Virgin Credit Card - POOR customer service

gtrevor

Just had the misfortune to deal with Virgin Credit Card customer services...

Brief summary of what happened:

Requested to start a direct debit online, which didn't work .. after 4 more attempts it eventually seemed to work, and got the agreement through the post (the standard direct debit form, not anything from Virgin).

Next payment wasn't due for another 3 weeks, and my online banking showed the direct debit had been setup.

Didn't pay anything, and the minimum balance wasn't taken out...

Made a payment the day after, and phoned customer service to complain, the person agreed that it wasn't always very clear when it would commence from, and refunded the £25 fee.

Next statement comes, and I've been taken off the 0% intro offer, and been charged £94 interest! Phone customer relations, who say that it was clear when it would be taken from, and tough luck.... after a bit more complaining, and speaking to the manager, she agrees to put me back on the 0% intro offer, and refund half the interest, but that is all she will do....despite lots of protests , she basically said that I was lucky she has even done that, and it isn't worth complaining anymore, as all complaints go to her anyway!

Really not happy with the way I've been treated....but haven't kept copies of everything I got through the post so don't know what else I can do...

YorkshireBoy

Both myself and my wife have Virgin credit cards and we have had no problems at all. Having said that, we set up the DD when we activated the cards via telephone.

The Virgin statements tell you that your (min?) payments will be collected on a certain date. If yours did not say this then the DD was not set up and you should have made alternative arrangements until the DD collection details were showing on your statement.

spook

Sorry to hear about your bad time with MBNA.

I keep hearing about people being caught out by the direct debit thing with their cards (if you apply for a direct debit AFTER receiving a bill, then they won't take the payment by direct debit for that bill). I think the way you apply for dd online is a bit misleading, as it appears alongside the other bill payment options. Maybe there should be a warning in the credit cards article?

Incidentally, the exact same thing happened to me but when I called them about it the person I spoke to refunded the £25 and told me who to call to get the 0% deal re-instated, so I got away with it.

gtrevor

spook wrote:

Incidentally, the exact same thing happened to me but when I called them about it the person I spoke to refunded the £25 and told me who to call to get the 0% deal re-instated, so I got away with it.

What's annoying is that I got the £25 refunded, and they agreed it happened regularly, but didn't say anything about being taken off the 0% .. if they had, this wouldn't have happened...

Their attitude was so poor though ..

The trouble is I use the online statements, and don't really look at the paper ones, and the online don't mention the method of payment, just says next payment must reach your account by XXX ... they need to make their online statements clearer !!!