Balance Transfer - Lies from MBNA?

andrewramage

Hi,

I have been tarting credit card debt for a few years now. I recently made a transfer which pretty much cleared an MBNA card. A week or so later I got the usual phone call offering me a new balance transfer deal at 0% for 9 months. I went in hard and stated I was only interested if the fee was less than 3%. Interestingly the lad on the phone said he could do it for 1.5%. I then asked him to let me know the (small) remaining balance on my card and requested to pay it off then and there, however he couldn't take payments but assured me if i did in online then the payment would clear in 3-4 working days but the balance transfer would take 7-10 working days so I would be okay. As usual, before the transaction was processed he asked the security questions and then read out all the details again, including the transfer fee amount, which was at 1.5%, and the fact that it woudl occur in 7-10 days.

Well, I was hoping to post good news about credit cards accepting lower balance transfer fees when pushed. But this is what has really happened:

I have just checked my statement online and the balance transfer fee was charged at 3%. And to make matters worse, the transfer occurred 3 days after the phone call and my payment to clear the amount went through the next working day!

So not only have I been charged twice the amount I was quoted in fees, I am also locked into paying interest on the outstanding balance prior to the transfer until i clear the full amount!

Obviously I am going to ring customer services and try and rectify, however before I do does anyone know where I stand - as I never received this offer in writing? Could it be possible that the lad on the phone simply lied to me to get my business (and presumably his commission)?

Any advice greatly appreciated,

Cheers, Andy

clio

Andrew if MBNA said to me on the phone btw it,s raining outside i would not take his/her word i'd go and look myself. they are CROOKS and will bend the rules to suit themselves. good luck wth your query and hope they do it at the agreed bt rate you got. [1.5%]

Overthetop

It does seem a slippery slope since it was agreed on the phone-Good luck with trying to get it sorted.

Milarky

MBNA cs staff are able to waive fees from past experience. Therefore you should assume that what you were told was in good faith, rather than allege something you cannot know (someone's true intentions)

Just be polite and ask them to check their own recordings of the call. They may simply accept your word anyway, and make an adjustment straight off. They certainly aren't going to try a 'blag' their way out of it without checking

Good luck

[PS. I don't think you were actually promised that your payment would be processed ahead of the balance transfer so that may be more difficult for them to amend - but who knows?]

ajaxgeezer

Andrew,

MBNA give discounts from the normal 3% BT fee by first charging it, and then applying the discount (so they tell me). I'd give them a ring to see if they have 'forgotten' to apply the discount.

I found this out by having a similar problem this weekend. On Tuesday I made a payment to clear my card (I'd spent on it since clearing off the last stooze) and a couple of hours later got a call offering me a BT as my last one had been paid off three weeks ago. The haggling went on, and I was eventually given a £2k increase up to £8k limit, and a BT at 1% fee for 9 months. I told them to wait a couple of days and to ring me back before putting through a £7600 xfer as I wanted to be satisfied that the card was empty. The call never came, so I rang them and was told that £7500 had gone through at 3%. Of course I moaned and was put through to 'Credit Card Services' who told me how it worked and that it was showing on the system as a 1.25% transfer fee!!!! I had to explain it was supposed to be 1%, and the girl said she'd refund the difference now. I'm still not 100% confident, but will wait for the statement.

Bismarck

As with some of the other posts, I'd go in with some open questions to see what their records show before stating where you're coming from. I don't suppose you got the name of the lad on the phone, did you? I appreciate that it sometimes feels pointless but I like to think it makes the call centre adviser think twice about whatever details they put on their system records....good luck!

andrewramage

thanks for all your help. After much phoning around and explaining the situation I have received a number of apologies, but essentially ended up where I started.

I know I should stand up to this however afraid i'm going to put it down to a learning experience, luckily it was a relatively small transfer and the interest on the outstanding balance that wasn't cleared in time is only £1 a month - I will clear the debt as soon as possible and in future avoid MBNA like the plague.

firesidemaid

just found this thread, and thought i'd add my experience with mbna and see if you want to change your mind or not about following it up.....

