MBNA "offers"

henrik1971

I've been an MBNA customer for about 10 years and regularly get 0% BT offers from them, some of which I have taken up.

However over the past year or two, their 'handling fee' has steadily crept up from 2.5% to 3%, 3.5%, 4%. 4.5%, and their latest offer to me came with a 5% fee attached.

I wonder how high can these fees go, and when will the FCA or whoever step in and say they can no longer advertise it as a 0% offer.

Two other great examples of this are the DVD rentals by post which unsed to be advertised as 'Unlimited' but in the small print, they say it was unlimited, subject to a limit. What a joke.

The other one is the cheque cashing shops in town that have billboards outside saying 2.9% commission, with the number "2" in font size 1000, and the ".9" so small you'd need a magnifying glass to make it out.

chattychappy

I agree with you.

I'm not in the favour of a nanny state, but given the amount of intervention there is in this market, I'm amazed that fees on a BT offer are not required to be rolled into a BT APR calculation.

I often get offers from MBNA too - but like you the fee has always been 5% recently. I'm getting better offers from other providers.

phona

My most recent from MBNA was 4.5% for balance transfers and 5% for money transfers. It's actually the first one I've had from them so I can't comment on it going up.

I had a conversation quite recently about BTs. Someone told me about an offer they received for a 0% interest balance transfer and I said there would be a fee of 3% or so. They said, "no, it's 0%" and that conversation kinda went in circles for a bit... And that was before I'd got into why you shouldn't mix balance transfer with purchases! No wonder people find finances confusing.

Similarly, I have a sim-only phone deal with "Unlimited Texts" subject to a limit of 3000. Not unlimited then, is it? 3000 is more than enough for me but if I sent 3001 one month, I'd be pretty cheesed off.

jamesd

The APR for such a deal will depend on the amount borrowed, how the minimum payment is calculated, what you do after the end of the deal, whether it goes on to standard rate or not. Not easy to provide a meaningful APR value.

If you don't like the particular offers you're getting you can try applying for a new card from another provider, since those can have deals lasting twice as long as existing customer offers for the same, lower or higher fee.

peter999

henrik1971 wrote: »

I've been an MBNA customer for about 10 years and regularly get 0% BT offers from them, some of which I have taken up.

However over the past year or two, their 'handling fee' has steadily crept up from 2.5% to 3%, 3.5%, 4%. 4.5%, and their latest offer to me came with a 5% fee attached.

I wonder how high can these fees go, and when will the FCA or whoever step in and say they can no longer advertise it as a 0% offer.

Two other great examples of this are the DVD rentals by post which unsed to be advertised as 'Unlimited' but in the small print, they say it was unlimited, subject to a limit. What a joke.

The other one is the cheque cashing shops in town that have billboards outside saying 2.9% commission, with the number "2" in font size 1000, and the ".9" so small you'd need a magnifying glass to make it out.

Do the fees vary depending on length of balance transfer offer.

I remember the 5% fee was for 18 month period, 3.5% was for around 12 months.

jamesperrett

All the MBNA offers I've received recently have had a charge of 3% for a 12 month interest free period or 5% for a longer period. While those charges might have been competitive a few years ago, they're not particularly competitive nowadays.

Penelopa.Pitstop

We have 2 MBNA cards in our household. One used to be Virgin and this card gets longer and longer balance transfers with fees up to 3-4%. Other card is old BMI that earns air miles. This one has shorter BT offers with higher transfer fees. We usually receive offers on both of them on the same day by email, just different conditions of BTs.

I use BMI on daily basis as it gets me 2 air miles per £1 spent. The other one is occasionally used for BT.

fozmcfc

I agree with the OP, they have been creeping up.

They are beginning to only now benefit, customers who can't get another BT card or very low APR loan or those who want to do a money transfer, as many cards, don't offer this option.

But then in general, borrowing say £2k for 12-18 months, and paying back a total of £2040 or £2050 still isn't that bad.

MABLE

Latest offer until December 2015.

0.0% until 8 December 2015 on all Balance Transfers completed before 31 July 2014
A transfer handling fee will apply of 3.5% of the transaction (minimum of £3.00)
Transfer Balance
Money Transfers To A Current Account

0.0% until 8 December 2015 on all Money Transfers completed before 31 July 2014


A transfer handling fee will apply of 4.0% of the transaction (minimum of £3.00)

Transfer Balance

unquote.

My fee is lower possibly because I am one of their preferred customers.

Tesco 14 month with a fee 2.99 percent and my Barclay cards offering money to my bank account 3.5 percent for 12 months.

henrik1971

Penelopa.Pitstop wrote: »

We have 2 MBNA cards in our household. One used to be Virgin and this card gets longer and longer balance transfers with fees up to 3-4%. Other card is old BMI that earns air miles. This one has shorter BT offers with higher transfer fees. We usually receive offers on both of them on the same day by email, just different conditions of BTs.

I use BMI on daily basis as it gets me 2 air miles per £1 spent. The other one is occasionally used for BT.

I have two of their cards as well - the mastercard (ex Sonycard) and the American Airlines Amex. I regularly get offers on them both, and like you they are slightly different. Recently the amex offers have a 3.5% fee and the sonycard have the 4.5% fee (or 5% for cash). The current offers were for the sonycard and a 15 month promotional period.

As one of the other posters said, other providers are doing better. I've recently taken up a Barclaycard existing customer offer for 0%, 15 months, 2.9% fee, which I think is great. Also received an existing customer offer from NatWest Mastercard yesterday at 6.9% for life of balance, no fee, but the offer rate is variable linked to BOE base rate, so again a bit of a scam, as people using LOB offers are usually looking to transfer large amounts for a long time so will be caught out as the rate is not fixed and could be upto 8-9% in no time if the media are to be believed.

jamesd

That NatWest life of balance offer could perhaps be beaten by a personal loan for many people, with a fixed interest rate. Of course no real reason to do that when 0% with fee offers for quite long terms are available instead.