Advice On Virgin/MBNA Late Payment Notifications

geordieboy2007

Hi, I have been a long term lurker around here but my frustration today means I am looking for advice.

I had about £2700 on a Virgin Card that was interest Free until April '07. I have also been clean on this card paying of £100-£150 a month before that. At the end of March I applied for another card and transfered the £2700 balance to Mint.

I never received any further statments from Virgin and assumed all was well.... until this weekend.

I returned from 4 weeks Business Travel and a 2 Week vacation and find in letter number one (from Virgin) a notice of late payment for £8.20 telling me my account was suspended due to 3 month arrears.

In letter two was the a nice message from MBNA telling me I am in default of my agreement and they would take further action.. Obviously I immediately paid the £8.20 and called Virgin. :eek:

They said that the balance transfer went through in April not March and so charged they had charged £8.20 interest as April is the month the intrest free ended (I had assumed it was end of April but anyway). This hadnt been paid by me and so this was the reason for notifications.

The laughable part is she said dont worry you wont be charged a late payment fee... geez thats great then, only three late payment and a default notice on my credit file.. fantastic.

This is looking like an oversight on my part as it probably said in the T&C start of April, but is there anything I can do? I think this is all extreme for £8.20.

:mad: They were pretty unhelpful when I called (both Customer Service and the Credit Dept). They kept saying really it wont affect my credit report and not to worry, anyone reading the report would see it was oversight and not a credit payment issue and advised I may be able to add a note to my account to this effect. - I'm not convinced.

Thanks for responses/input I am interest to hear what effect this might have on my otherwise great history.

GB

jay78

Have you actually checked your credit reports? Where you did your balance transfer did you check the dates correctly? That is allowing for the extra days that are needed for a payment to go through? (i.e.) 3-5 days before the date that interest would start to be applied?

YorkshireBoy

jay78 wrote: »

Where you did your balance transfer did you check the dates correctly? That is allowing for the extra days that are needed for a payment to go through? (i.e.) 3-5 days before the date that interest would start to be applied?

OP "assumed" the 0% end date was the end of April, when in fact Virgin 0% end dates always coincide with the statement date - which I suspect was probably towards the start of the month.

Always ask for the 0% end date during the activation phone call, and then diarise it.