Another Egg Card oddity

muffle_2

Here's another problem I've had with my Egg Card recently.

I changed my Direct Debit payment from the minimum payment to the full balance about 4 days before the payment was due. The web site claimed that it was too late to change it for the current statement and that it would only affect subsequent statements.

Based on this, I made a BACS payment for the full balance minus the minimum payment and this was received on time. Then when the due date came around, I found they had debited the full balance from my bank account by DD. So basically their web site lied and because of this they'd taken an extra £2,537.84 from my account! Luckily the cash was available but ordinarily it would not have been and you can be sure I would have incurred failed DD fees from both Egg and my bank, as well as interest on the missed minimum payment.

Anyway, when I contacted Egg they agreed to return the additional payment I made, which they did a few days later.

Then I get my next statement and they have charged me £0.35 'merchandise interest'. This is despite me OVER-paying them AND the full payment being taken by Direct Debit. They should be paying ME interest on the extra money they got from me for approx a week by decieving me.

All the items on the statement were purchases, no balance transfers. I have also checked and the amount they returned was the additional amount I paid, not the full balance amount, so it's not like they returned the wrong amount and I got charged interest on the extra.

Has anyone got ANY idea?

I have not bothered querying it as it was only 35p, but I thought maybe someone would have an idea and others might want to know about this pattern of behaviour from Egg recently.

grumbler

muffle wrote:

...about 4 days before the statement was due.... I made a BACS payment for the full balance minus the minimum payment and this was received on time....
Has anyone got ANY idea?

Frequently asked questions : (Moving money )

BACS payments take up to seven working days to clear into your account.

For further explanation see this thread: Egg Card - The Most Audacious Scam Ever?

muffle_2

Sorry this advice does not help me. The balance was paid in full by DD. Also the information given by YorkshireBoy in the other thread is incorrect.

YorkshireBoy

muffle wrote:

Also the information given by YorkshireBoy in the other thread is incorrect.

I would have added "In my opinion, the information..."

grumbler

muffle wrote:

....The balance was paid in full by DD. ....

... and then the payment was returned later. So, you should consider the situation as if mimimum payment was made by DD.

muffle_2

grumbler wrote:

... and then the payment was returned later. So, you should consider the situation as if mimimum payment was made by DD.

Err no. The DD was for the full amount. I paid an additional BACS payment for the full amount minus the miniumum payment which I THOUGHT would be debited. They still got the full amount even after refunding the extra payment.

grumbler

muffle wrote:

They still got the full amount even after refunding the extra payment.

OK. Let's say it this way:


...as if mimimum payment was made by DD and the remainder (full minus minimum) by BACS.

P.S. I am not Egg's advocate. I just try to interpret their T&C (yes, unfair) in order to avoid mistakes in future ...

raa_thistle

In reality they would not have returned the DD, but would simply have done a BACS back for the amount owing to the customer. Therefore the balance should have been paid off in full by the DD, then had an over payment of the full balance minus the minimum payment (calculated by the OP), leaving the card in the positive by £X. All the person on the other end of the phone then has to do is do a BACS to the OPs requested acount (probably the same acount the DD comes from), leaving the card with a zero balance, and a newly changed DD set to take the minimum payments.

To recap then,

1) Balance paid off in full by DD - Bal = £0
2) Overpayment received - Bal = +£X
3) Call centre do a BACS back for £X - Bal = £0

As the DD didn't have time to change the acount was cleared by the due date, meaning no interest shhould have been incurred.

The question on interest is, were any of the purchases treatable as cash advances, ie. casino, online casino, online betting acount funding, real life gambling, or cash advances.

If non of these are present on your card, I wouold phone them up and ask them to clarify for you which transactions accrued interest and why. If they cannot tell you the you should ask for a refund (they may ask you for some time, give them unitl the following day, after that you can escalate it to their complaints dept.).

Sorry about the long post.

ctm_2

It looks like everyone is missing the point.

muffle changed the DD instruction to take the full amount, rather than the minimum amount. Egg said that it was too near the next payment date for it to apply for that payment date, so only the minumum would be taken by DD, so he paid the balance by BACS. When he did this is completely irellevant.

However, what egg said was wrong, because they did change the DD to take the full amount, rather than the minimum amount, then charged him for the privelage for their mistakes!!

YorkshireBoy

ctm wrote:

Egg said that it was too near the next payment date for it to apply for that payment date...

Which goes against the information provided in their FAQ section, which states...

How do I change the amount I want to pay?
You can change the amount of your payment from our website as long as it is at least 5 working days before the next payment is due to come out (excluding the date of payment).

As they give you up to 45 days interest free credit, this leaves a window of around 9 days following statement production in which to change the collection amount. As Muffle made the request 4 days before his statement was produced, they had a clear 13 days in which to carry out his request.

http://new.egg.com/visitor/0,2388,3_11084--View_1765-bID_EC+servicing+faq-dva_1,00.html#howdoichangetheamountiwanttopay?

ctm_2

Ok. I thought muffle was talking about the payment date shown on the statement, not the actual statement date.

perhaps you could clarify what date you were talking about muffle.