Incorrect advice now got £600 in charges! Advice how to proceed please

Fishun

Hi all,


I’ll summarise this as best as possible..


I have a balance on my MBNA credit card for a money transferwhich was taken up to buy a car on a 0% offer. When arranging the transfer Ispoke at length with the customer service rep to get a figure I would need topay each month so the balance was cleared before the 0% offer ran out so Icould set up a direct debit, and I asked which date of the month this needed tocome out. I followed their advice and instructions to the letter and have beenpaying off each month.


As the balance is sue to be cleared in August I went on theonline banking site today to double check it would be cleared when expected,there was much more left on than should have been and a raft of charges for£40+, and £12 late payment charges. The representative on the phone said thiswas because the date I had it coming out of the account was out of sequencewith the statements and therefore it classed every payment as late, and had hitme with a late charge each time. Also this meant I lost my 0% privileges, sohave been paying interest also from when this first happened. I haveaccumulated around £600 in charges, and never had a notification of the latepayment charges. I didn’t check my statement regularly as I never used the cardfor anything else it sits in a drawer and as far as I was concerned everythingwas correctly in place to pay by the required date so i had no reason to –obviously wish I had now!

I complained and they are taking no responsibility so amawaiting a call back from someone more senior, I will take this as far as I canas it’s their incorrect information in the first place that has led to thishappening.

My question is, do Ido a balance transfer on to my normal card (which has a 0% offer on now untilAugust 15) to avoid paying any further charges, or is that the wrong thing todo given I’m then paying them effectively, including the charges which I thinkare unjust?


Any advice or similar experiences much appreciated, this isreally stressing me out L

eddddy

Hi Fishun

Do you mean you set up a Standing Order? You wouldn't have had this problem if you had set up a direct debit (to cover the minimum payment, at least).

You are challenging the fees anyway - I don't think it will make any difference whether you now do a balance transfer or not. If you are successful in your challenge, they would refund the fees either way.

[Deleted User]

Fishun wrote: »

I haveaccumulated around £600 in charges, and never had a notification of the latepayment charges.

That's strange. They should have told you in your statement each month.

Fishun wrote: »

I didn’t check my statement

Oh.

meer53

Fishun wrote: »

Hi all,


I’ll summarise this as best as possible..


I have a balance on my MBNA credit card for a money transferwhich was taken up to buy a car on a 0% offer. When arranging the transfer Ispoke at length with the customer service rep to get a figure I would need topay each month so the balance was cleared before the 0% offer ran out so Icould set up a direct debit, and I asked which date of the month this needed tocome out. I followed their advice and instructions to the letter and have beenpaying off each month.


As the balance is sue to be cleared in August I went on theonline banking site today to double check it would be cleared when expected,there was much more left on than should have been and a raft of charges for£40+, and £12 late payment charges. The representative on the phone said thiswas because the date I had it coming out of the account was out of sequencewith the statements and therefore it classed every payment as late, and had hitme with a late charge each time. Also this meant I lost my 0% privileges, sohave been paying interest also from when this first happened. I haveaccumulated around £600 in charges, and never had a notification of the latepayment charges. I didn’t check my statement regularly as I never used the cardfor anything else it sits in a drawer and as far as I was concerned everythingwas correctly in place to pay by the required date so i had no reason to –obviously wish I had now!

I complained and they are taking no responsibility so amawaiting a call back from someone more senior, I will take this as far as I canas it’s their incorrect information in the first place that has led to thishappening.

My question is, do Ido a balance transfer on to my normal card (which has a 0% offer on now untilAugust 15) to avoid paying any further charges, or is that the wrong thing todo given I’m then paying them effectively, including the charges which I thinkare unjust?


Any advice or similar experiences much appreciated, this isreally stressing me out L

As they will have provided a monthly statement for you which would have shown the charges, i can't see that they will be backing down on anything. If you don't check them, thats your problem. Just because you don't use the card doesn't mean there won't be any transactions on it. Credit card fraud happens all the time.

