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.