Monday 19 July 2010

MBNA - the good, the bad and the...



I have an MBNA crdit card and I (nearly) always pay it off each month in full to avoid paying interest. In general I find that MBNA offer very good customer service, but woe betide anyone who falls the slightest bit behind in their repayments.

The Good. Option to manage your account entirely online eliminating paper with robust security. Option to notify MBNA when you're going abroad as they can and do contact you if an unusual transaction (e.g. one from a foreign country) appears on your statement.

The Bad. For no other reason than human error, I forgot to pay MBNA by the due date one month. This would be the first time I had been late with a payment in literally years of having the card. I received a phone call from a machine asking me to commit to a payment, which I did. The same (very irritating) machine rang me at least four subsequent times even though I had already made the payment and gone through the long process of "Press 1 for this, Press 2 for that" several times.

If you're unfortunate that you end up in arrears with an MBNA credit card, it can turn positively ugly.

Verdict? A fine service as long as you make sure to pay on time every time.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

That sounds a bit agressive even for a credit card company these days.
John

spc100 said...

The weakest part of the mbna offering, is their 2.5% iirc on foreign currency transactions.

Liam D. Ferguson said...

Thanks for the comments. The charges on the MBNA card are all pretty much on the high side, particularly for non-standard events, like a late payment.