Virgin money interest catch

tonyrhodes

I am in dispute with MBNA over interest charged on a Virgin Money credit card. I had been on an interest free offer until september of this year. When my September statement arrived I paid off the full balance on the payment due date and expected to have avoided any interest charges. To my surprise when my October statement arrived I had an interest charge of £25.34. On making inquiries I was told that my offer expired on the statement date (1 September) not payment due date (19 September). So in order to have avoided interest being charged I should have made an interim payment between statement due dates which I think is ludicrous and feel is a very cynical way of trapping people into paying interest charges.

I have writen to MBNA on two occasions and received two totally unsatisfactory replies. Since then they have applied further interest to my account and a £12 'late default sum' even though I am in dispute. I have also called them by telephone on several occasions only to be told they will not put my account into dispute and that it will damage my credit rating if I dont pay. I have an impeccable credit history and have never been in default with anyone but feel like I am being blackmailed into paying an amount of interest I genuinely feel is not due.

I am peruing the matter with financial ombudsman but MBNA will still not recognise my ligitimate dispute with them.

Has anybody had a similar experience I would be very interested to hear form them because as a matter of principle I am standing on.

normanmark

In the terms & conditions it will state that the offer runs from the date the account is opened. Not from going by statement due date.

As far as I can see this isn't a legitimate dispute & you're probably wasting your time with the ombudsman. You need to do talk to someone at MBNA & plead to see if they can refund the penalty charges. As for the interest, it's something you owe & put it down to experience.

michilin27

it tells me on each statement when my interest free period runs out, has done since the account was opened- my card is with halifax, not sure if other card providers do this?

as previous poster said the interest is legitmate, even if u still want to pursue your compaint it would be advisable to make payments to stop any more charges

even if the interest was refunded it would be done so out of good will and not because it is incorrect- missed payments on the other hand, cannot be removed from credit reports out of good will

exel1966

tonyrhodes wrote: »

I am in dispute with MBNA over interest charged on a Virgin Money credit card. I had been on an interest free offer until september of this year. When my September statement arrived I paid off the full balance on the payment due date and expected to have avoided any interest charges. To my surprise when my October statement arrived I had an interest charge of £25.34. On making inquiries I was told that my offer expired on the statement date (1 September) not payment due date (19 September). So in order to have avoided interest being charged I should have made an interim payment between statement due dates which I think is ludicrous and feel is a very cynical way of trapping people into paying interest charges.

I have writen to MBNA on two occasions and received two totally unsatisfactory replies. Since then they have applied further interest to my account and a £12 'late default sum' even though I am in dispute. I have also called them by telephone on several occasions only to be told they will not put my account into dispute and that it will damage my credit rating if I dont pay. I have an impeccable credit history and have never been in default with anyone but feel like I am being blackmailed into paying an amount of interest I genuinely feel is not due.

I am peruing the matter with financial ombudsman but MBNA will still not recognise my ligitimate dispute with them.

Has anybody had a similar experience I would be very interested to hear form them because as a matter of principle I am standing on.

The replies may seem unsatisfactory to you, but I'm afraid you don't have a leg to stand on as you have misintepreted when the 0% offer has expired. As has already been said the offer expiry date does not coincide with the payment due date which is later. Some cards extend the offer expiry date to coincide with the payment date, but most don't.
They all differ slightly with 0% offers as some will commence the offer from application date, some from account opening date, some from BT date, some backdate to the 1st of the month regardless. Some cards tell you on the statement the exact expiry date, some don't.

One other point to note is that the FOS will only entertain a complaint once you have exhausted the MBNA route and once 8 weeks has passed since the original complaint date, but that doesn't really matter here as there is no complaint to answer.

tonyrhodes

Thank you for your replies and advice it looks like I will have to bite the bullet and put it down to experience.

Cheers

The_Engineer

The same thing happened to me a few years ago with my Virgin CC. As I had made about £ 500 from their interest free credit I didn't make much fuss.

latecomer

michilin27 wrote: »

it tells me on each statement when my interest free period runs out, has done since the account was opened- my card is with halifax, not sure if other card providers do this?

Unfortunately not. I got caught out by RBS adding a not to a statement about 3 mnoths before the end of my deal. Of course I thought I see it on the next months and remember to pay the full amount due. But there was nothing on the next statement so I went past the deadline and got charged interest. I wasn't happy but accepted that it was my own fault for not taking note of the date the 0% period ended.

One person at the call centre went as far as to say that "thats how they make their money" which really didn't help matters. I made my feelings known and cancelled the card.