I lose out with MBNA’s replacement for Diamond Club

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• martin says:

  8 Oct8 October 05:17

  I feel a bit cheated now – I got the no rewards card! My wife closed her account as soon as she’d emptied the miles out, which is a shame as it would have been interesting to compare. 0.5% on a Visa is alright – I’d have been happy with that!

  • Steve says:

    8 Oct8 October 07:51

    That’d be the minimum you should accept, seeing as you can get that much on either the John Lewis or Asda non-amex credit cards

• Zoe says:

  8 Oct8 October 05:26

  No rewards here. Never paid interest spent 1 – 5k per month.
  Will check my husband’s letter later.

• Chris says:

  8 Oct8 October 05:57

  No rewards here, aleo never paid interest.

  My MasterCard letter was slightly different to my Amex/Visa letter, with something about access to some kind of MasterCard benefit (early ticket access maybe). I can’t remember exactly, it was so uninteresting I shredded it about 1 minute after reading

• Dannyrado says:

  8 Oct8 October 06:37

  No rewards here. On either my two card pack, or my bmi MasterCard.

  Perhaps it would be worth approaching them Rob, to explain that many of us hfp’ers will literally just cancel the card… surely they would be better offing us something/anything. The thing is, I know many of the mbna folk in Chester, and many of them have no idea about miles, points schemes..

  • Callum says:

    8 Oct8 October 07:05

    Does the fact they have reward schemes at all not tell you they are fully aware some people will only get reward cards? They clearly don’t particularly want you as a customer!

    • Div says:

      8 Oct8 October 07:56

      Callum – I totally understand what Dannyrado is getting at. A decent percentage of MBNA staff do have no real understanding of loyalty points.

      I can tell you this on the basis in particular from various documents I had sight of as part of a complaint that went very high up in the organisation, and ended up with the ombudsman. There were a number of things that were very revealing about how poorly some of them understood loyalty motivations.

      But it’s not just high level, a lot of the more junior people (not just customer services, but also product offers development) seem to have very poor understanding of high affluent spenders.
      A lot of MBNA business seems to be low income spenders who go into default.

      It not only clouds their CS attitudes, it also skews their thinking generally. (And I’m not just talking about preventing abuse).

      Add on top of that some bad systems…

• Genghis says:

  8 Oct8 October 07:00

  “I am responsible for probably the biggest single transaction ever made on a bmi Diamond Club credit card.”

  You tease Raffles. Tell us more…

  • xcalx says:

    8 Oct8 October 07:06

    I remember Raffles paying a stonking tax bill a number of years ago.

  • grex9101 says:

    8 Oct8 October 07:49

    Exactly.

    You can’t tell us half a story. Your readership demands more!!!!

  • Alan says:

    8 Oct8 October 10:05

    Indeed, let’s hear how much it was!

• Karl Ransom says:

  8 Oct8 October 07:00

  I’m more interested in the amount of the “probably the biggest transaction”

  • Lady London says:

    8 Oct8 October 21:23

    I’ll take a guess it was a car.

• Callum says:

  8 Oct8 October 07:13

  No wonder our tax system is such a mess of you’re seemingly allowed to scam the system and get kick backs from tax payments! (Though I’m not sure I completely follow how you’re writing off 30% of the card fee so maybe I’m just not understanding this at all!)

  And maybe I’m remembering it wrong, but didn’t it turn out the Amex cards will/do fall under the same cap as mastercard and visa? In which case, why offer more rewards on the Amex?

  • Yuff says:

    8 Oct8 October 07:48

    I don’t think HMRC is in a mess due to payment options 😉
    Also, it won’t cost them to receive the payment, if the payee gets a reward, for using a certain type of payment card, surely that’s down to the person making the payment being smart 🙂

    • Callum says:

      8 Oct8 October 09:34

      I didn’t say this CAUSED problems, just no wonder it has problems if getting kickbacks from reducing your tax liability is allowed.

      Though this is based upon my assumption that debit card charges are lower.

      • Callum says:

        8 Oct8 October 09:37

        Well, I’d say them being greedy (me included, so not me being “holier than thou”!). I’m sure a certain orange man will agree with you though!

      • Callum says:

        8 Oct8 October 17:32

        They do, and if you were only paying by credit card it would be cost neutral for HMRC. They are discussing paying by credit card then effectively getting a 20-40% discount on the card fee by claiming it back from HMRC as a “business expense” – one which was completely unnecessary, ergo HMRC are losing out.

  • Genghis says:

    8 Oct8 October 07:52

    I’m not too sure about the number itself but anyone carrying out a trade can claim the card fee as an expense.
    So a sole trader at 40% IT band would in next years return decrease their earnings by the card fee paid thereby decreasing tax by 40% of the amount. Likewise with a small Ltd co (<£300k revenue) but at 20%.
    Raffles, where do you get the 35% from?

    • Raffles says:

      8 Oct8 October 08:50

      It was a rough average based on the fact that people have different tax rates.

    • Callum says:

      8 Oct8 October 09:35

      Thanks, Raffles explanation of it being an average makes perfect sense now!

• Stuart Graham says:

  8 Oct8 October 07:23

  Yes mine also said it would convert to a Visa card with no mention of an Amex card.
  Also no rewards

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