. Dispute verification is the next. You send a certified letter to that creditor requesting full verification of the debt. If they don't reply, you send another requiring they reply or update the bureau. If they still don't reply, you get a credit lawyer to go after them. Costly, time consuming, but necessary. Sometimes you have to sue. The other thing is that the dispute verification should not go to regular contacts, but to any corporate level contacts you can find. The regular channels will dump it in the trash for sure. Last resort - sometimes you have to just hunker down and sit on it. I had some old collections, some 13 or so, that I didn't even know were there as I hadn't checked my Experian report in years. They added themselves to the report just after my bankruptcy even though they could have filed a claim to get paid in full, as they said they had occurred before the BK. If they'd claimed I wouldn't have cared whether it was valid or not, I just wanted a clean report. I had to wait for the statute to pass for them to go away. Now I'm down to just one collection left on Experian, once it's gone all three reports will be pristine. It only took 8 years of credit punishment, overworking, overtime, bonus pay, and penny pinching to get here.

I would disagree with this statement. I pay at the company website because I want the payment to come out that day. If I pay at Hooters/CapitalOne/Barclays before I leave for work, by the end of the day the payment has posted to the account. I like to have things leave my bank account as soon as I do the transaction, just to help me keep track of what goes in and out of the account. My Barclays card is cycling tonight (9/16) and I have already went on and posted the minimum payment to be made on 9/17. I wouldnt consider this trying to "cheat" a system, but thats just me. I do pay from my bank bill pay for some things, but it usually takes at least 2-3 days vs. same day at CapOne/Barclay/Hooters website. Just my two cents. But I also made a payment on my Hooters card yesterday for the New Statement Balance. Payment went through for the whole amount. Oh and their "website upgrade" they did... is total crap. Their old site was somewhat better -- I am tempted to close the card just cause their site is horrible to use now. This makes no sense whatsoever. ACH transactions take AT MINIMUM 24 hours to process. While that company is "crediting" your account right away, they're not getting the payment immediately, because there is a handoff - from your bank to the clearinghouse, then from the clearinghouse to the recipient. Again, it's floating payments. There should be no need to have things credited "that day". If you know your bill pay takes 48 hours to send an electronic payment then issue it 48 hours before the day you want it credited. It's the same difference. Again, like I said, people who do what you're describing are effectively trying to float paychecks. You want the recipient to be satisfied, but you don't want to plan in advance and book payments early to meet the deadlines like you're supposed to. I can't imagine what stress you might have gone through before online payments became widespread. You can't duck the trend. Again, I've been where you are. I know the game. You want to avoid the late fee at all costs, maybe you get paid a day before the due date, SO doing it that way gives you a little slide. I'm all too familiar with how that stuff works. It's exactly how I ended up in the financial rut I did 8 years ago. This glitch or whatever it is, smacks of being the same thing as trusting a loan shark with your ATM card and PIN. Why would you trust such a transaction to someone who wants your money? Think about it. GIVE, don't let them TAKE.

I know you're itching to see conspiracies, but you missed another possibility. And by the way, I stated my scenario to help you make an informed decision. PUSH your payments and you won't have to deal with stuff like this. Anyway, the other possibility is one of untrusted payments or untrusted sources. I don't know your bank, but it's entirely possible that they do this because they don't fully trust the payment source...whether that's you specifically or your bank. Customer Service won't know that. You need to get to one of the upper tech support guys for the site. Mine has no annual fee. And I agree...the people here are missing the point you and I are trying to make, which is to push payments. It gives you greater control over issues like this, and chances are the payment (assuming the bank has a good bill pay system) is electronic anyway. In my mind people who pay through a pull from a bank account do so because they're trying to "cheat" the due date - they go on to the card's site and book the payment the day before or day of because they either forgot or they are trying to float paychecks, and they are hoping that the bill pay app will give them a pass. That's not a theory; it's based on empirical evidence. I used to do the same thing...before I got smart with my finances and realized what I was doing. That's quite the credit line. How long have you had the card?

Has never happened to me. Then again, I send payments through my bank, not through any of my cards' apps except my credit union, and them only because they don't support electronic payments from my bank. That ensures the "paper trail" you referenced, because I know exactly how much money was sent and when it cleared the EFT. If the card company disputes the amount (which they never do), I can easily show them proof, and my bank will gladly get on the phone and tell them what they need to hear. Merrick Bank has been nothing but good to me with the Hooters Card. Have you tried just asking them what the deal was?

I've never stepped foot in a Hooters. I have an issue with such a place. Not that I'm stuck up or anything, but I fail to see how they're any better than Wings n Things. Plus WNT has better looking females IMO. Don't get me started on Tilted Kilts. The stocking/leggings on the Hooters chicks annoy me too. Anyway, my Hooters card started at $1500. A year later I got one increase to $1700. Around the beginning of 2011 I got an increase to 2000. I firmly believe that they are really big on actual use of the card. I've charged computers to it on occasion so maxing it is a no-brainer.

Requesting that info means (A) you have a fraud alert or ( what you submitted on the app didn't match the credit report. Did you do the preapproval before applying?

Problem is - and Experian is notorious for this - the word "frivolous". In their eyes if they do a dispute and they verify it, and you try again, it's "frivolous" unless you get a doc from the creditor. In my eyes that's not sufficient, but the law allows them to pass the buck with that.