MBNA charging interest when none due

Chomeur

I have two credit cards with MBNA. I'm using a number of their zero percent promotions. No interest is currently payable on either of my cards. But they charged me £1 on one. OK, not much money, but I don't want this to become a regular thing so I phone them up. It takes fifteen minutes to get through their automated system and sort it out. The operator tells me that the charge is due to a computer error and they'll be refunding it to me.

Then I get the statement for my other card. They've charged me £7 interest. So I phone them up again. The operator tells me that the promotion I'm using, where expenditure between 4th January and 31 March was interest free was only valid for expenditure before 4th January. I kid you not, he really said that. Eventually he says he can't understand why I've been charged the interest and promises to refund me.

Either their game is to charge people small amounts of interest that aren't payable and hope their phone system will be such a pain that people won't bother ringing up to complain, or they're incompetent. Either way I'm going to use other cards in the future instead.

fozmcfc

Would be worth you repeat posting this over in the credit card section as well, just to warn people to check their statements carefully.