Have you had your Egg credit card closed? Take part in our poll...

newsgroup_monkey

I am absolutely stunned at Citibank's stance here. Some years ago, I got into some financial difficulty (not really bad, just a few missed and late payments) with Barclaycard. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I didn't have a mortgage at the time and didn't really know how to go about it, I just guessed I had the worst credit score in the world.
When I got an advert through for a credit card which said it was for people with low credit scores. I can't remember who the original card was with, but it was someone I'd never heard of. The APR was quite high.

These people then got taken over by Citibank.

They immediately decided that all the people with these cards were high risk so put the APR up to 25% odd. Obviously, I didn't use it. By this point, I had an EasyCard (great fun these - you could lower the interest rate by paying a small annual fee) - great for doing short-term loans.

Anyway, I had to go away with work for a lot of last year and wanted to ensure I had my work expenses on a separate card so that I could easily see what was coming and going. I knew I'd make the payments on time so the APR didn't interest me.

One month, I found there was a discrepancy - I'd paid my bill, but it still said I had money owing. I phoned up and they said they would look into it, not to worry and they'd call me back.

Whap! 2 days later got hit for a £12 charge and the interest rate is now 29.5% because I am high risk (this is based on the fact that I was awaiting a Halifax 0% card with what I would regard as a high credit limit!)

Spoke to them and got the £12 charge removed. Cleared the card off, cancelled and good riddance.

The relevance here is that the last time I spoke to the closure department (who tried to keep me on as a customer - they've had plenty of money out of me in the past), they told me that I should have applied for a Citicard Platinum. These are for people with normal credit limits. Citicard Classic cards were designed for people with low credit limits, high risk etc.

So if Citibank are so particularly worried about it, why pick on Egg customers? Why not look at their high-risk credit cards?

In my opinion? It's hogwash. I reckon Citibank are up to something. Watch this space... they may well be lining up a sale of a certain credit-card line.......

Sanna_3

Mark_Ice wrote: »

Add me to the 161k.
Strange as it is, I've never missed a payment with them in 7 years.

That's the problem, they're not making any money off you.

BenL

Have any of you with the letters about cancelling got a CPA (Continuous Payment Authorisation) for your Egg Card.

I wonder if these will still go through as Credit card companies usually like to say that even if you close your account they wil be debitted from your account.

Could be a way to keep Egg having to send you statements for that £1 a month charity contribution.

Cost them money to process it each month

waygood

My girlfriend had a letter off egg too.

She has no balance on the card, but did cancel the direct debit with them. They said "You can't do that", so she said "well cancel it then". They didn't but then sent her this nasty letter instead.

midge

i just don't understand,
i have had my egg card for five years and regularly use money manager, i have quite a few cards, each loaded to the max, (sorry martin)and occasionally i am late for a payment, up until recently egg have been making a fortune out of me, charges for being late that have then put me over the limit and have incurred over-limit fees, that i have tried to pay back but then more interest in the meantime means i am over my limit again incurring more fees, you get the picture. on and on it goes.
so really i am a great customer, regularly making them money, no risk cause my cards maxed out,and still owing £2500 so years of extra interest to go..
i am still in shock as only last month they offered me a loan to pay it of, and then upped my limit???

claratastic

I would to take this opportunity to thank Egg.

I received the letter last weekend and became concerned and angry about the reference to a poor credit rating as I suspected the closure of the credit card account had more to do with the fact I haven’t used it in a while. I checked my credit files and found out my credit rating was pretty good (the only issue flagged up was a couple of missed payments from 4 years ago when I was a recent graduate). So after reading the moneysavingexpert article on best credit cards and stoozing I applied (and have now been accepted) for a 0% balance transfer credit card AND another 0% for purchases CC.

I am getting a new car this week (new to me, at least), so that will be going on my new credit cards and I’ll be leaving my money to gather interest in my high interest savings account.

So a big thank you to Moneysavingexpert for all your good advice. And a smaller thank you to Egg for motivating me to look into things and get more out of my money. I sincerely hope, however, that the negative publicity from this stunt does more to harm their business than keeping us on their books would have done.

lisyloo

so that will be going on my new credit cards

Has the dealer said they will accept payment by cerdit card? (or dod you mean SBT?).
A lot of card dealers don't like it becasue of the card fee.

chrisbram

I haven't owed anything on my egg card since June 07 but still got the letter
:-( although I was interested to read in previous thread that Citi have taken over egg as I recieved my new citi card with no problems with a £4,000 limit!!!

CrazyCat

Does anyone know when it's safe to assume the last of the letters have been delivered? My balance is zero and I've not used my card for over a year, so I'm kinda expecting a letter, but have received nothing as yet... just wondered when I'd know for sure which group I'm in!

mikey99_2

Phoning Egg up I was told I'd been defined as a 'bad risk' despite being a customer for about seven years, with rarely a late payment (and a couple of limit busting incidents, resolved as soon as I was aware of them.) in all that time. I've also got an Egg Loan.

This mass mailing in a cheerful green envelope is possibly the most insulting letter I've ever received from a financial institution.

Can we now get clarification on the legal situation as to if we DO have to pay interest if the issuing company has closed the cards?

I asked the woman on the phone if she'd received many more calls like mine - a second's sad and weary pause, then 'yes, a few...'