Barclaycard - No Good For People Paying Their Balances In Full

Verbatim

Rikki
In situations like yours, I would ring up and say that you relied on the advice given and demand a refund of interest.

barclaycard_barbs

Hello.

No message from the HR department as yet! rwgibson98 what did you mean? We try to come across as open/frank but if it sounded different to you, I'd be interested to know how...

Just in case anybody is worrying, unless you change the way you use your regularly card (from borrowing to regularly paying your bill in full) your payment date IS NOT going to change. Every customer still gets a minimum of up to 56 interest-free days credit.

Why do this? Because we have to strike a balance between serving customer that pay nothing for using a card versus those customers that borrow and pay interest.

I don't expect to win an argument about whether this is the "right" thing to do or not but thought the info might be useful

Ian

Paul_Herring

Ian_Griffiths wrote:

Just phoned now to confirm my position and was told its fine because I have a DD set up to pay in full.

.. fine that is, until they surreptitiously move the date from (for example) after you get your monthly paycheck paid in to before, thus incurring charges on your bank account because they refuse the DD due to insufficient funds, then you incur further charges on your CC because the DD bounced....

sparkymark_3

barclaycard_barbs wrote:

Hello.


Why do this? Because we have to strike a balance between serving customer that pay nothing for using a card versus those customers that borrow and pay interest.


Ian

Surely Barclaycard still making money on the charges they make to retailers though ?

CIMA_LOVER

My Feb payment day, has moved forward 3 days, (but maybe that cause Feb has 28 days) ???

kenshaz

The situation is that they are the enemy and we must be ever vigilant, they penalise is when we make a mistake,make sure they pay when they slip up

Rafter

sparkymark

The amount charged to retailers that ends up with your bank is about 0.9% of the transaction value, a lot less than it used to be as a result of regulation and pressure from retailers.

0.9% of say average spend of £200 a month is £1.80 a month.

It costs about 25p to send out a statement each month (postage, printing, paper etc)

If you pay in full the bank has to pay interest on the amount borrowed which works out at about £1 at the current bank of england base rate.

On top of that if you pay by cheque then it costs the bank money for someone to manually enter the payment and process it. Say 50p

The fee also needs to cover fraud costs, the free insurance that all cards have if something goes wrong with the retailer, the cost of issuing plastic, all the banks computer systems and staff plus fees to visa and mastercard for being part of their networks.

So, if you pay in full, the card can be loss making for your bank, even before they start adding cash back or rewards schemes.

This is why the APR on cards is so high and banks charge high fees, because the borrowers and fee payers have to subsidise the full payers.

Why wouldn't your bank try to reduce the amount of free days they give you as a result of this?

If you had to pay out £2+ a month in return for receiving £1.80 wouldn't you try to reduce your loss?

In Australia where the regulator has reduced retailer fees even further, people have to pay annual charges for their cards and there are very few reward schemes.

My personal view is that it would be better if retailers offered discounts for using debit cards and banks offered no incentives for using credit cards. That way people can make a genuine decision about whether to delay payment by using a credit card without being incentivised for getting into debt.

It should mean that interest rates and fees on credit cards will fall, because borrowers won't be subsidising full payers.

R.

rwgibson98

barclaycard_barbs wrote:

...We try to come across as open/frank but if it sounded different to you, I'd be interested to know how...

It comes across as dishonest and unethical.

I have no objection to making money. I just think that there are ways and means of doing this. Charging an annual fee is an honest way of making money. Levying retailers a 3% charge for payments made with Visa cards is another. Keeping the interest free period consistently short is an honest way of keeping "costs" down. Offering a long(ish) interest free period, and then reducing it on an occasional month sounds, smells, and just IS trying to catch customers out in order to levy an excessive late payment charge. And in my judgement, that's wrong, and brings Barclaycard into disrepute.

barclaycard_barbs wrote:

...Just in case anybody is worrying, unless you change the way you use your regularly card (from borrowing to regularly paying your bill in full) your payment date IS NOT going to change. Every customer still gets a minimum of up to 56 interest-free days credit....

Would you buy a second-hand car from someone saying meaningless things like this? How about those of us who aren't changing the way we regularly use our Barclaycard, those who regularly pay our bill in full? Do we still get a minimum of 56 interest-free days credit, or does that only apply to months when you're not trying to catch us out?

barclaycard_barbs wrote:

...Why do this? Because we have to strike a balance between serving customer that pay nothing for using a card versus those customers that borrow and pay interest...

So you admit that Barclaycard wants to raise revenue by levying some late payment charges on customers who are too stupid to check whether they're being caught out each month?

barclaycard_barbs wrote:

...I don't expect to win an argument about whether this is the "right" thing to do or not but thought the info might be useful

Ian

You're right about it not being the "right" thing to do, and yes, thank you for the "useful" information. It's very illuminating.