Virgin Credit Card - Be careful

louiser123

i have to say i cant understand why a payment made by debit card is not classed as immediate, after all we use our debit cards in shops/restaurants ect and we are not asked to either wait for our food for 3 days till payment clears or told to come back and collect our purchases in 3 days!!!

debit card payments come out of accounts immediatly or at least mine does, so i reckon its just another bleating load of tosh the banks ect make up to enable them to charge more.

whats the point of debit cards at all if the transactions done on them can differ its simple to me as soon as i have paid thats my part of the bargain over and if shops accept it as instant why cant the cards and banks!!

vet8

Posters on here always recommend paying by DD, which is clearly sensible, but I think you need to realise that this is not always appropriate. As I have stated elsewhere DDs only work if you are on a regular monthly salary and you can guarantee that on a certain date your salary will be in the bank to pay the DD.

Believe it or not there are loads of people who are not paid like this and who have to juggle their money each month to pay the bills when they can. It is annoying when someone posts smugly that the answer to everything is to set up a DD. It is easy if you are comfortably off to forget that not everyone else is.

tiff

By the same token not everyone who has a regular monthly salary is comfortably off, vet8. But I get your point.

Louiser, that is a good point. I hope someone on here can explain why that is.

fudgecat

Whilst your point is taken, Vet8, surely the DD for the minimum amount is not beyond the purse of most people? This can then be topped up as necessary with an additional payment. It gives the card holder peace of mind, ensures that the profit of MBNA is severely curtailed and should not cause too may problems at the bank, surely?

bengal-stripe

Moggles wrote: »

One of MBNA's favourite tricks is to bring the payment due date forward. Notice of this change will be embedded somewhere in the small-print leaflet which accompanied your previous statement..........judging from the complaints to this forum, hundreds of customers are clobbered.

The statement for every month shows quite clearly, at what particular day payment is due.
That date can also be found when one log into one's account.

Surely, one can expect any reasonably intelligent person to open their monthly statement and look at it.

Moggles_2

bengal-stripe wrote: »

The statement for every month shows quite clearly, at what particular day payment is due. That date can also be found when one log into one's account. Surely, one can expect any reasonably intelligent person to open their monthly statement and look at it.

I don't much care for the way you've edited my post, Bengal. As stated previously, I personally have not been caught out. (I do read statements and also monitor my cc accounts online.)

Nevertheless, I can understand why, in the tapistry of life, peeps get caught out by MBNA's continuous tinkering with the payment due date. Other lenders do not find it necessary to bring payment due dates forward to this extent.

MBNA has never once provided its customers with an explanation for this behaviour. If an explanation was forthcoming, the bank might find its customers less sceptical about the reasons. :rolleyes:

bengal-stripe

Moggles wrote: »

I can understand why, in the tapistry of life, peeps get caught out by MBNA's continuous tinkering with the payment due date. Other lenders do not find it necessary to bring payment due dates forward to this extent.

MBNA has never once provided its customers with an explanation for this behaviour. If an explanation was forthcoming, the bank might find its customers less sceptical about the reasons. :rolleyes:

In recent years, MBNA has reduced the potentially interest-free period from 59 days down to 50 days (to save money). My statements are dated the 17th or 18th of the month. Four years ago, payment was due the 15th or 16th , now it is due the 5th or 6th.

There is no doubt, MBNA has reduced the ’benefits’ of their cards. There might be other CC offering a longer interest-free period and all MBNA customers are free to change to those.

But, tapestry or no tapestry, I have no sympathy for people who cannot be bothered to check their statements and then to claim it on some conspiracy.

space_rider

I set up a DD for the minimum and I have divided the amount owing on the card by 15 months and set up a standing order to pay it. I transferred my overdraft from the Halifax as they were charging £1 or £2 per day and there was no way I was paying that.

cos_2

louiser123 wrote: »

i have to say i cant understand why a payment made by debit card is not classed as immediate, after all we use our debit cards in shops/restaurants ect and we are not asked to either wait for our food for 3 days till payment clears or told to come back and collect our purchases in 3 days!!!

debit card payments come out of accounts immediatly or at least mine does, so i reckon its just another bleating load of tosh the banks ect make up to enable them to charge more.

whats the point of debit cards at all if the transactions done on them can differ its simple to me as soon as i have paid thats my part of the bargain over and if shops accept it as instant why cant the cards and banks!!

The payments you see happening 'online' or immediately, don't, I'm afraid. If you were to go to your local restaurant tonight and pay with a debit card then come home and check your online bank account you won't see that transaction. In fact, you might not see it for several days (same applies to the big supermarkets) because the payment requests are collected together into batches and submitted to the bank clearing systems at various times depending upon each company.

Small restuarants and shops use payment clearing companies that do this batching process on their behalf - the big retailers do it themselves, but tend to submit them for final payment no more than once per day, and usually at night.

What you probably WILL see is your available balance is reduced by the amount you spent at the restaurant, because the system will 'prebook' the amount against your account in an attempt to ensure the actual payment claim is eventually met.

It's a horribly complex process and I've surely explained it very badly