Closing Accounts - What have I learnt

no_more_cards_for_me

I closed several cards recently and thought I would share my experiences of the service levels I received:

Nat West : Simple, cancelled with one phone call and letter received confirming within 7 days. I would expect this from a major bank. Overall service level average, web is via NW online banking so not great.

Egg: No hassle but slow on confirmation. Customer service and response to emails very good. Too liberal with credit limits overall but willing to listen and helpful when the customer has problems. Collections department helpful and understanding. Website is good.

Captial One: Very good, no issues and letter received within 5 days. From a customer service point of view, outstanding once you get through to a supervisor, otherwise very average and scripted. I would use them again and probably recommend them due to the service I received once past the call centre. Charges refunded very quickly.

MBNA: Average, slow to respond to emails and send out confirmation. Constant phone calls if account in arrears, poor communication. I would not want to deal with them again, difficult to settle and overall poor service levels. The new security on the website seems to serve little point and generally they are not that helpful.

Aqua: Useless- utterly useless!!!!. Account closed and letter received within 7 days. Statement with £5.60 received, rang the call centre and refunded out of good will. Advised that account closed. 2nd statement received with £0.01 outstanding. Rang call centre and refunded.

"By the way sir, you will receive another statement confirming the refund of £0.01 in due course".

No wonder they can afford to charge 34.9% APR to send out statements for £0.01 !!

So out of all of them I'd use Cap 1 & Egg again but wouldn't touch MBNA or Aqua with a barge pole. The customer service from some of these companies is very good at one extreme and terrible at the other, with poor communication and a lack of understanding - it would appear that once you have borrowed and gotten onto the minimum payment routine they don't expect you to actually settle the card !

Now that I'm debt free, I suppose its easy to say but credit cards if misused can be a real problem. If paid back in full them they are fine but I know I can't trust myself not to spend on big credit limits.

So I've kept one card back for work use ---- Barclaycard.

Why - well so far they have been OK and I had a sensible limit with them. They are far from perfect but the website works and I know where I stand with them. Full payment every money from the company means not charges. I'd love to get an amex card for the cashback but its unlikely to be for a year or two as my credit file settles down.

Good luck everybody.

jonesMUFCforever

You may think that they are closed but if a continuous authority is asked for then the account is reopened and the transaction posted to the card account.

no_more_cards_for_me

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

You may think that they are closed but if a continuous authority is asked for then the account is reopened and the transaction posted to the card account.

Not got any of those (thankfully)

jonesMUFCforever

arenaman wrote: »

Yes I'm sure I haven't got any set up, isn't it about time someone clamped down on this? would a bank allow money to come out of a closed account, No so why do CC companies allow this and why the hell can't they or the customer cancel the CPA? It's quite shocking really.

You have answered your own question - the customer CAN and MUST cancel the CPA.
The bank will not have any record of these.
Easiest way is not to set them up in the first place.

marksoton

no_more_cards_for_me wrote: »

MBNA: Constant phone calls if account in arrears, poor communication.

Can't think why... :rolleyes:

Do you not see the irony of these two comments ?

Rupert_Bear

MBNA are the best. Reading though the OP post think they have been naughty in the past hence the reason there is bitterness against them.

Run your account correctly and no late payments you will always get promo rates from them.

Also fab customer service.

no_more_cards_for_me

No bitterness, but an observation that the customer service I received was poor, they communicate poorly with an automatic call system that repeats calls even when answered.

I wouldn't go near MBNA no matter what promo rate they offered. When it takes 3 days to respond to an email enquiry then I think that is pretty poor service. Its acknowledged that MBNA bump the rate at any given opportunity and I found this even when upto date with all payments.

Merely trying to give information about the service levels of some of these cards so that others can form their own opinion about which one they might want to use.

At least they weren't as bad as aqua.

chambta

MBNA (Virgin) were an absolute shambles to cancel for me.

Put me through to some retention department and were like a dog with a bone. Never closed it when asked and took at least two follow up calls.

dtaylor84

arenaman wrote: »

would a bank allow money to come out of a closed account, No so why do CC companies allow this

Yes, a bank allows continuous payment authorities to be set up on debit cards, so money can come out of a closed bank account too.