SEATTLE -- Angry credit card customers claim Chase Bank pulled a bait-and-switch on them. The bank advertised "no tricks, no gimmicks, just savings" if people transferred balances to Chase.

When the bank changed the terms, those people sued. The Chase offer was simple and straightforward -- move your high-interest debt to a Chase card and get an amazingly low rate - 2.9 percent to 4.9 percent APR.

Chase promised that as long as you paid on time and didn't go over the credit limit, that low rate would not change until you paid off the balance. But in January, Chase changed the deal for hundreds of thousands of its customers.

"I often paid more than the minimum due, and I never missed a payment. I lived up to all of the terms of the agreement," said Chase customer Gayle Orner of Corvallis, Oregon.

And yet Chase told Orner it was adding $10 a monthly fee and bumping up her minimum monthly payment from 2 percent to 5 percent.

"And so I pulled up the statement and almost fell over when I saw that it went from $300 to $800," she said.

In San Francisco, Bard Hunt had the same thing happen.

"It just seems like they're trying to make up for some of their losses that they've incurred because of the downturn in the economy," he said.

The law suit claims when people called to complain, Chase told them the monthly fee could be dropped and the minimum rolled back but only if they paid an interest rate of 7.99 percent.

Consumer advocate Joe Rideout says he's never seen a credit card practice "this abusive."

"The people who accepted this offer were those who really read the fine print. They understood the fine print. And then Chase went and erased the fine print and wrote some new fine print that was very advantageous to the bank and lets them gouge their cardholders," he said.

Chase will not comment on pending lawsuits. But in an e-mail, the bank said, "tens of millions of Chase customers have taken advantage of our promotional low-rate financing over the last five years,. Most of these loans have been paid back in less than 24 months.

However, there have been a small percentage of customers that have made little progress in paying down these loans. Our desire is to have these loans repaid in a reasonable period of time."

But some customers wonder just what Chase means by "a reasonable period of time."

"Well, I paid off 40 percent in two years. What do they want? If I had known they wanted me to pay off the loan in two years, I wouldn't have taken it," said Orner.

All credit card issuers, including Chase, have language in their agreements that let them change the terms at any time and for any reason. But, the lawsuit argues, that does not allow Chase to change the main terms of the contract, which offered a fixed rate for life of the balance as long as you are a customer in good standing.

Last month, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo convinced Chase to drop the $10 monthly fee, and make refunds to those who already paid it. The bank says it will return about $3.3 million to approximately 300,000 customers.

The lawyers suing Chase say that's not enough. They want minimum payment restored to the original 2 percent a month. And they want the bank to reimburse all the customers who had their rate increased to 7.99 percent.

Ultimately, a judge or jury will decide if Chase has to do that and whether the bank violated any laws.

What do I need to do?

If you are one of the Chase customers who had this happen to you, you don't need to do anything right now. If the lawsuit is certified as a class action suit and there is a settlement, you will be notified by mail.

The New York firm of Giskan, Solotaroff, Anderson and Stewart is handling this case, which is one of numerous lawsuits filed about this issue across the country.

New rules from the Federal Reserve which go into effect in July of 2010 will prohibit credit card companies from changing terms at any time and for any reason. Consumer advocated say this case demonstrates why those rules are needed and why Congress need to pass the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights. That bill passed the House last week and is awaiting a vote in the Senate.

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An abusive credit card practice?