Bits: bad news as Lloyds tries to buy MBNA, bad news as Regus culls Gold cards

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• Matt says:

  28 May28 May 04:00

  You only had to be a Virgin Flying Club Silver to qualify for the free Regus Gold. It was the only benefit to the Silver tier of any real value, and hasn’t been replaced with anything else worthwhile.

• krys_k says:

  28 May28 May 05:12

  It does rather seem that lloyds use antiquated admin processes, but I’ve found their customer service to be helpful and efficient. Also, all bonuses, and that’s 9 in all across both avis cards for three of us have posted. The important question that we should be discussing is when do the contracts end and what card is the best card to be on at that point?

  • Bob says:

    28 May28 May 09:28

    It is not only Lloyds with antiquated systems. One of the other Big four requires its large corporates (loans of over say £75m) to send them a fax when they want to drawdown on part of a loan. A fax in 2016! My place of work did away with faxes five years ago- you can imagine how much trouble it causes!

    • John says:

      29 May29 May 13:15

      Faxes are considered more secure than emails. Following last year’s hack, Sony Pictures got the faxing habit again.

      Allegedly V Putin’s staff have invested in typewriters!

• Sideysid says:

  28 May28 May 05:26

  The Lloyds Avios card is the only credit card that I have applied for and ever been declined. At one point I went in branch and had an appointment to open an account (to take advantage of the Club Lloyds account and build a credit file with them).

  Needless to say, their customer service (both in branch and on the phone ) was absolutely Scheisse. This was despite me being a Santander Select/Barclays Premier customer and me switching a redundant account.
  I walked out of the branch and from that day on Lloyds can stick it where the sun doesn’t shine for all I care, no matter what card they offer. I may try TSB at some point to see if they fare any better.

  • Genghis says:

    28 May28 May 06:12

    TSB still use the same system infrastructure as LBG entities

• Susan says:

  28 May28 May 05:31

  Not being able to log in to the Lloyds cc website and settle the bill online unless you have a LLoyds current account is pretty antiquated.

  • John says:

    28 May28 May 06:20

    Why don’t you have a current account with them?

    If you have a spare £5000 to stick there, they pay £200 interest (gross) plus 6 VUE vouchers annually. If you have a partner then open a third joint account.

    • Alan says:

      28 May28 May 11:05

      Had a look, Club Lloyds looks interesting – although I see needs £1500 paid in per month (easy) and 2 direct debits.

  • Andrew says:

    28 May28 May 08:54

    Not great I agree but you can always push your payment from your other bank account direct to the Lloyds credit card. You just need to know the correct sort code and account number but most banks populate that for you.

  • The Urbanite says:

    28 May28 May 10:05

    The account number and sort code are shown on the giro slip which comes with the statement. The reference is the credit card number.

  • James says:

    28 May28 May 10:50

    They made me go to a branch in person to settle a final bill when I finally binned them off after numerous problems. Wake up Lloyds, your service is terrible.

• Waribai says:

  28 May28 May 05:53

  Regarding Regus, I would login online to see if you’ve been downgraded!

• Catman99 says:

  28 May28 May 06:23

  Lloyds does have the best online banking website. Their online Bank Statements go back to 2002 and they look like Bank Statements and can be downloaded to spreadsheet which is great if you want to sort your statements into say Name order. Barclays is the worst as I’m not sure that they want you to use online banking….(Santander is also good, Nat West is OK and I don’t know about HSBC)

• James67 says:

  28 May28 May 07:06

  Another thing that appears to be getting culled this week are free legacy experian accounts, from lateJuly. These are accounts provided as part of products such as tesco finest home insurance that simply never expired even though you no longer held the qualifying product.

• Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

  28 May28 May 07:21

  View from my corner of the industry is that Lloyd’s won’t be able to take on the book – combined market share will be too high. Competition Commission already forced them to spin off TSB (although state aid was an important aspect in the decision) and the FCA is in the middle of their Market Study.

  Probably a similar situation for Barclaycard, we consider them even less likely given the internal restructuring going on.

  Virgin Money seems like a serious possibility – we also thought that Cap One could be in the race given that they’ve recently scaled up their investment in the UK and their acquisition appetite in the US.

  Perception is that it’s not a particularly good loan book though – look at that ROA for example. We expected that any sale would be at a discount to book value – interesting to see that the FT heard otherwise!

  • the_real_a says:

    28 May28 May 23:21

    Interesting thoughts as ever Andrew

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