MSE News: Tesco Bank credit card-holders stung with unexpected charges after...

lisaann72red

Pretty furious with Tesco I like others feel that the letter was misleading. My brain genuinely processed it as a way to bolster sales leading up to Christmas. We always pay our balance in full every month. We left the Tesco special offer amount unpaid like others. We have been offered for our interest to be paid back however all the while interest is still accumulating on our account we have spent non Tesco transactions. We have to wait 6 weeks for a refund of charges. Plus we are going to have an interest on our next statement they have put us in a right mess now. When my husband phoned to pay last months statements he queried if by paying minus the special offer amount we would incur charges and was told no we wouldn't, so even the staff didn't understand it!!! dodgy trick by Tesco during the worst money months of the year!:(:(

JuicyJesus

boo_star wrote: »

If you're not going to even attempt to learn how a financial product works, I'd be more than happy if you were no longer able to take out any financial products in the future.

Consumers are entitled to rely on what businesses tell them, and were a complaint about this to go to FOS then my gut feeling is that FOS would uphold because the offer was so unclear.

Again, yes, everyone should read the terms and conditions. But a reasonable person could read those terms and conditions, follow them and still come out paying interest.

boo_star

JuicyJesus wrote: »

Consumers are entitled to rely on what businesses tell them, and were a complaint about this to go to FOS then my gut feeling is that FOS would uphold because the offer was so unclear.

Again, yes, everyone should read the terms and conditions. But a reasonable person could read those terms and conditions, follow them and still come out paying interest.

How?

The T&Cs say that unless you pay your balance in full, you pay interest.

JuicyJesus

boo_star wrote: »

How?

The T&Cs say that unless you pay your balance in full, you pay interest.

They also say that they will pay off balances that attract the most interest first. A reasonable person would assume that non-Tesco and therefore non-0% purchases would be paid off first and the 0% purchases last. Thus if you were to buy both Tesco and non-Tesco goods, then pay of all of the non-Tesco goods to the penny, you could reasonably expect to pay no interest as those purchases would be settled first.


It's not a scam, or a con, but it's not a very good offer and is bound to confuse even people who read the terms. Consumers are also not expected to have to memorise T&Cs in their totality and refer to them to corroborate any advertising claims a firm makes; they're entitled to listen to what firms tell them. In my view the offer should have come with a prominent health warning rather than T&Cs tucked down behind a "click for more info" link.

phillw

Mr_Goodkat wrote: »

If I had a Tesco credit card and wanted to take advantage of the offer the obvious thing to do was to put all Tesco spending on that card to take advantage of the offer and then use a different card for purchases elsewhere.

It's only obvious if you knew that Tesco were being predatory in offering 0%, knowing that it was a scam. If you take what they say at face value, then it's not obvious at all.

Mr_Goodkat wrote: »

There was nothing in the offer that suggests the waiving of interest on other purchases should the full balance not be paid by the due date.

But they had paid for the purchases not made at Tesco, the only outstanding balance was the Tesco purchases which were supposed to be at 0%.

Mr_Goodkat wrote: »

Tesco as a number of people have seen on the other thread will probably refund as a gesture of goodwill but it is purely down to people not understanding how credit cards in general and this offer in particular work!

If people didn't understand how this particular offer works then it shows how purposefully misleading it was designed to be. I assume they think that most people won't notice or won't complain after being seduced into an arrangement that meant they paid interest.

If Tesco didn't design it to be misleading and were incompetent instead, then it's even more of a worry.

Superscrooge

I don't have the original leaflet that Tesco posted out. However I do still have the Tesco magazine that advertised the offer. You can make up your own mind whether it is misleading.

Click on the below link and move the scroll bar at the bottom to page 166

https://issuu.com/tesco_magazine/docs/tesco_magazine_christmas_2016

It states.................

We're giving our credit card customers a little extra help this Christmas. Simply use your credit card in store and at tesco.com between 1st November and 31st December 2016 and we'll give you 0% interest on purchases until your March 2017 statement. Visit tescobank.com to learn more. Terms, conditions and exclusions apply.

Tesco have now removed all trace of the offer from their website!

I'm not suggesting Tesco DELIBERATELY set out to mislead. But the wording of the advert has mislead a lot of their customers.

I bet Tesco don't run the same offer again next Christmas!

jockblue

Hmm, long time lurker, been a member on here for many years. I know how card promotions work, I've worked the credit card systems for many years, seen similar arrangements with American Express and other card companies work well, yet I fell for this trap.


For all the number of people who scoff on here about the idiots who fall for these things, I can tell you as an experienced cardholder that it was implied from the promotion that the Tesco purchases were not being ringfenced from other purchases until March. That was the promotion, that was the change to the T&Cs implied.


Clearly that wasn't the case. However, it was not as straightforward a situation as some on here seem to think it was....

redux

jockblue wrote: »

I can tell you as an experienced cardholder that it was implied from the promotion that the Tesco purchases were not being ringfenced from other purchases until March. That was the promotion, that was the change to the T&Cs implied.

It very clearly said this was for spending with Tesco.

That does not by either ambiguity or intended implication include spending in other places.

Therefore there are separate categories.

jamesd

JuicyJesus wrote: »

They also say that they will pay off balances that attract the most interest first. A reasonable person would assume that non-Tesco and therefore non-0% purchases would be paid off first and the 0% purchases last. Thus if you were to buy both Tesco and non-Tesco goods, then pay of all of the non-Tesco goods to the penny, you could reasonably expect to pay no interest as those purchases would be settled first.

Those purchases were settled first then Tesco did what normal card issuers do and charged interest on those from the date of purchase to the date of payment if the bill wasn't paid in full. That's what a reasonable person could normally expect to happen unless an offer said something non-standard would be done.

redux

JuicyJesus wrote: »

They also say that they will pay off balances that attract the most interest first. A reasonable person would assume that non-Tesco and therefore non-0% purchases would be paid off first and the 0% purchases last. Thus if you were to buy both Tesco and non-Tesco goods, then pay of all of the non-Tesco goods to the penny, you could reasonably expect to pay no interest as those purchases would be settled first.

You are simultaneously arguing that the other purchases attract interest and that they do not.

But the payment made does indeed go against the non-Tesco purchases.