Card work

[j4]

A few weeks ago I finally got round to cancelling three credit cards (leaving me with just one, which is quite enough). The three to get the chop were:

• HSBC - the card I got with my student account in 1996, heavily used until about 6 months ago
• Egg - a card I originally got on a 0% balance transfer deal to help me pay off the HSBC card, and had used occasionally thereafter
• first direct - ditto, except that I hardly ever used this card after the initial balance transfer

The banks' different approaches to cancelling the cards were interesting to note.

• first direct eventually sent a clear and official-looking letter and form with a pre-paid envelope to confirm cancellation and return my card (cut in half).
• Egg phoned me up fairly promptly to confirm that I wanted to cancel, to tell me that I didn't need to return the card so long as I destroyed it, to ask me why I was cancelling it (on being told "I just don't need more than one credit card" they just said "fair enough!" and didn't push or argue) and to read me the small print (I can't reapply within 12 months).
• HSBC ... nada. Absolutely no checking, no acknowledgement, but I can no longer log in to my online banking, so I assume they have closed the account. (Some of you may remember that it took me FIVE MONTHS to close my current account with them, and when I finally managed to overcome their obstructiveness to achieve this -- after several phone calls and two visits to the branch -- I asked them to send me a closing statement; they said they would, and never did.)

I was rather hoping that HSBC would ask me why I was leaving, and they didn't even do that, so I didn't have a chance to tell them it was because of their consistently appalling customer service, uncompetitive rates, unhelpful staff, total lack of communication, and generally being as much use as a chocolate fireguard. A mouldy chocolate fireguard. It seems a bit pointless writing to them now to complain about a service I no longer use, but instead I'll just disrecommend them here.

The annoying thing is that HSBC are one of the (as far as I can tell) very few banks who explicitly offer a house-sharing mortgage for up to four people. Unfortunately I wouldn't trust them to organise the proverbial drinking spree in a drink-producing establishment, let alone to manage a mortgage, so I'm just hoping that some more competent banks will start to offer the same. (Not because I'm personally interested in it, just because I think it's a Good Thing!)

Comments

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

I may be about to cancel my TSB Visa card, as I hear they're going to charge an annual fee to people who pay off every month.
I was wondering what to replace it with, but L says I should use 'our' card for my personal stuff and transfer the dosh to the account we use to pay it off with. 'Our' card is Egg, but with a small% cash back on every use, which is why we have it. The Pru are selling Egg to somebody else, though, so that may change, in which case...

[j4.livejournal.com]

The one card I'm keeping is an NSPCC charity credit-card from the Halifax (http://www.halifax.co.uk/creditcards/nspcc.asp). Not a very good interest rate, but I don't intend to use it unless absolutely necessary, and if I do use it, the NSPCC gets some kind of micro-payment.

The Motley Fool's credit card comparison table (http://www.fool.co.uk/credit-cards/credit-cards-comparison.aspx) is generally quite useful, though they don't seem to list any charity credit cards (http://www.knowyourmoney.co.uk/credit-cards/compare-credit-cards/charity-credit-cards/?gclid=CJju6vnywYoCFQU6EAodBFO0hA).

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

They do if you search all cards and select donation to charity.

If Lloyds are going to start charging for my Visa card then I'll have to think about changing, but it is very useful seeing it listed alongside my current and savings accounts, and it is going to get a little hammered when I move, stilled paid off at the end of the month. :-)

[gerald_duck]

Actually, you might know this…

Once upon a time I saw advertisements for a card that worked like a normal payment card, but could only be used for donating to charities. This lumped all your charitable donations together and made reclaiming the tax simple.

Now that I'm interested in one, I can't see any trace of them. The modern wave of charity credit cards moves googling for it into needle-in-haystack territory.

[j4.livejournal.com]

No idea, but surely you could just get any credit card and use it for this purpose!

[gerald_duck]

But then you have to prove that every individual payment made on the card was to a charity. Because it's not possible to use the CharityCard for anything other than charitable donations the card turns things into one number for the taxman automatically.

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

You want this
http://www.caf.org.uk/Default.aspx?page=7025

[gerald_duck]

Bingo! Thank you!

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

I may consider a Retired Greyhound Trust card if I want my own and nobody's doing cashback anymore.