If you have proof that you were advised when to pay then you might get somewhere. Why didn't you set up a Direct Debit ?

Fruit_and_Nut_Case

Do you have a recording of the advice you were given or did you get it in writing?

YorkshireBoy

Fishun wrote: »

I have a balance on my MBNA credit card for a money transferwhich was taken up to buy a car on a 0% offer. When arranging the transfer Ispoke at length with the customer service rep to get a figure I would need topay each month so the balance was cleared before the 0% offer ran out

At length!? Wasn't it just as simple as?...

(Total amount borrowed + the money transfer fee) / number of months 0% = monthly payment required

Which bit of the addition and/or division were you having particular difficulty with?

cardoness

Hi Fichun,
I have had the same problem. I did the same as youself and applied for a 0% money tranfer to also pay for a car. As I wanted to pay a set amout to pay back each month I phoned mbna to set up a direct debt. I was told that because it was a set amount I wanted to pay I was to set up a standing order, which I did with my bank. I put the card in a drawer and like you never used it. On Friday I received my yearly credit card statement and saw nearly £600 interest on my balance. I thought they had made a mistake so I phoned them.Like you it was because my payment wasn't paid on time that they took me off the 0% deal and blamed the bank.I told them I wasn't happy and they said they would wave May's interest. I then phoned my bank who told me that I should never have set up a standing order as it can take a couple of days to reach mbna,it should have bee a direct debit. Iexplained that mbna told me that I couldn't do that. I complained also to the bank that I should have been told that the date for my standing should have been set up for a few days earlier than the actually date of payment. I wanted to make a complaint about the service I had been given by the bank but was basically told I wouldn't get anywhere. I then phoned mbna back and managed to get the last 3 months interest written off.
Hope this helps.

GingerBob_3

Hi Fishun,

A few questions and thoughts;

Did MBNA have you phone number? It's usually a good idea that CC companies don't have it, but in this case it might have helped. If they did have it, I wonder why they didn't ring you up to tell you about the first late payment and loss of 0% rate? If they didn't ring, then why do they want phone numbers?

I think your best course of action would be to challenge what's happened with MBNA (citing lack of communication, re phone calls), and if you don't get anywhere with them - and realistically, I don't think you will - transfer the balance to another card. Keep the MBNA card open and use it once or twice a year for a single minimal transaction. Also, set up paper-based statements. In other words, cost them money. At the same time brief against MBNA whenever you can.

As for coming to this board; as you can see it's full of smartarses who spend their lives going through T&Cs with a fine tooth comb, and who revel in telling people who don't do the same, how stupid they are and it's all their fault.

I hope you get somewhere with this.

john1002

Gingerbob,

Surely anyone taking out a financial product should at least have a grasp of what they are signing up for, we don't have a copy of the conversation so can not be 100% sure what the advisor advised or if they were aware the person asking the question was unsure how a credit card works, remember a credit card is a variable credit providing product with variable payments as such not a fixed loan like a bank or car loan would be.

Yes the advisor would give an idea of what monthly payment would be needed and roughly when but as no one month is the same no one payment date would be the same, I think it's firmly up to the person to know how credit cards work and use this knowledge to apply it to the MbNA one and thus know when to pay and how much to pay.

Just my view on it and I'm not one of those who reads every t abd c but having read all the stories on here you would be a fool not to

John

scootw1

Why on earth did the op not pay this every month themselves? You get an email or text tellng you when it is due with most cc providers these days and it takes a few minutes to pay. Surely one is not that busy that they cant spare a few minutes each month to ensure it gets paid? As for not checking statements, laziness is what that is.

meer53

MBNA didn't say that a direct debit couldn't be set up, they said a direct debit for a fixed amount couldn't be set up. To not look at statements for 12 months is foolish, regardless of whether you are using the card. Cardoness could have prevented the charges quite easily by checking each month.