Virgin Money balance transfer cancellation issue

fest0r

I signed up for a VM credit card for the purposes of a balance transfer last week and also a Tesco card. They were both accepted so I don’t need the VM transfer now.

I stupidly assumed I would have to activate the VM card before the transfer happened (the way Tesco and others operate) but it went through today. I was told conflicting info about it being confirmed on Thursday then Saturday then more worryingly, I “confirmed the transfer by replying to a text message yesterday”. I did not receive or reply to a text yesterday, my phone wasn’t even turned on. I did receive a welcome text last week, right after the application and they confirmed my number was correct.

They supposedly can’t cancel the transfer now, but the far bigger issue is the error on their system about my reply that didn’t happen. Anything requiring confirmation by me in the future could be automatically approved.

Has anyone else experienced this? I can only access the account through the app and the app can only be setup with the card. A really terrible setup.

eskbanker

I suspect that this is more likely to be a case of front line call centre staff not being well enough informed rather than some inherent problem with systems 'automatically approving' something that requires express customer authorisation, so if you provided sufficient information for the transfer to happen (they obviously knew enough to be able to process it) then what led you to believe that there'd be subsequent approval hoops to jump through?

fest0r

I spoke with two people from customer service and one from the fraud dept. They all said (eventually) it specifically mentioned on my account notes that I replied to a text message yesterday. The person in the fraud dept. said that transfers don’t always need confirmation, but their system claims I replied by text to confirm. In transfers that don’t require confirmation, there is no text request. Obviously, this is not the case so I think they’re genuinely unaware of this glitch.

I appreciate that this is some sort of coding/system error, but I have no idea if it will only be limited to this scenario.

If they had just told me I was too late to cancel, I would have accepted my mistake and not given it a second thought. How would I dispute this type of error in the future though? Computer says you confirmed by text so you must have confirmed by text.

I requested the account notes and they will be sent within 30 days. I would need to make a SAR with Vodafone to get text history (or lack of) but it’s not going to fix the error. I think I’ll just accept the fee and close the account.

fest0r

BTW, as I said, I can’t even access the account until I receive the card in 7- 10 business days. Tesco, Nationwide, Santander etc. all require activation before transfers complete. That's why I thought more “hoops” would be required.

If the card doesn’t arrive in the post, I could be making a payment before I can even access the account. I didn’t even know that was legal.