Amazon MBNA Card Beware

danjourno

Hi,

I'm not sure if people are aware but I just got burnt by this.

I applied for an Amazon MBNA Credit Card which has a promotional offer giving you 0% interest for purchases over £300 till 2013.

My April statement had a balance of £1,974.51 which the statement said was made up of £1,467.54 chargable at 1.3133% and £506.97 chargable at 0% interest under the promotional rate.

So I made a payment of £1743.18 which I thought would cover the £1467.54+ and mean that I wouldnt get charged any interested.

However, Ive discovered that that isnt the case. If you leave ANY amount on your account, EVEN if its an amount covered by a promotional rate, they charge you interest against the £1467.54 from the purchase date till the date you pay it off. Meaning theres no 56 days interest free to allow you to receive and review the statements.

My mistake that I didnt read the back of the statement. It does say clearly 'Interest free period: Maximum 50 days for card purchases, if you pay your balance in full and on time each month.'

This means that if you want to make use of the interest free promotional rates, you cant make any other purchases! Otherwise you get shot in the foot and have open wallet surgery where they suck interest out of your pocket. In my situation, I would never be able to make use of the promotional rate since I use it for purchases.
It would be nice if MSE would make this more clear to people, as the bank certainly don't want to make it clear.

Coupled with the fact that I didnt have access to my statements for the last 7 days due to a 'technical fault', this is really frustrating.

Any comments?
Thanks
Dan

Tixy

danjourno wrote: »

Any comments?

Its not just Amazon/MBNA - all cards companies work like this - that you have to clear the full balance to get the 56days interest free.

You are certainly far from the only one to have been caught out by this- usually its been people who have a promo bal transfer balance and mix that with standard purchases which they pay each month.

Best advice is not to mix promo deals with day to day spending.

At least the good news for you is you spotted after one month, several people have posted having not checked statements and not spotted they were being charged for several months.

Typhoon2000

Yes, same with all cards. That's why you should not use a 0% card for any non 0% purchases to bt's.

izools

As above.

Your credit card agreement states 56 days interest free on purchases when the statement balance is paid in full each month.

As you haven't paid the statement balance in full each month, the 56 days free doesn't apply

thenudeone

This is what I would expect and in line with the terms, but it's easy to get caught out.

I'm an experienced stoozer but Natwest recently caught me out.

I was surprised to see interest being charged on a Natwest card that has nothing on it but 0% balance transfers.
Why?
Because although the BT itself is at 0%, the BT fee isn't, and interest starts to be charged on that straight away.
It doesn't bother me too much because when Natwest do a BT, they take several days, but they automatically credit your account with 4 days interest @29.9%APR to offset any interest you may have been charged by the other card, so overall I'm still up.
In future, however, I'll pay off the BT charge straight away to stop any more interest being charged.

It just goes to show that you have to read the fine print very carefully and understand all the implications before accepting any card's special offer.

sistafromanothermista

I never understand these things!!!