MBNA April charges hike to minimum payments HELP!!

ladyjane4

Please can anyone give us any advice?? We have recived a letter to inform us that MBNA will be changing our monthly minimum payments from April. We have calculated this to be approx £100 pounds more a month!! We owe £10,000 on this card and have been paying just the minimum payment which are around £240.00 a month. They say this is to help the lender pay off the debt quicker !! We really can not afford the change in payments we are really struggling to meet the existing payments (but we do) any advice would be soooo helpful as lost how to tackle this situation, feel so powerless.

LadyJ

Tixy

Hi. This is due to a change in credit card rules from 1 Feb. From March Card companies now have to set your minimum repayment to be at least 1% of your balance plus any interest charged.

If you are struggling to meet your repayments it might be worth heading to the debt free wannabe board and posting up a statement of affairs to see whether the posters can spot any areas you can save money so you can afford your minimum repayments, or preferably more than your minimums.

slummymummyof3

As Tixy has said, you really need to post a statement of affairs so that people can make suggestions to you as to where it may be possible for you to make savings elsewhere in order for you to meet these payments.

chattychappy

Tixy wrote: »

Hi. This is due to a change in credit card rules from 1 Feb. From March Card companies now have to set your minimum repayment to be at least 1% of your balance plus any interest charged.

No it's not. It's a commercial decision by MBNA.

The new rules were not retrospective in effect. The specifically apply only to new accounts. I believe during the consultation process it was decided not to apply the rules to existing accounts specifically because of the problems it might cause.

Sorry no useful advice for the OP on fighting this. I feel it's legally questionable - written complaint to MBNA followed by FOS might produce something. It's not acceptable IMHO that people should be forced into credit-rating destroying special arrangements/plans because MBNA want to make such a significant change to minimums at relatively short notice.

Unless there is a high profile campaign taken up by the OFT, Which?, Martin etc., I doubt whether anything will happen. An FOS adjudicator might go out on a limb, but it might need one of the ombudsman or a court to rule on this - and this won't happen in good time.

Loads of threads starting on this - you are not alone. Maybe someone will take it up.

Tixy

Cheers for the correction chatty, I did think it was odd it was going to be retrospective.

Its certainly a good move for new accounts but for existing accounts if MBNA are choosing to do this it should have had a much longer notice period in my opinion (say 6months or more).

I suppose arguably MBNA will say that they can close down anyone's account with 2month's notice and request payment in full so shouldn't need to give more than 2months notice for any chance in conditions etc.

chattychappy

Tixy wrote: »

I suppose arguably MBNA will say that they can close down anyone's account with 2month's notice and request payment in full

I hadn't noticed that one. I really doubt that it would be enforceable though, except in the context of arrangement with creditors/bankruptcy whatever. Even with the interest hike opt-out thing, they can only insist that an account is paid down in a reasonable period. (Which co-op now seem to think means 6 months!)