Card transactions don’t add up to balance

Spirepast

MBNA credit cars
Has anyone exported their months transactions to excel and found the balance is more than the total of transactions?
Mine are £181 out. Speaking with them on their messages board they say it will be sorted this month- but I can’t see how it will as the transactions this month add up to the balance due. 

CliveOfIndia

It's most likely pending transactions - recent transactions that have been notified to the card company, as it were, but have not yet been applied to the statement.  It's not uncommon for transactions to take a day or two in some cases to appear on the statement.

The main thing is just to make sure you pay the total amount due as printed on your statement when you receive it - any pending (but not yet statemented) transactions will be due for payment on next month's statement.

Spirepast

Thanks.
Should have made this clearer, but the statement balance was more than the total of transactions, and this larger figure was the sum taken by direct debit.  Normally pending transaction go onto the next statement, but I can’t see any transactions that add to the difference.
I’m hoping this next month the statement balance will be an equivalent sum less than the sum of the transactions, but I doubt it.

daveyjp

Post details of the transaction amounts and discrepancy and you may get more insightful responses.

lr1277

I found this only happened during the period when I was making minimum payments so was carrying a balance. The card company were adding interest without adding an explicit transaction to the statement.
Once I paid the full amount and now pay the full amount by direct debit, this doesn’t happen.
In my case I was using the old John Lewis Partnership card and was tracking my transactions and balance through personal finance software. The first time it happened, I downloaded my statement to excel and compared the transactions with a download from my software. And yes there was the discrepancy.

born_again

Spirepast said:

Thanks.
Should have made this clearer, but the statement balance was more than the total of transactions, and this larger figure was the sum taken by direct debit.  Normally pending transaction go onto the next statement, but I can’t see any transactions that add to the difference.
I’m hoping this next month the statement balance will be an equivalent sum less than the sum of the transactions, but I doubt it.

Balance paid in full from last month or not?
Any cash based transactions that will carry a fee & trailing interest or the next couple of months.

In reality everyone is guessing unless you could post a copy of the statement (blocking out name, address card no etc)

molerat

I am currently using MBNA, Lloyds and Halifax credit cards, so all using the same back end, and not had anything like that happen.

Spirepast

Card paid in full every month by direct debit. No cash withdrawals.  Nothing shows in transactions that will explain the difference, only thing I can think is MBNA have omitted some transactions.
I will get to the bottom of this, I’m going to wait for my next statement on the 27th and once I find what has happened I will post here.

double_dutchy

Is it possible that the issue is with Excel, e.g. some transactions being treated as text in excel and not added to the total?

I assume you are using something like =SUM(D2:D100) where transaction amounts are in D2:D100? If so what happens when you use a COUNT function on the same range, e.g. COUNT(D2:D100). The result should be the total number of transactions

Spirepast

Hi
An update on this. Not excel, I always cross cast to check for such errors.
I eventually, after two failed attempts, got through to someone on the phone who understood my issue. [The first two refused to accept there was an issue]
it sees a few transactions which were indeed mine, weren’t on the list - seems they fell through the system and were omitted from the statement I could see. And the next one.  All rather strange.
The next statement balanced ok, but todays again is missing about £94 of transactions.
Obviously MBNA have an issue which they are not resolving. All seems rather prone to abuse.

Anyone know how I can contact someone senior at MBNA?  

MorningcoffeeIV

Spirepast said:

Anyone know how I can contact someone senior at MBNA?  

You won't.

You'll need to submit a formal complaint.