MBNA balance transfer

Laurenmarie01

Hi,
I've been trying now to do a balance transfer to my existing MBNA credit card for two weeks. My current balance with them is low and i have enough available to make my transfer from my Barclaycard credit card. When i try and do this online a message comes up saying not able to process and to give them a call. When i ring them they keep saying they dont know why i cannot do this and that i need to contact Experian. Experian have told me to contact MBNA! I've joined Experian to check my score which is good and I've no issues on my account. Has anybody had this issue?

Ben8282

MBNA telling people who have a balance transfer offer that they can't do it and contact Experian AGAIN.
We already had that day before yesterday.

Laurenmarie01

Hi. I've checked the forum and i can only see the post regarding transferring a balance from a Virgin card which is owned by the same company. Is this the post you are referring to?

davedelaney

Hi Lauren, I'm the OP of the other thread. It appears the Virgin card I have isn't old enough to be issued by MBNA so isn't the root cause.

However -- I have exactly the same situation as you. Good credit, and not allowed to do a balance transfer for the same reason; "contact Experian".

Laurenmarie01

Hi Dave,
I just dont understand how they cannot tell me what the issue is. I've spoken to 4 different people at MBNA now who say exactly the same thing. I told the lady tonight I could go out and spend £10,000 on my credit card right now but Im not allowed to do a balance transfer! Its madness. She said something has changed recently with Experian. I've tried to contact them but they dont have a phone number so I've sent an email which i've not had a response to yet.

davedelaney

It feels like a bait-and-switch.

You obtain the card on the pretense of having £x amount that you can balance transfer at a 0% rate.

Due to unspecified reasons you're deemed unsuitable to be given the agreed amount at 0%, but they'll gladly loan you the same amount (and more) at their rate of 20.9%.

Those in a desperate situation will have no choice. MBNA has their punter hook, line, and sinker.

Ben8282

The problem with this is it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The 'contact Experian' business is the standard reply when a new card application is refused.
In the case of the OP of this thread, she presumably has an existing customer balance transfer offer from MBNA. The point here is that MNBA will receive feeds from the CRA's on a monthly basis and, if anything there worried them, they wouldn't be making the existing customer offer in the first place. Furthermore, credit files are not searched prior to making balance transfers
Even if something has changed with Experian, there is no involvement or even possible involvement of Experian of any sort in doing a balance transfer from an existing card account unless of course MBNA now propose to do a credit search of all existing customers before allowing them to make existing customer balance transfers which I really cant see being the case.
The cause of this really is a mystery.

born_again

Raise a complaint with MBNA over the failure to action the balance transfer you have been offered @ 0%

Experian will not i n anyway block them from processing the bal trans.

davedelaney

The balance transfer agent three days ago stated verbatim "Experian will not allow us to process the balance transfer" and "Experian is blocking us from initiating it".

It's complete nonsense.

I raised a complaint the other day and I plan to call back in a few days time, as my balance transfer offer is valid until the end of the month. I intend to escalate to a manager on the phone if possible.

Laurenmarie01

I sent a message this morning on Facebook to mbna. The guy I spoke to was really confused with the whole thing and couldn’t understand it either. I haven’t had chance to do this yet but he told me to do the following

“you may want to get our transfer team to check all of your current open accounts. If you ring us on 0345 266 1866 and ask them to check all of your accounts, they would be able to see any offers available to you. Unfortunately, as I'm sure you can understand, there isn't too much we can see over social media, however, if you request for them to check that, they should be able to look into this for you”

Ben8282

Laurenmarie01 wrote: »

I sent a message this morning on Facebook to mbna. The guy I spoke to was really confused with the whole thing and couldn’t understand it either. I haven’t had chance to do this yet but he told me to do the following

“you may want to get our transfer team to check all of your current open accounts. If you ring us on 0345 266 1866 and ask them to check all of your accounts, they would be able to see any offers available to you. Unfortunately, as I'm sure you can understand, there isn't too much we can see over social media, however, if you request for them to check that, they should be able to look into this for you”

This response is equally ridiculous.
Presumably you have only one card with MBNA?
Or if you have multiple cards you have online access to them all and they are all up to date and in good order?
Presumably when you log in you can see for yourself what offers are available .....
I assume that you do actually have an existing customer offer showing available on the account that you wish to make the balance transfer to and sufficient available credit?