MBNA Missing first statement - anyone else?

newspaperfeature

This just happened to me and I wondered if anyone else had had a similar experience.

I took out a Virgin Atlantic Amex with MBNA and I am absolutely convinced I never received my first statement.

I just received my second statement to find a late payment charge for £12 on it plus interest and, when I called up to find out what happened, I was told it was my responsibility to make a monthly payment whether or not I received a statement and that it's not their obligation to deliver the statement to me. I was also told that by not making a payment I forfeited any promotional rate that I had got when I took out the card.

This doesn't bother me too much as I usually pay everything off in full and I do accept that everything I was told is true and as stated in the T&Cs. But it also struck me that if all new customers' first statements 'go missing in the post', it's a very easy way of a) getting a £12 late fee off every new customer, b) getting the interest on that first statement and c) forcing them to forfeit their promotional rate - plus it's all legal, as the T&Cs obviously state that you have to pay whether or not you receive a statement.

As you can see from my site name, I'm a journo, but primarily I'm interested in this from a personal perspective so I'm not looking for case studies or anything, just wondering if this had happened to anyone else or if this is a well known practise?

moneyuser

I remember a post a while ago and the exact same thing happened.

deanos

If you are on special rates they will revoke them if you miss a payment, you will need to ring and explain and they will put you back on that rate, you only get one chance with them

newspaperfeature

They actually agreed to refund the late payment charge as I threatened to pay off the balance there and then and cancel my card.

I'm not overly fussed about the promotional rate because I will make sure I check the balance and pay it off every month online now.

It just really smelled like a scam, especially now moneyuser mentions recalling a similar post...

No_6

Your obviously online,
So why didn't you check your statement online,
why not make your payment online ?
if you had checked 'online' once a week, you wouldn't
have missed your statement !

!

6

Spark

No_6 is right, you should check your online accounts at least once a week, if only to make sure that no fraudulent transactions have been made on your cards, and at the same time check for your next payment date.

newspaperfeature

I'm not disputing that I've made a mistake here; yes I probably should have checked online. But to be honest, I think I probably behaved like 90% of the population would have done in the same situation. What I'm really interested in is the extent to which the credit card company profits from that situation and whether it's a situation they actually engineer.