Egg card - beware of bug in billing software!

Dagobert

Beware, check your CC and current account statements!

Egg's software mistakenly debited an amount to my c/a: A minimum payment of £18.43 was due to be debited on 3rd Oct. But I had already paid the card off in full by 22nd Sep. Therefore nothing should've been debited to my c/a. But to my surprise, I found that £1.47 had been debited!

This amount is going to be refunded. Egg are always very good responding and they sort things amazingly quickly, I find.

However, errors like that could easily lead to an overdraft limit being exceeded and causing a £30 unauthorized overdraft fee! In fact, I was only £1.50 away from that.


PS: I am presuming that you are familiar with the term bug: it's an error in a computer program.

Woby_Tide

it's not an error, it's a feature

Milarky

Egg states that if a payment is made more than 5 working days before the direct debit collection date [in this case 3 Oct] this goes towards reducing or clearing the debit amount. This is common to a few other cards I can think of [Lloyds TSB, HSBC] but not all [Barclaycard, Co-op].

Anyway, I've seen this happen before - the payment is made more than a week [the five working days] ahead of the debit date and it has had no effect on the amount collected automatically. It is a bug in the system.

But, as the poster said, Egg accepted an error on their part because they 'are going' to refund [it may a while]. Since the payment was taken by DD from a current a/c it is coverd by the DD guarantee - which means that any charges incurred on the current a/c from wrongfully collecting this amount are reclaimable also [probably by a further refund by Egg]

HTH

PS If the poster 'sent' payment on 22 September, rather than it arriving by that date, then this sort of thing could happen [eg if it took till Monday26 Sept to reach Egg - just inside the 5 working days] As MSE Martin Lewis might say

If the money is in your current a/c, always, always, always, always pay your Egg card by debit card rather than sending BACS payment - as it is applied to the account the same wokring day. Nothing is faster.

Dagobert

Milarky wrote:

If the poster 'sent' payment on 22 September, rather than it arriving by that date

It was in the Egg cc account on 22nd Sep.

Milarky wrote:

Anyway, I've seen this happen before - the payment is made more than a week [the five working days] ahead of the debit date and it has had no effect on the amount collected automatically. It is a bug in the system.

The strrange thing though is that they did not collect the minimum amount of £18.43 announced in the statement: they took £1.47; where the hell they got this number from, I don't know.

Milarky wrote:

If the money is in your current a/c, always, always, always, always pay your Egg card by debit card rather than sending BACS payment - as it is applied to the account the same wokring day. Nothing is faster.

This is new to me. How does this work? How can you pay a cc by debit card?

YorkshireBoy

Dagobert wrote:

This is new to me. How does this work? How can you pay a cc by debit card?

Log on to "your account" and from the "move money" area (LHS of screen), select "one-off payment".

Alternatively, just ring up and quote your debit card number. As Milarky says, the transaction is quick - mine showed up the following day.

WSO

Dagobert wrote:

How can you pay a cc by debit card?

I have my Egg card set up to take the minimum by DD but always pay the balance off the day before the due date by my debit card... even when I've paid at the weekend I've not been charged interest - which is handy because I can leave the money in the savings until last minute, haven't been charged interest using this method yet...

For Egg, from your transactions sheet or statement, click "Make a one off payment" - then it will give a form with an amount, from, and to - if you have no cards set up - click on the "add" button next to the from box and add your card details to your Egg "address book"... then just fill out the form with the quantities and the payment is taken as a debit card payment rather than BACs.

HTH

asharon

My stements with egg are made on the 14th and payment taken on the 1st of the following month so my payments have to be made before the statement is made I think.

WSO

asharon wrote:

My stements with egg are made on the 14th and payment taken on the 1st of the following month so my payments have to be made before the statement is made I think.

In my experience, if you pay your balance minus expected payment (so that it clears the balance on the payment date) - you do not get charged interest. I have not chanced making a payment later than the payment date, but if I could get away with paying the rest of the balance on the 13th in your case knowing I wouldn't be charged interest then I would! An extra 15 days of interest on the savings would be handy...

If I had your payment shedule, I would make my debit card payment on the last day of the month the statement was issued (so 30th Sept for statement dated 14th Sept).

Can anyone confirm that if the balance of a statement is cleared after the payment date but before the next statement date that no interest would be charged on the new statement?

To clarify, an example... £400 on card in Sept statement, pay off £8 on payment day but using card so that £600 or so on card on payment day. If I pay £392 on or before payment day I know I wont get charged interest... but if I paid the £392 the day before the Oct statement is issued would I need to pay the estimated interest that was shown on Sept statement?

I hope not as I really would like to stash my money away for longer...

Milarky

WSO wrote:

To clarify, an example... £400 on card in Sept statement, if I pay £392 on or before payment day I know I wont get charged interest... but if I paid the £392 the day before the Oct statement is issued would I need to pay the estimated interest that was shown on Sept statement?

I hope not as I really would like to stash my money away for longer...

The answer is. I believe, 'yes', you will pay the estimated interest, since you will only escape interest if the £392 reaches the account by the payment due date when the £8 is taken by DD, and not any later. It can be advantageous to split payments like this sometimes - if for instance using non-current account sources such as other credit cards to pay - but the general advice must be to pay the balance in full by DD if you have sufficient funds. A good thing about Egg is that you can switch the exact DD amount back and forth [between 'full', 'fixed' and 'minimum'] as little as five WD before a collection.

WSO

Thanks, checked the Egg Money T&Cs I asked them to send me (since my spam filter ate the notification email) and there it does say that interest is not payable if a statement is cleared on or before the due date.

So, when they switch from 45 to 50 days interest free credit I assume that the payment date will be delayed by 5 more days?... just and so starting to understand a little more about how it works.