Word of Warning about Virgin card

Free_Mike

Hi All,

You need to keep a careful watch if you have one of these cards.

I have one onto which I transferred a balance 3 months ago.

At the end of month 1 I checked the online account and made a payment on the due date 5th. (Which cleared 2 days later) I received the next months statement a couple of days later which showed a late payment fee of £25 and interest at thier standard rate (not the 0% of the transfer). I phoned Virgin who told me I should have received a statement a couple of weeks before the 5th (which I didn't) so they agreed to refund the £25 late fee and return the interest to 0%. I setup a direct debit to make sure all future payments arrived on time (completed on the 12th).

Skip to last month. I received my next statement to show another late payment fee and interest at thier standard rate. Again I phoned to be told that thier direct debit does not come into effect for 6 weeks (despite the fact that I had received a confirmation letter to say it had been setup on the 14th of the previous month!). So another hour on the phone and the £25 was refunded and the interest rate returned to 0%.

Next month I shall be keeping a very close eye around the payment date to see what happens. I will not be at all surprised to see another attempt to charge extra fees and get the interest rate to thier standard.

I'll let you know what happens . . . . .

YorkshireBoy

You'll know when the DD has been set up correctly because your Virgin statement will say something like...

"Your minimum payment of £xx.xx will be collected by direct debit on or after the xx/xx/xx"

Until this shows on your statement, you'd be well advised to make the payment by debit card before the payment due date.

I have to say that I'm surprised that so many people seem to be having trouble with their Virgin DD's because when I set mine up earlier this summer it ran like clockwork.

DebtEverest

You probably should also check with your bank too. Though they may not be very helpful either.

This has been my experience with my direct debits.

I have a Halifax bank account and they have been consistently late in setting up any of my DDs from my credit cards. I had the confirmation on my Natwest Visa statement saying the DD would be taken out on the payment date. I then logged into my online banking which showed NO direct debit had been set up. Phoned halifax, they too said that no DD was set up for NW.

However.... two days later a direct debit was taken out.....

From costly past experience with other cc dds I always make sure I make manual payments for the first couple of months rather than rely on the direct debit to be set up promptly.

HTH

Clariman

This is why I don't use Direct Debits for my credit cards. I trust my own personal organisation (using the "Setup Bills" function of MS Money) to make payments on time, more than I trust a card issuer to set up a direct debit.