Capital One has long offered great deals on credit cards. However, most consumer advocates and credit experts have shunned their products because of an extremely damaging credit reporting policy.

Capital One has refused to correctly report credit limits to the credit bureaus for years. Instead of your actual credit limit, they reported your highest balance to the credit bureaus. This would damage your credit score by making it appear that your account had a low limit and a high utilization rate. Capital One claims to have done it for their cardholder&39;s "privacy" but it was likely just to hide the real value of their users from other credit card companies. We talked about this issue in an article called "The Case of the Disappearing Credit Limits."

On Friday, Capital One announced that they would change their policy and start reporting credit limits. Hooray!  Almost everyone with a Capital One card could see an increase in their credit scores when this change takes affect. Capital One has finally decided to do the right thing for their consumers.

Or have they? ConsumerAffairs has reported that this policy shift is being paired with a dramatic interest rate increase for some of their borrowers. Some cardholders have seen their rates increase 5% or more without making any late payments or account changes.

Is this a case of two steps forward, one step backward for Capital One?

Emily Davidson is editor of CreditBloggers.com and a former credit expert for the credit bureau, TransUnion. She writes about credit and personal finance topics.