Banks not advertising credit card offers anymore?

Alex9384

I thought it was just Lloyds / Halifax / MBNA that don't show you any details about their credit cards, such as how many months 0% they are offering...

Now I noticed Virgin do the same. I wanted to see their offers but they don't say how many months you'll get on 0% rate, or anything like that. Just a representative APR.

Both LBG and Virgin require you to do their eligibility check. If you're not eligible, you can't even see what they are offering. What the heck? Is there any benefit to this? Why other banks can show info about their cards and some others decide to make it top secret?

Also, why not to show what the cards actually look like? Whether it's just another dull blue, or bright pink... whether it's Visa or MC, horizontal or vertical, and so on.

cymruchris

Alex9384 said:

Also, why not to show what the cards actually look like? Whether it's just another dull blue, or bright pink... whether it's Visa or MC, horizontal or vertical, and so on.

With more and more cards going into the on-phone payment systems such as Apple pay - does the colour/pattern matter anymore? Not that any cashier is every going to take a blind bit of notice - and your potential date won't be particularly impressed that you have a blue card with yellow stripes over a red card with pink dots.... If it pays the bill, it pays the bill....

I imagine with the recent focus on representative APR's and the chancellor making a little bit of noise around investigating the sector - some brands might want to move away from what is 'typical' and more along the lines of 'matched to your profile'. By completing the eligibility checker might give more scope to offer a more tailored response - that you'll likely qualify for this rate and this offer. 

Eligibility checks aren't harmful to your credit history though - so can't really be a bad thing if they want to run the basic checks to give me a clearer picture before I apply than just seeing a typical APR of 19.9 percent - hitting the apply button - getting the hard search - and then being told I'm successful at an APR of 34.9 percent....

I can envisage the swing towards this kind of approach by more and more lenders as the chancellor makes a few ripples in his comments. (Although he himself doesn't know how to use a contactless credit card)

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2022/03/chancellor-ask-regulator-credit-card-loan-aprs-martin-lewis/

[Deleted User]

Alex9384 said:

I thought it was just Lloyds / Halifax / MBNA that don't show you any details about their credit cards, such as how many months 0% they are offering...

Now I noticed Virgin do the same. I wanted to see their offers but they don't say how many months you'll get on 0% rate, or anything like that. Just a representative APR.

Both LBG and Virgin require you to do their eligibility check. If you're not eligible, you can't even see what they are offering. What the heck? Is there any benefit to this? Why other banks can show info about their cards and some others decide to make it top secret?

Also, why not to show what the cards actually look like? Whether it's just another dull blue, or bright pink... whether it's Visa or MC, horizontal or vertical, and so on.

Lloyds and Barclays do, i get monthly correspondence from both showing the offers they're giving me, banks tailor their customers offers so perhaps you just need to wait until yours get offered to you.

callum9999

[Deleted User] said:

Alex9384 said:

I thought it was just Lloyds / Halifax / MBNA that don't show you any details about their credit cards, such as how many months 0% they are offering...

Now I noticed Virgin do the same. I wanted to see their offers but they don't say how many months you'll get on 0% rate, or anything like that. Just a representative APR.

Both LBG and Virgin require you to do their eligibility check. If you're not eligible, you can't even see what they are offering. What the heck? Is there any benefit to this? Why other banks can show info about their cards and some others decide to make it top secret?

Also, why not to show what the cards actually look like? Whether it's just another dull blue, or bright pink... whether it's Visa or MC, horizontal or vertical, and so on.

Lloyds and Barclays do, i get monthly correspondence from both showing the offers they're giving me, banks tailor their customers offers so perhaps you just need to wait until yours get offered to you.

That was their entire point! Most banks list their cards on their website, Lloyds etc won't and will only give you personalised offers.

There's no need to wait until they get offered, you can check whenever you want online.

[Deleted User]

Any offers are always going to be conditional on a credit check so offering x number of months is a choice of the lender. I suspect some don't purely because they don't want the hassle of people expecting say 31 months at 2.9% fee and getting 18 months at 3.5% fee and then complaining (there are examples on the forum of this)

dr_adidas01

Alex9384 said:

I thought it was just Lloyds / Halifax / MBNA that don't show you any details about their credit cards, such as how many months 0% they are offering...

Now I noticed Virgin do the same. I wanted to see their offers but they don't say how many months you'll get on 0% rate, or anything like that. Just a representative APR.

Both LBG and Virgin require you to do their eligibility check. If you're not eligible, you can't even see what they are offering. What the heck? Is there any benefit to this? Why other banks can show info about their cards and some others decide to make it top secret?

Also, why not to show what the cards actually look like? Whether it's just another dull blue, or bright pink... whether it's Visa or MC, horizontal or vertical, and so on.

