- Friday, 9 January 2009
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Below the navel there is neither religion nor truth - Italian proverb
Egg nicked my credit card
IT WAS LIKE a kick in the teeth really. The letter was simply headed: "We are ending your Egg Card agreement."
Apparently, under condition 20.2 of the "agreement" I now had 35 days to say goodbye to the bit of plastic I've been carrying about for, oh seven years or so. Not that I was particularly attached to it. But the implication that any use of the card might be beyond "an acceptable level of risk" was a bit rich.
Thinking that Egg was still having trouble collecting on the Direct Debit I'd set up, I sent them a message. They could stick their card.
The level of incompetence the "bank" had previously demonstrated by sending me two copies of the same letter informing me that my account was in arrears by the grand sum of £0.00 was enough to persuade me, I said, that the "bank" knew not its arse from its elbow.
It was only later that day that it transpired I was only one of some 160,000 Egg card users who had received the same termination letter.
This being the case I felt a little less persecuted. Though unsure if my credit score was any cop or not, I felt miffed that I'd immediately sent 450 quid off to Egg along with a note to the effect that they'd failed, as far as I was concerned, to take the full amount on the Direct Debit I'd set up as instructed. Rather they took the minimum. They could still stick their poxy card.
In previous months the "bank" had failed utterly to take the payments properly as my bank (a proper one with branches and employees) informed me. " It's their (Egg's) mistake" my banker said. "I see this sort of thing all the time."
When I told Egg this, the outfit did refund the illegal charges deducted from my account because of its own mix-up. How nice.
Now it seems the Office of Fair Trading is to look into Egg's behaviour, especially in light of reports that many Egg card holders who'd been dumped had perfectly good credit histories and therefore might not risky at all. Not very lucrative to have around, possibly. But not risky.
Some customers have even complained that they've been libelled, that they've had their reputations impugned, I'd feel like that if I had any sort of reputation to uphold. Hang on I DO feel like that.
Hardly libel though. That might be the case if they'd put a list of "risky" card holders on the Interweb somewhere, or something.
Doh! I guess I just libelled myself.
Anyhow, officers of fair trading. Go sniff. These merchants shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. Hanging's too good for them. µ
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They only want Patsies who carry a monthly balance, not people who pay their bills on time. It costs Egg to much in administration to maintain accounts that are kept current by savvy card holders. Patsies generate interest and are desirable "cattle" to milk from.
Couldn't agree with you more. I dumped Egg some 12 months ago or so, when I'd gotten completely annoyed with their terrible website which was difficult to navigate and therefore not-at-all easy to manage your money (that's when the damn thing was actually up and running - about 80% of the time it was closed for maintenance). I also didn't like their idea of Variable rates of chargeable interest. To me, variable means "variable". To Egg, variable means "increase only". That is, increase around 3 or 4 times in a year.... And then, when I told them to poke it, they wouldn't stop hassling me with messages from different staff members, all wondering why I wanted to close my account. "Just shut the freakin' thing down" I repeated in a more polite fashion. Fools. All of them.
yup same happened to me ..got my fingers burnt with them, due to a constantly increased interest rate decided to pay it all off ..i havent used it for 8 months ..then 'the letter' came thanks but no thanks! youre a rotten egg..no pun intended no end of hassle with them clearing the last bit of interest on the interest i couldnt give a flying one about not having an egg card its the fact they tried to make out it was a credit history problem ...just like to see this headline citibank financial advisor found with 160,000 eggcards up his arse
All that is required for libel is publishing of the libellous item to a third party - if Egg has shared details with, ooh, let's say Experian and Equifax, that would be enough. Whether the content of the communication is libellous, though, is another matter.
What the hell is an Egg card?
Sounds more like pointless whining to me. If you are going to write something like this and publish it on an IT news site, maybe you could take the time to actually do a bit of journalism - try and find something out that will educate the readers. As it is, your article summarises to: Egg have made at least three mistakes in their management of my credit card account, so I have terminated it. You could have followed this with something interesting like an analysis of how it has impacted previous companies when they/their IT systems commit these sorts of errors.
They thought perhaps I'd really like an Egg Card. I guess they feel they have to get their numbers up having dumped on 160,000 people. In fact, it's probably because I had an Egg Card when I was a student and it was always totally maxed out. Sorry Egg, I pay my bills now.
it's almost as if they just started doing their sums :-) Anyway, here's a little nugget. I cancelled by Egg card about 2 years ago, but I can still login to the site and use the My Money feature to manage all my other accounts. Hee hee hee, have fun!
I am in the process of closing down all my credit cards and bank accounts except for the one I have my wages paid into because I just can't stand to deal with the incompetent idiots that staff these disgusting greedy companies. I have had trouble with Barclaycard recently, I found that after years of using their website to pay off my bill each month it suddenly wouldn't accept either of my debit cards, one of them was flat rejected and the other wouldn't pass the "verified by visa" check saying that I had entered the details wrong (which I hadn't). I also have found that my Barclaycard no longer works with the verified by visa system despite having worked for the last few years. I then phoned up and asked to close my account and to pay off the remaining balance because I just couldn't be bothered with this crap. They told me that one of my attempted payments on the website had gone through and so the balance had been settled. They said that the website frequently says that payments have been rejected when they have been successful. I didn't trust that this was true and phoned back one or two days later to confirm that my balance had been paid and that they'd shut the account down. They didn't understand what I was asking and it took a solid ten minutes to make them understand and then they "confirmed" that the account was closed and that the balance was paid off with the payment showing on the system. I actually thought that they might only employ mentally retarded people. Then yesterday (about a week after initial contact) I phoned again to say that I still hadn't seen the payment come out of my bank account and they told me that I still owed them money, it was overdue and there was no record of a payment or attempted payment being made. I then tried to pay the balance over the phone and their system rejected my debit cards because they said I had tried to make a payment with three different cards in the last 30 days online (yes because each card was rejected for no reason) so it was locked out. I then had to go to a branch of barclays this morning to pay the balance and the person "helping" me walked off half way through and went to speak to someone else and then told me that I couldn't use one of my cards to make the payment because it was not a barclays debit card. I also recently had a change of address form rejected because they said my signature didn't match their records despite the fact that all the cheques I've written have cleared recently. So basically they have sapped hours out of my life, made me miserable angry and dissillusioned. This is all while I am trying to move house and have encountered similar mistakes requiring countless phone calls with the tax office, utility companies, car insurance, car servicing and mortgage company. I have had money taken from my bank account by a power company that I am not a customer of, taxed for company medical insurance that I don't have, had my car damaged while servicing, had post containing personal documents sent to the wrong address, had threatening final demand letters sent for money I don't owe and all of this marinated in hours and hours of talking to absolute thick imbeciles on the phone. I'm going to kill myself.
As a company, we have been reclaiming penalty charges on credit cards fro some time. 6 months ago, we found out that around 75% of credit agreements are unenforceable because they do not comply with the Consumer Credit Act 1974. We have successfully wiped out remaining balances for people using consumer law. I suspect that Egg have now seen this and decided to cancel these cards before the card holder found out.