[imc.livejournal.com]

When I got a new credit card a few years ago I chose Egg because they were offering 0.5% cashback on all purchases. This had dropped to 0.1% before the card even arrived, and some time last year they abolished it altogether.

Egg also keep ringing me up to say they're putting card payment protection racket on my account as it's free for the first month and all I have to do if I don't want it is cancel within 30 days. Which I do (including the one time when I sent a secure message over their online banking system entitled "card payment protection" and asking if they could cancel CPP on my account, and they replied with a phone number that turned out to be a completely different (http://www.cpp.co.uk/card/index.html) entity called CPP).

On the other hand, I've had practically no trouble from HSBC. There was one time when I left my credit card 1p in debit and, because I didn't pay them their 1p that month, their computer slapped a £20 charge on the account. When I complained it was immediately refunded without question.

[k425.livejournal.com]

Have a look at the Egg Money card - that's what we've got. You can pre-load it, and they pay you 4% interest on that. And they pay up to 1% cashback on spending.

[caramel-betty.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Just looking at it, it wasn't obvious to me that Egg Money was a credit card - I have the Egg Card, which has just gone from "annoying" to "HOW MUCH?" in its interest rate, so I was looking to move away. They seem to be reticent about saying what sort of credit card it is, though, which seems odd. I'm assuming it's actually a proper Visa credit card?

[k425.livejournal.com]

It's from the Mastercard stable. I presume it's an ordinary credit card because I get an invoice once a month and have to settle the sum within n days, rather than everything being charged direct to my bank account or whatever. And in addition I get cash-back, which is no bad thing.

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

Friends' mortgages scare me, there just seem to be so many ways in which things could go wrong, but I agree if I were thinking of going down that route I'd want good evidence that the lender was very well organised and on the ball.

[gerald_duck]

There's a reason the Midland Bank changed its name to HSBC. No longer being shit isn't it.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Well, being bought out was.

Back in the days they called themselves Midland, they were OK - a perfectly competent bank by the standards of the day. Sadly, since more competition has appeared, rather than learn lessons from the newcomers and improve their service, they appear to have gone backwards.

They're a dinosaur, one of the apatosaurs. It's just that the nimble little raptor chewing on the end of its tail has yet to be noticed.

[gerald_duck]

My mum is the prime example of an inertial customer, but even she got so fed up with the Midland that she moved her current account. I also know a few other people who got fed up with them, including a company that settled for half a million pounds or so in their negligence suit against the bank.

In terms of horror stories I've heard, only Halifax and Barclays rival HSBC for knuckle-headed errors, and at least they are more effective and responsive than HSBC at scraping the brown stuff off the air mover afterwards.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Happily, I've not had any problems with the Halifax. Yet. This may be because these days my total interaction with them is via their website, which does what I want it to do, and has yet to let me down.

[emperor]

I have an HSBC card, because it's the only one I have with a plausibly-large credit limit. My other bank, Nationwide, are just as inept, sadly :(

[j4.livejournal.com]

How big a credit limit do you need? None of the cards I took out seemed to have any problem with offering me 3K or thereabouts, and kept upping the credit limit to try to entice me to get into debt; but I can't imagine ever wanting to spend anything like that much on credit. I suppose if you were using it for the downpayment on a house or something, but then surely there are better ways to get loans!

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

I've put large amounts on the credit card before now, but those were things I was going to pay off immediately, and I only used the credit card because then I could ask them to send in the attack lawyers if it all went wrong.

[emperor]

This is roughly my approach; I buy things online with a credit card, too. I don't use it for borrowing, but Nationwide would only give atreic and I 1k, which doesn't last very long when you're buying white goods &c.

[imc.livejournal.com]

Indeed, when I moved house (nearly ten years ago now, gosh) I spent about £5,000 on white goods on two credit cards which I immediately paid off.

Unfortunately, now I've been married for a few years, the ability to pay my credit cards off each month is but a distant memory. Le sigh.

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

I hesitate to ask what your definition of white goods is. To me it means washing machines and freezers and stuff like that, and unless I'm trying to freeze all my victims I can't see how I would spend £5000 on same.

Now a nice sofa, that's an expensive item.

