Asda Credit Card- dumbest move ever?

tallyhoh

I have had an Asda credit card for quite a few years. About 4 months ago I had a letter to say the product was being withdrawn after 13th January 2013. The letter explained how to pay off the balance, when my cashback points would be paid up to & not to use the card after 13/1/2013.

A few weeks later I had a similar letter again reiterating the above.

As I only use one credit card I applied for a different card & have been using the new card for a few weeks.

Today I recieved a letter from Asda stating that they were replacing my original card with a different product & explaining how I should reapply for it.

Am I missing something or is this the dumbest marketing move ever?:eek:

InsideInsurance

Who is the current card underwritten by and who is the new product underwritten by? I see from their website that the one they currently advertise are from Sygma Bank SA.

At a guess I would say that Asda are switching card issuer. Asda are not a bank and therefore have gone down the same route as most other retailers who want to build on their brand and have approached a bank to do a white label of their card for them.

In these sorts of relationships things are complex over who exactly "owns" the customer and what rights and obligations each party has both to each other and in respect to the customer.

Hypothetically if they have switched underwriter then the original underwriter probably sent the first letter which didnt mention anything about the new product because they've lost the business and so wont exactly be promoting a competitors product. The second one presumably would come from Asda itself who does have an interest in retaining your business.

With one former client who did a fair number of white label for insurance products and I remember when they lost one client they had to provide all the customer data to the new insurer that had taken over the book from "us". The contract didnt however say how the customer data had to be provided and so to be a little petty and not help our competitors data was given printed on paper (rather than electronically) with single customer data being split over several pages which were non sequential in the bound books they were given in

alanq

The old card supplier was Santander.

http://money.asda.com/media/490806/santander_customer_letter_july_2012.pdf

oscarward

I'm in the same boat, what have people done i.e. taken out new asda card or gone somewhere else with a better deal?

dazza.mk

Personal preference, but I've currently got other cards that beat the % instore cashback by shopping in Asda so the only 'freebie' is free delivery over £120.

Which isn't enough for me to apply.

staple28

I paid mine off and started using my barclay card instead, i wont be applying for their 'new' card