Its more than likely to do with matching card offers to your credit profile for example the higher a risk you are the higher the APR and probably the minimum 0% rate they can offer is what you will get. Where in reverse if you are in the least risk category you will get a lower APR and longer 0% offer.

Consumers these days want to see what APR and other offers credit card providers will give them before making a decision on if they want to apply for the product or not.  After all you wouldn't be happy if a hard search was conducted and you didn't get what the offer you had seen was and then decided you didn't like it and not continued with your application would you?

Personally don't care what a card looks like and I have 2 pink debit cards (1 Monzo and my NAB australian bank account visa debit card) or if its horizontal of vertical card, they are chosen for there benefits to me be it points, cashback, travel benefits.

It's also not that difficult to work out which payment provider a company uses be it Visa or MC for example Barclaycard is going to be Visa Credit (Except for the Avios on which is MC) Virgin is Mastercard.

You're going to find that a lot of providers are going to switch to doing eligibility checks as it will be more beneficial to them in getting the type of consumers they want.

Alex9384

cymruchris said:

With more and more cards going into the on-phone payment systems such as Apple pay - does the colour/pattern matter anymore? Not that any cashier is every going to take a blind bit of notice - and your potential date won't be particularly impressed that you have a blue card with yellow stripes over a red card with pink dots.... If it pays the bill, it pays the bill....

LOL, it's not about that! I think you are judging by your own standards.
I have more than a dozen cards here, next to my laptop and some more cards in my wallet. It's simply easier to have different colours so I know immediately which card it is, without even needing to read what's printed on it.
For example, my Nationwide Select credit card used to be nice shiny silver, the only silver card in my wallet. Now they changed it to blue which is almost the same as their debit card, so now I need to double-check which one am I using. Not to mention there are other blue cards.

And yes, some people do care about design too. There was a whole thread about it.

Apple Pay? Not everyone wants to be 100% dependent on their phone in every area of their life. I really don't understand this obsession with having everything in your phone. If your battery dies, you then can't do anything. Not to mention that some people simply like to have a physical product in their hand, i.e. a physical card. So, yes, it definitely does matter.

Alex9384

cymruchris said:

Eligibility checks aren't harmful to your credit history though - so can't really be a bad thing if they want to run the basic checks to give me a clearer picture before I apply than just seeing a typical APR of 19.9 percent - hitting the apply button - getting the hard search - and then being told I'm successful at an APR of 34.9 percent....

Not harmful, but it takes time and you need to do it every single time you are comparing cards.

What is the problem with showing that this or that cards has UP TO 24 months 0% purchases? You may not get the full 24 months, but you know what their top offer is.

I used to open 4-5 different bank websites in my browser and simply compare what can I expect from which bank. Then I did an eligibility check on the one that looked most interesting to me.
Now I can't do that anymore.

Alex9384

Deleted_User said:

Any offers are always going to be conditional on a credit check so offering x number of months is a choice of the lender. I suspect some don't purely because they don't want the hassle of people expecting say 31 months at 2.9% fee and getting 18 months at 3.5% fee and then complaining (there are examples on the forum of this)

Simple solution...

Our credit card may offer 31 months OR 27 months OR 21 months, based on your personal circumstances. Any problem to do this? If the same website said you may get 15 months or 12 months or 9 months, I know I won't even bother with eligibility check, if 15 months is their top offer.

Alex9384

dr_adidas01 said:

It's also not that difficult to work out which payment provider a company uses be it Visa or MC for example Barclaycard is going to be Visa Credit (Except for the Avios on which is MC) Virgin is Mastercard.

You're going to find that a lot of providers are going to switch to doing eligibility checks as it will be more beneficial to them in getting the type of consumers they want.

Some providers offer both Visa and MC for different cards.
How do you know which card uses which? Is it really so hard to show a bloody picture of your product?

And not everyone knows that Virgin is MC. I do know it, you do know it, but random person doesn't know which bank uses which network, unless they can see the card.

[Deleted User]

Alex9384 said:

Deleted_User said:

Any offers are always going to be conditional on a credit check so offering x number of months is a choice of the lender. I suspect some don't purely because they don't want the hassle of people expecting say 31 months at 2.9% fee and getting 18 months at 3.5% fee and then complaining (there are examples on the forum of this)

Simple solution...

Our credit card may offer 31 months OR 27 months OR 21 months, based on your personal circumstances. Any problem to do this? If the same website said you may get 15 months or 12 months or 9 months, I know I won't even bother with eligibility check, if 15 months is their top offer.

The problem is that they may not want to do that or have more bands. It still doesn't solve the solution of people ringing up complaining they didn't get the best offer.