Nasty MBNA

juliacooper

Hello,

Had a terrible time on the telephone on Friday with MBNA. I will try to keep this as brief as possible.
I had a bablance of GBP6700.00 (there abouts) which I paid off in full in January before the due date - previously paid minimum monthly payments by DD.
SO in my own mind I had paid off balance and they had taken automatically a DD payment of about £120.00 at the same time.

I then made a purchase of £55.00. But in my own mind I was in credit of about 70.00. When my december statement came is said I owed them 25.00.
I called them up and they said it was interest. I disputed it it with them and said I was very unhappy. I had been a good customer blah blahblahand I said that if that was the case I wanted to close my account. I expected them to say ok pay off the final payment and that will be the end of it. But the lady I spoke to said OK I will close you account then.

Now I was perhap very nieve andassumed wrongly that they had closed my account and wiped off thesaid interest.

However came home on friday to find another statement with the said 25.00 interest and latefee of 25.00 plus more interest applied. So I called -was busy so they rang me back.

I explained the situation - told them I had closed my account andcouldnt understand why I was still receiving statments. They said they had closed my account - but I still owed them money!! I said ok well How can you close my account if I still owe you money - and they said that means that I can no longer use my card. I said ok why haveyou chargedme a late fee. And they said cos you havent made a payment. I said well I pay by direct debit - why didnt you take the money. They said becuase I cllosed the account!

Now is it me - or is that very strange?

Apparently I have to close the account and Finalise it (remember thatword kids). I said thats what I thought I had already done. She then went on to patronise me saying how can it be finalised if I still owe them money. I then said well why didnt you take it by direct debit - how can I be peanalised if they didnt take it - they said when I closed the accountthey stopped taking it??!! At this point I asked to speak to a supervisor - shethen went away for ages (good job it was their phone bill) and eventuallycame back sayingshe hadspoken to the supervisor and had wiped thelate charge. I am still not sure if this is right- but was so angry at theway I had been spoken to (after all it my interest that keep her in a job). I asked if I could settel and FINALISE over the phone - but they do not accept switch payments!

Has anyone else had similar problems with them?


Thanks

Julia

Tom_Jones

Always found MBNA to be very helpful when I ring them, although I did have an issue with them a few years ago when they charged me interest on a PC purchase before the due date for payment, but they did remove this charge after a long conversation with a supervisor, glad they wiped the late charge for you but you do need to pay off the interest as soon as you can, unless you think your in the right that you don't owe it, in that case put your case in writing to them and send it recorded delivery.

I would personally pay the £25 and ask for a letter that you account is closed.

Reaper

Some things don't seem to make sense, perhaps because you were trying to shorten the story.

You say you paid it off in full plus they took £120 by DD so you were £120 in credit. So what happened to this credit when your statement arrived? Were you wrong about the figures? If not when you closed your account they owed you money not the other way round.

omega27

Was the £6700 a BT (or cash withdrawl, or part of either)? They acrue interest daily, so even if you pay the full amount before the statement date you will still owe them interest next month. So say the interest works out at £90 (about 1.3%/month), you spend £55 & £120 is from the DD. That leaves you owing £25.

nh

Could the £25 be interest charged on the £6700 before it was paid off?

If you hadn't paid the balance in full last month, then this month you would have no 56-day interest-free period, so even though you paid the amount the statement said you owed, but the time it actually reached MBNA, you owed more.

Could that be it?

cloud_dog

I'm no big fan of finacial institutions (they exist to bleed you dry) but, on this occasion, I think I would have just re-iterated that there were no oustanding monies to repay and got the MBNA rep to confirm this.

To some degree you have to take responsibility for ensuring you acheive what you set out to acheive, in this case, close the account with no monies owing.

I'm not unsypathetic to the OP but MBNA exist to make money, why would they cancel charges / interest if someone was closing the account; if they were going to remain a customer and MBNA thought they could make money out of them in the future then perhaps they might have waived the fee / interest charge.

cloud_dog

nh

Now I am confused, why did Julia owe money to MBNA in the first place then? Because as she said she paid the balance on the statement, plus the DD was taken, so why the charge?

I was just asking whether the charge was interest incurred between the statement date and the day it was paid off.

If so, then yes, she owed MBNA money. I think it is wrong that they didn;'t make it clear to her though when she tried to close the account. And that they didn't take the DD.

They should have made it clear that money was still owed.

But the money owed in the first place wasn't a fiddle was it? It really was interest owed.

westernpromise

I sympathise with Julia, and clearly there's a general lesson to be learned here, which is that whenever any of us takes advantage of one of these deals, we must get the card issuer to confirm in excruciating detail exactly what we must do to avoid interest.

This means not just understanding when the deal ends, but also what we have to do to ensure that the account is cleared and is recognised as cleared so that we can resume normal use without incurring penalties like this.

I suspect the commonest pitfall is wrongly assuming that 6 months at 0% = no interest till after the 6th statement.

Is there no ombudsman to whom this could be referred? If Julia owes money and there was an active and usable DD in place, then surely she did make arrangements to pay the bill. It was down to MBNA to collect and it's hardly her fault if they didn't bother.

baffcat

westernpromise wrote:

If Julia owes money and there was an active and usable DD in place, then surely she did make arrangements to pay the bill. It was down to MBNA to collect and it's hardly her fault if they didn't bother.

This, I believe, is one of the most valid points made in this series of posts. A DD had been used since the card had been issued. It had never been cancelled, ergo - MBNA had the authority to take the payment.

Get back in touch with them and demand recompense.

Baff

deemy2004

Joining the discussion late......

Is it the problem that Julia misinterpreted the due date as being the same as the end of the 0% period date ?

If so then she is in the wrong and needs to pay the interest. The onus is on ALL stoozers to KNOW when their 0% period ends...

As for the rest... Julia needs to put this down to experience and not get too hooked up by what has happened. Always remember to stick to the T&C and Don't imagien that the bank is going to let you off interest owed unless they specifically say so... A few simple words such as, so what happens with the oustanding interest ? Would have prevented a lot of heatache....

If your lucky you may get the late fees back, if you argue that they are illegal as you are being penalised due to confusion on their end in not clarifying what happens after an account is closed.