MSE News: Barclaycard to buy 1.15 million Egg customers

Froggitt

Although if the past is anything to go by, byebye cashback.

Megalomaniac

Massive shame. I have always enjoyed the cashback offered, and seemingly they have always enjoyed having me as a customer (I still have a 7.9% APR unlike the vast majority of others where it has gradually increased). Oh well - all good things come to an end! Thanks for the heads up on this MSE.

izools

Megalomaniac wrote: »

Massive shame. I have always enjoyed the cashback offered, and seemingly they have always enjoyed having me as a customer (I still have a 7.9% APR unlike the vast majority of others where it has gradually increased). Oh well - all good things come to an end! Thanks for the heads up on this MSE.

You never know, yours might be converted into a Barclaycard Simplicity which also carries a 7.9% APR.

One can but hope

skybluesaver

On top of getting the delightful Indian call centre customer services, you'll also be getting the pointless contactless RFID Barclaycard which is a fraudsters paradise. Just read up online the security problems with RFID credit cards, knowing that the customer services are poor & i'm sure you'll understand why i'm closing my Barclaycard now i've got my Halifax Clarity card.

miller

1jim wrote: »

I have just applied (and been accepted for) a Halifax Clarity Reward account, wife will be getting one in her name as well so thats £10 extra a month...not quite as good as eggs cashback but comes close....

The Clarity card is a good choice especially as it tops the charts for Foreign Exchange i.e. spend £500 on holiday, you are £15 better off already on average.

On the domestic front spend*:
£0-£299: no cashback: worse than egg
£300-£500: cashback 1.66%-1%: same or better than egg
£500+: < 1% slightly worse than egg unless significantly more

Edit: *for Reward Current account customers

katebl

I have recently applied for and got a Nationwide credit card (17 months 0% BT) to transfer a balance from MBNA. I have both an egg card and a barclaycard (limits £2,500 and £6,000 respectively), neither of which has any balance on it. Seeing as I only wanted to keep cards for BT'ing should I just close my egg card now? Don't really want them to re-assess my original barclaycard when they look at giving me a 2nd as they just dropped my APR and I am happy with the limit. Also would they credit search when transferring the accounts, as I don't want another search when I don't really need it. Any thoughts appreciated!

donaldtramp

Barclaycard are getting too big and their crappy indian call centres was the final blow and so i will never deal with these idiots again.

So barclaycard use Indian call centres. Fantastic. I think we know what's going to happen to all those Egg call centre staff in Derby.
Very sad. RIP EGG.
I also note that there is no mention of Barclaycard honouring any of the cashback deals going forward.
I doubt whether the extra years warranty deal with Egg will last either.

meggsy

"Chris Williamson, Labour MP for Derby North, said he was concerned about job losses. 'I have spoken to Barclays and they have told me nothing,' he said.
Williamson said he had spoken to union Unite and was trying to arrange a meeting with Ministers this week.
'Once more clarification is given, and if there are major redundancies, we will see if the Government can stop the deal from taking place,' he said"


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1363386/Barclays-Egg-separate-job-fears-remain.html#ixzz1FosuZqPW

maxmiler

I have almost always worked with Barclays for various service providers (but never directly for them) from when I left school in 1973 until I finished work in October last year.
One very notable point is that the decisions that Barclays make bear very little semblance to common sense; so much so that when they change service provider it costs them more in the long run, so they don't make any savings that they thought they would make.
Also back in the late 90's they looked at joining Link. What they wanted from this was to persuade the other banks to increase the fee for taking out your cash from Link ATMs so that they could increase profits from cash withdrawals (Barclays had more ATMs than any other bank). Fortunately, the other members of Link outvoted them stating that while the cross-bank charge was quite low, it was more than enough to cover costs.
The same seems to me to have happened when they have taken over other business. They don't keep the customers. (I had a CSMA card and a Goldfish card both of which Barclays took over a few years ago. Some of my friends also had these cards. All of us ditched them then because the benefits were either removed or eroded so as to be of no value and in my case, also because of prior experience of Barclaycard). The only reason that I can think of for them taking over these other cards is to reduce the amount of rivals to their own brand card.
And my final comment about Barclays is that they are always looking for an angle of some sort in everything that they do, and don't care about what they do in the search for profit.

Froggitt

The more cards they buy up, the more cards will start up as competitors.

Also, the search for profit will be fruitless if they ditch the cashback and all the customers leave.