[imc.livejournal.com]

I may be misremembering (let's make it £3,000), but also I'm including black goods too (TV, hi-fi). Cooker is probably the most expensive thing you missed out in your list. It was a completely unfurnished house. I spent over a grand at Argos (not on white goods). It was quite fun…

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, if you include a cooker and black goods then I can easily see how you reach £5K.

[glittertigger]

I don't have a credit card at all any more. I applied for an HSBC one a year or so ago (I was going abroad and thought I ought to have one) and they kept losing paperwork and never set it up. Possibly a blessing in disguise.

I have a mortgage with them and at least that service seems to be competently run.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I've never had a credit card, and don't want one; I manage perfectly well with my debit card.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Jolly good. If you don't have any need for a credit card, then obviously (tautologically!) there's no reason to get one.

One of the things a credit card has been extremely useful for in the past is buying things online from the USA, where I've found that sites often haven't accepted a debit card. As more and more places accept debit, though, I've used the credit card less and less.

[caramel-betty.livejournal.com]

The annoying thing is that HSBC are one of the (as far as I can tell) very few banks who explicitly offer a house-sharing mortgage for up to four people.

Via the magic of Google (http://www.google.com/) and boredom (http://offensive-mango.livejournal.com/285149.html):

• Guardian Money article about shared purchases (http://money.guardian.co.uk/property/firsttimebuyers/story/0,,1921797,00.html) which mentions various places


• Share to Buy (http://www.sharetobuy.com/) with the Britannia (http://www.britannia.co.uk/)


• They also claim that Abbey and Skipton will do this sort of thing, though their websites are strangely empty of any references to it. But, you know, a phone call could answer that.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Like I say, not immediately necessary, but I will bookmark this so I can find it at a later date.

And good to see someone harnessing boredom for the forces of good. 8-) Recently I've been soaking up some of my spare cycles being a Mechanical Turk (http://www.mturk.com/), but usually it's just sudoku and arguing on usenet...

[jvvw.livejournal.com]

You've got me worried - I'm actually in the process of moving my bank account to HSBC. Jon's used them for years and the folk at our local branch know exactly who we are and bend over backwards to be helpful. I've been impressed so far. It was the fact that it took me over an hour at a branch of Barclays to get my address changed when we moved that was the final straw, and our joint account and mortgage is with them, so it made sense.

[j4.livejournal.com]

[don't know why I've only just seen the notification for this comment, but]

I'm sorry if I've got you worried -- other people have obviously had much better experiences of HSBC, so maybe I have just been unlucky. If your branch already knows you and is being helpful, sounds like a good reason to stay there. I figure all banks know that the hassle of changing banks is enough to deter most people from doing so most of the time, so they've no real incentive to bother overmuch about customer service; but if they're giving you a satisfactory service, then clearly there's no need to change, and if they stop doing so, you can always change later. (NB I don't really have any money to speak of, so they've no incentive to treat me politely! -- your experience is likely to be a lot better in this regard.)

Fortunately, now that I can do most things over the web I can't imagine ever needing to go into the branch of any bank often enough that the staff would get to know me, & that suits me just fine.

[i-ludicrous.livejournal.com]

I find I have to have this kind of credit card cull every couple of years. So far the HSBC card I got when I was 18 has always survived, but I think it will go in the next round: they have finally decided to get rid of the interest free period for cash advances, which is the only reason I have hung on to it up till now. I can't understand why they ever thought that was a good idea in the first place...

[voiceofsauron.livejournal.com]

Hello my name is David. I work for HSBC.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I've only just seen this comment (dunno what LJ was doing there with the notifications) but I'm sorry if you're offended by my account of my experience with HSBC. I have spoken to helpful members of staff there (the Loughborough branch were certainly better than the Cambridge branch) and I'm certainly not saying that everybody who works for them is useless, but overall my experience with the bank was pretty bad. Maybe I was just unlucky.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

I keep one spare card in a safe place, unused except for a couple of subscriptions, as a backup in case the main card is stolen - or in case the issuer withdraws it.

...Which leads to your point about HSBC: if you don't trust them, dont trust them. I find it astonishing that anyone thinks otherwise.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Frankly, I don't trust any banks. If I actually had any money to speak of, I'd be worrying a lot more than I am!