5 years ago i was cold-called by mbna with a bt deal. i wasn't really interested as i had just done a LOB bt to barclaycard for 2.9% - so i told them this thinking they'd go away. they said they could offer me 1.9%. i asked again (and tried to get it in writing) to check that it was a LOB deal and the girl said yes, so i went ahead.

cut to six months later and it seemed that the bt deal was over (ie. only a 6 month deal). i rang them to complain, but they said i would have to write in. i got a standard reply so phoned the new cs number i had been given. there were a few phone calls - my claim was that they should check their phone records (funny, none available) and that i had doubled-checked the deal and that there was no way i was going to have lost my LOB b/card deal for a 1% cut just for 6 months (it was a big balance).

in the final long long phone call (luckily them to my mobile) they said they would apply it for another 6 months - i told them i had to be put back in the same position before they 'lied' to me. they said they could only do it for 6 months. i replied it's either the courts or the guardian money page then, and i know which will be easier for me!?:rolleyes: they replied that it would have to go to the ombudsman first. i had forgotten about that and absent-mindedly said 'oh yes i did that and was successful with my mortgage endowment. if i won and they said you had to honour my agreement, you would have to, so what would you do then?'

cue on hold for ages, and they came back and agreed to change it every six months. the cs staff kept changing and they kept forgetting so i kept reminding them in advance. this year when i rang up as usual they said 'we have no record of this, we'll apply it again for 3 months till you sort yourself out another deal!' i don't think so.....i had to fax them their original letter and finally their computer system can now apply it as a LOB rate! hurrah!

so, sorry for the long post, but it stuck such a chord i had to reply.

good luck x

luvagoose

Hi Andrew
I'm having serious dealings with MBNA at the moment and there is one thing that i have learnt about this company is that when you ring customer services they will happily give you there first name but not there last, so GET THEIR EXTENTION NUMBER and deal with just one person EVERY TIME, otherwise you will be talking to lots of customer service advisers who couldn't care less about your case.
MBNA very rarely record telephone conversations, but there is no harm in asking for the recording.
hope this helps
andy

bigbloke45

andrewR. Remember that MBNA underwrite a huge amount of other companies credit cards e.g. Sonycard and most of the football league for a start!

Motley Fool did a thing on which Credit card company underwrites which other company. It's well worth looking at!

http://www.fool.co.uk/news/your-money/credit-cards/2007/06/27/baffled-by-the-brand.aspx?site=UKFool

You might be a little gobsmacked!

DestroyingAngel_2

luvagoose wrote: »

Hi Andrew
I'm having serious dealings with MBNA at the moment and there is one thing that i have learnt about this company is that when you ring customer services they will happily give you there first name but not there last, so GET THEIR EXTENTION NUMBER and deal with just one person EVERY TIME, otherwise you will be talking to lots of customer service advisers who couldn't care less about your case.
MBNA very rarely record telephone conversations, but there is no harm in asking for the recording.
hope this helps
andy

Actually, when you ring MBNA they always answer by saying "Hi (or similar), you're through to (Name), to assist you further, may I have your name/card number please" Obviously, if you ask them to repeat their first name and then also ask for their last name, at the start of your conversation, they're more likely to oblige - much more difficult to get that information after you've started raving and ranting! :rolleyes:

MBNA's cs department take inbound calls on a queueing system. You can get a person's extension number all right, but instead of being put through immediately you could end up at the end of that person's queue. Even if you were to get through to someone else first and ask to be connected to a particular extension, there's no guarantee you'll be put through immediately. All reps receive the same training, so if one person can handle your query, the next one will be able to do likewise. (I learnt the hard way - tried getting transferred to a specific extension and was put on hold for such a long time I had to eventually give up and try again! The next rep dealt with my query with no problems whatsoever.) Whenever I call, I find that the rep invariably always knows what my previous call was about, or whether it's an ongoing dispute, etc - they must have a comments page on each customer.

MBNA record their telephone conversations ALL THE TIME, for training purposes and also for audit. Sometimes, if you listen very carefully when talking to a rep, you can hear an echo of your voices on the line - that means the call is being recorded. Spooky ... when it first happened to me I genuinely believed some fraudster was tapping into my phone line! :eek: