Lloyds TSB and their obscure rules to stop you getting your credit card bonus

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• Jamie says:

  3 Jul3 July 07:12

  I’m in the middle of my second month at the moment and I hate Lloyds with a passion.

  Still can’t access my account online, despite going into a branch to prove my identity they are now telling me I have to go back into another branch again because I forgot my password, the security is way over the top.

  In terms of the bonus I was told that as I applied via the avios.com website then my first 3 months are broken down as

  40 days (from date of acceptance) as it takes a while for activation
  30 days
  30 days

  I’ll hit the spend but have zero confidence in getting the bonus, can’t wait to cancel.

  • Rob says:

    3 Jul3 July 10:46

    This is what I was told as well (40 days / 30 days / 30 days). For me, my acceptance date was the date appearing on the letter to which my credit cards were attached, when they arrived.

• Alison says:

  3 Jul3 July 07:13

  So glad to hear that it’s not me, it’s them !
  I’ve had 2 unsavoury experiences with Lloyds credit cards. The first was many years ago when they offered a uselessly low credit limit because I was new to the UK. The second was this year. Even after almost a decade of unblemished credit history, Lloyds wavered on whether or not it could offer the product for which I’d applied (a long interest-free period card).
  A mailed-in credit report, 5 trips to the branch and 5 calls to credit card services later – with each saying that the card was possible but that only the other could help finalise the process, I walked away with no card and £100 from the branch in recognition of how painful the process with card services had been. Is Lloyds actively seeking customers with poor credit for higher returns?

  • John says:

    3 Jul3 July 07:23

    “The first was many years ago when they offered a uselessly low credit limit because I was new to the UK.”

    I don’t think you can blame them for that one…

    With the second, unless that was at the time of every high street bank offering 6% interest, the £100 probably beat any profit you would have made from the long interest free period!

• Roger says:

  3 Jul3 July 07:37

  I have the fee-free cards and have long since given up on Lloyds TSB because of their pathetic IT systems, presumably part of the reason for their hopelessness in monitoring expenditure. . My cards are successors to the old Air Miles cards, and unlike respected colleagues, I earnt precisely 0.0 million Avios with the Avios cards as they refused my offer to upgrade to the fee-payable card. D)

  You ask ‘Are the Lloyds TSB cards really worth such trouble?’ I’d say certainly not. At 1 Avios per £ for me for the AmEx, the earnings pale into insignificance compared with double that on the Diamond Club MC (OK, not available to new applicants), not-quite-so good earnings on the Tesco MC (at the grandfathered rate) and various AmEx options.

  The old option of using LTSB AmEx to secure Air Miles flights without a surcharge disappeared when Avios were launched. I now retain the card as a ‘just in case’ card and benefit from occasional targeted bonuses.

• DV says:

  3 Jul3 July 07:45

  Lloyds is hopeless. The Avios credit cards required a trip to a branch in person. Having used Lloyds for the first time I begin to understand how it agreed to buy HBOS. 25 Avios/£ was worth it however. 1 million Avios later…

• Swiss says:

  3 Jul3 July 07:46

  What about bombarding them with emails of complaint. And all copy in the banking ombudsman. I was fairly confident I would get the points until I read this post – now I’ll have to wait and see…

• Wozza2404 says:

  3 Jul3 July 07:48

  I was later to their “Millions of Avios for everyone” promotion last year, meaning I only had time to apply for myself and not my wife as well. I did still manage to rack up over half a million miles (even with a ridiculous £2k limit), but with another 3 months I could have done serious damage.

  Because of that, I’m waiting for another promo along those lines. I know we won’t ever see anything as generous, but as you can only ever have 1 promo bonus, 20k miles doesn’t cut it for me.

  As for overseas spend, my Gold Card earns 2MR/£ which is worth 3 Avios during a transfer bonus. Plus MRs are worth more to me than straight Avios due to their flexibility.

  All in all, Lloyds will need to do MUCH better than 20k for Mrs W to take the plunge and apply for her one and only sign up bonus.

  As always, YMMV

  • Rob says:

    3 Jul3 July 07:52

    Agreed – although its hard to believe they will bring back that promo from last year!

    (But, then again, they DID extend the closing date – even though they would have seen the damage being done by that point!)

    • Wozza2404 says:

      3 Jul3 July 08:10

      Yes, I doubt they’d be that daft, but even 5x would be enough to bring me back.

      I think my figure here would be the opportunity to earn a minimum of 75k Avios before I’d make her apply.

• Worzel says:

  3 Jul3 July 08:12

  Further to Roger’s post (July 3 7:37 am):

  I had a battle with Lloyds during the Airmiles to Avios transition-whilst trying to secure a companion ticket Nov/Dec 2011.

  Lloyds were still advertising “Free Flights” (Airmiles) at the time of my writing.These free flights were impossible to obtain(apply and then spend) so close to transition-and I pointed this out to them.

  Go to the Lloyds website today and you’ll see:

  “Fly to Barcelona on us” .

  Has anything changed?

• Brian says:

  3 Jul3 July 08:43

  Personally, I’ve had no problems with my cards. I’ve found the online banking easy to deal with, and I like the fact that Lloyds provide a landline number to call, rather than trying to force customers to call premium rate numbers. I called them soon after getting the card to find out about the dates they were using to calculate the monthly spend. Like many people on this site, I found that the date was NOT the same as the statement date or the day I received the card, but since I learned this in good time, I was able to adjust my spending habits accordingly.

  Of course, I haven’t yet received the bonus, but hope that I will soon!

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