Capital One Class Action Lawsuit Says Bank Keeps Sending Credit Card Offers to Dead Wife

A Wisconsin man has filed a class action lawsuit against Capital One Bank after numerous attempts to stop them from sending “hundreds” of unsolicited credit card offers to his deceased wife.

The class action lawsuit alleges Capital One Bank violates the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and Wisconsin privacy law, and inflicts emotional distress on the plaintiff as a result. 

Plaintiff Alfred Knox claims the postal service continually delivered “pre-qualified” Capital One Bank credit card offers in the mail for his wife, Gloria Knox, after she died in 2009.

“The constant barrage of advertising materials sent to Plaintiff Knox reminded him of the loss of his wife, and left him sad and depressed. Moreover, his inability to get the marketing to stop left him feeling less than human,” according to the class action lawsuit.

In 2017, Knox thought he could stop the unsolicited credit card offers from Capital One Bank by registering with the Federal Trade Commission’s National Opt-Out service. 

The plaintiff says this opt-out option allows “the consumer to trigger their rights to elect to have the consumer’s name and address excluded from any list provided by a consumer reporting agency.”

Despite this request, Capital One Bank reportedly continued mailing credit card offers to the plaintiff’s deceased wife. 

Alfred Knox says he called the national consumer opt-out hotline to request that solicitations for his deceased wife be stopped, but each of the three credit reporting agencies failed to process his request to exclude her name and address from lists, according to the class action lawsuit.

The class action lawsuit points to language on the website’s Frequently Asked Questions page to describe the “opt-out” feature.

Consumers are told opting out “prevents Consumer Credit Reporting Companies from providing your credit file information for Firm Offers.”

The plaintiff in the Capital One credit card class action lawsuit claims by using this option, which is administered by all three major credit reporting bureaus, all mailed credit card offers should’ve stopped.

What’s more, the class action lawsuit contends, Capital One Bank knew the plaintiff’s wife was deceased because these credit bureaus had Gloria Knox listed as such. 

“Capital One acted with blatant, intentional, and willful disregard in obtaining Ms. Knox’s credit information from consumer reporting agencies under the false pretenses that Capital One was making legitimate firm offers of credit, when Capital One had actual or constructive knowledge that these offers were a sham because Ms. Knox predeceased them,” the plaintiff says.  

In 2018, Knox called Capital One Bank’s customer service directly in an attempt to stop the unsolicited credit card offers. Knox says he was told on two separate occasions the mailings would stop, but they didn’t. 

“Despite all of these assurances from Capital One, Plaintiff Knox received advertising from Capital One addressed to his deceased spouse, as often as four times per week, and sometimes receiving more than one letter on the same day.”

This failure to cease the credit card offers violates FCRA, the class action lawsuit alleges. 

The FCRA “creates substantive rights for consumers and persons with special relationships to those consumers; consumer reporting violations cause injury to consumers, and such injuries are concrete and particularized when they result in the unauthorized sharing of consumers’ private credit information,” the plaintiff claims in the class action lawsuit. 

Congress created the FCRA to respond to “a need to insure that consumer reporting agencies exercise their grave responsibilities with fairness, impartiality, and a respect for the consumer’s right to privacy.”

The plaintiff alleges Capital One Bank and their unsolicited credit card offers violate FCRA law because they’re pulling credit reports from deceased consumers. 

“Capital One obtained Ms. Knox’s credit information in connection with these purportedly firm offers of credit even though Capital One had knowledge that Ms. Knox had predeceased these offers,” according to the class action lawsuit. 

The class action lawsuit against Credit One Bank and its credit card offers goes further, claiming the unsolicited mail violates Wisconsin privacy laws. 

In Sawyer v. West Bend Mut. Ins. Co., the Wisconsin Court of Appeals upheld “unwanted solicitations are highly offensive and may rise to the level of actionable trespass,” Knox says.

And in Baemmert v. Credit One Bank, N.A., “repeated and persistent unwanted solicitations” are considered “actionable unwanted trespasses,” the class action lawsuit claims.  

Beyond breaking consumer protections, the class action lawsuit alleges emotional distress on behalf of the plaintiff. 

Knox finds the unsolicited credit card offers from Capital One Bank to be “highly offensive trespasses” that were “unsolicited” and “unwanted” in his home. 

The class action lawsuit adds that “this emotional distress has manifested itself physically” in Knox.   

Have you received unsolicited Capital One credit card offers? Let us know in the comments below. 

Counsel for the plaintiff in this case are John D. Blythin, Mark A. Eldridge, Jesse Fruchter and Ben J. Slatky of Ademi & O’Reilly LLP.

The Capital One Credit Card Offer Class Action Lawsuit is Knox, et al. v. Capital One Bank, Case No. 2:20-cv-1403, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

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