SST Card Services/ Visa Card

I had an account with Washington Mutual for the last two years and I've never missed a payment. They had a great website that was very user friendly and allowed you to set up payments in advance. In early March of 2007, I set my payment up with them to be debited out of my checking account on the due date March 27th. The last week in March I received a notice stating my card had been sold and that I should discontinue using my old card. I figured the pending payment I had set up with Washington Mutual would transfer over to the new company since I hadn't received any statement with the new card instructing me where and who to send my payment to. Nor did I receive a notice stating if your a customer that pays online these payments will not transfer over. To my surprise, a statement arrived in the mail in April from SST Card services stating my account was past due and I had a $39.00 late fee assessed. I was furious and immediately tried to access the Washington Mutual website to see if my payment had posted. In attempting this I received an error message stating the website wasn't available any longer. I checked my bank account to see if the payment had debited and it hadn't. I was furious when I contacted SST-Card services because I felt I had been scammed. The woman that answered the phone was extremely rude when I explained the situation to her in attempt to get her to waive the late fees. Her response to me was to call back the next day when her supervisor was in and I could take it up with her. I told her that I had worked for a credit card company similar to the one she was working for in the early 90's (Associates) and that I was familiar with these credit card portfolio purchases and how they would scam people. She didn't seem to like my tone and hung up on me. I called back and spoke to another woman (much nicer) that confirmed she could view my payment history and was able to see that I had never missed a payment and that the payments were always paid online. She was kind enough to waive the $39.00 late fee because she could see I had made a payment online the day before (the day I finally received information, hence a statement with contact information on the company that purchased my account). I told her I couldn't understand why the payment did not transfer over and that when I set the payment up online for the past statement their was never any mention that my account would be sold at the end of the month so any payments pending would not post! I thought it was awfully suspicious that my account was sold and transferred around the billing cycle date. Now, here's the icing on the cake! I received my second statement today 5/17/07 and the interest rate jumped from 9.74% to 31.49%. Unbelievable!! Of course no one is available after hours to take my phone call but I'm certain the rate increased because they put me in a past due status in order to change my finance charge terms from A & B to Term C. Term C is the highest rate without any grace period. I'm just in the beginning stages of my investigating with this company but already I've seen numerous websites with similar complaints. If anyone has any advice or knows of a class action lawsuit please email me at Email User

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