M&S Credit Card - one almighty mess up

Katiel15 · 28 May 2014 at 7:15PM

Here is a tale about a credit card. Not just any credit card - a M&S credit card.
Last July I took advantage of an 12 month interest free detail with them on a card that I hadn't used for a while. All set up, checked that I had a d/d in place for the payment. Went on holiday. Came back to message on answer machine and phone call at 9am the morning after I got back to tell me that the payment hadn't gone through. Checked my bank account - plenty of money there and the bank told me that it had never been requested. Spoke to M&S and it turns out that a new d/d should have been sorted out as it had been dormant for so long. OK, made a manual payment, requested a new d/d form and sat back. Meanwhile carried on making manual payments. Several months later requested another d/d form. Finally in February this year the d/d got set up. On the statement at end of March it told me that I would be charged interest as it was at the end of the offer. So I rang them up, told them all the details from the balance transfer (luckily I kept names, dates and amounts). No problem, they said, their mistake, they would sort it. Next thing I get a letter from them telling me that my account balance was £16000, £6000 over the credit limit. Turns out that instead of sorting out the interest free period they had actually added the balance back on. So I rang them up and thought I got it sorted. M&S offered a £20 gift card for my trouble. Then at the end of April, I got the statement and a letter telling me that my account was £6000 over the credit limit. The statement told me that a payment of £400 would be taken out of my account, the letter told me that they would claw back the whole 'overspend' and would take over £6K from my bank account. So I rang them up again. I was told that it was being sorted out. Obviously it wasn't. After 3 days it was finally sorted out - or so I thought. I was told that both the payments would be cancelled, so I up a manual payment to the account for May. I was given an extra 9 months interest free period as a apology. End of. Or so I thought. Oh, no it wasn't. Check my bank account today to find that they M&S may have cancelled the £400 payment:mad: but forgot about the £6K. That went out and funnily enough straight back in due to lack of funds. Goody, bank charges. Rang M&S, started at the very beginning. Told them them I would want the charges refunded. I was promised a call back by the end of the day. Yep, you guessed it. No call back. It will be tomorrow afternoon before I can ring them again. My stress level with all of this is pretty high - as you can imagine. I feel as though I am talking to a bunch of total idiots all the time. Last time M&S conveniently gave me details of how to complain to the FSA. After they have hopefully sorted it this time would you complain? I am wondering what level of compensation to demand from M&S this time. It is just a total mess.
PS. Thanks for sticking with this and reading it all!

Tixy · 28 May 2014 at 7:47PM

Have you made a written complaint to them? If not that is your next obvious step. I would't wait to see if they sort it after the next call, or the one after that or after that, I'd write the complaint now (well I'd have probably written it before now seeing as the phone calls are clearly no resolving things).

ic · 28 May 2014 at 9:15PM

Its probably worth going into a branch (they do have bank counter/areas don't they?) and sitting with somebody face to face, who can then make the necessary calls on your behalf - that way you'll have somebody to go back to if anything else goes wrong.

Looking at the ombudsman examples, it looks like this would rank in the £100 - £200 range if they were to be involved. Obviously to get that far, you'd have to work through the process and that can take over a year.

RichL74 · 29 May 2014 at 2:03PM

I dont think they have counters as such, they have the bureau money exchanges but I dont think there is any 'over the counter' service for the credit cards.