CreditCards Blog

Hi folks,

I was *very* fortunate to stumble accross a post on, ahem, another finance website which warned that the minimum payment due date on their Virgin card had been creeping forwards by a day or two per month.

If they hadn't noticed, their standing order would've been late, they would have missed the payment, had a '1 down' status logged on their credit file and -arguably worst of all - would have had their 0% deal pulled, the interest rate reverting to whatever absurdly high (~25%?) standard rate they charge on balance transfers at the moment.

I rushed to check my statements and sure enough, the same has been happening to me. I'm currently crossing my fingers that my S/O on the 8th hits the account on the 11th as newly required, instead of the 14th it was originally needed.

This is dispicably sly behaviour on the part of MBNA, designed, I'm sure, to trip customers up so the generous 16 month 0% deal can be pulled early. I assume they're well within the T&Cs of the account to do this, so there'd be no comeback if you did get tripped up.

I asssume this doesn't affect those with direct debits set up, as these should be triggered in time? Although I gather there's some dodgy 'minimum payment only' rule been implemented for those with DDs as well. It seems the 16 month 0% offer is almost too good to be true - if you don't keep your eyes well peeled!!

Cheers,

Tim

been happening for months m8, i myself noticed this on my virgin cc about
3 months ago, you have to be on the ball as any slip up is allways the customers fault.

Yes my payment date has crept forward from the 16th to the 1st of the month now. Pretty soon it will be before I've been paid!!!!

I have always had credit card statements "creep up" and "creep down" over the last 6 years. I thought it was always to do with their interest free period which made the actual day of minimum payment creep up or down based on the number of days in a month.

But then nevr had to bother as I always made sure that I had direct debits(DD) set-up for minimum paymenst on all my credit cards and then paid any excess amount over that by standing order. that way they can never catch you out which is what their business is about. Earning money form ppl who forget or set up standing orders.

Not that I support any such sly moves to change dates arbitrarily.

I think everyone should setup a minimum payment by DD that saves the heartache of finding out that they moved the payment date or changed the minimum payment required aka. the 5 to 10 or 25 that MBNA recently did.

I and my OH did not suffer as we had DD setup and our DD automatically changed from 5 to 25 for both of us. We just make sure that we our OD free for any such surprise changes.;)

ofcourse I am paranoid and check our accts every morning!! maybe hoping for a surprise credit of a 1million!!!.:rotfl: