I lose out with MBNA’s replacement for Diamond Club

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• Genghis says:

  8 Oct8 October 10:27

  This whole credit scoring remains a bit a black box to me. I hear on the one hand having a low credit utilisation and having cards for a long time being a good thing yet also having dormant cards you don’t use as a bad thing. If I kept the (now worthless) Visa they’re offering me, what would that do to my credit score? Or indeed I cancelled? Any experts?

  N.B. I know credit scoring is almost arbitrary. I’ve never been rejected for a credit card but my score although high on all 3 bureaux does jump around a bit due to the amount of churning I do.

  • Callum says:

    8 Oct8 October 17:58

    The score isn’t only arbitrary, it’s completely useless and I sincerely hope you aren’t paying to receive them.

    Dormant accounts aren’t a big issue, credit utilisation is. The only major downside to keeping it on your report is if a lender feels you’ve already got all the credit you can handle. Unless it’s your oldest credit card account, I probably wouldn’t bother to keep it just for that.

• Andrew M says:

  8 Oct8 October 10:47

  Thanks for that tip Trevor. The Diamond Club card is the one I’ve held for the longest time and by a wide margin. I was going to cancel it but I’ll now reduce the limit on it (£100 is the minimum) and perhaps transfer the credit limit to another MBNA card.

  • Andrew says:

    8 Oct8 October 11:23

    You think that having a card on your account with a £100 limit is a good thing?

    Imagine you are a credit sanctioner with no access to your mental process…

    “Why does MBNA only trust Mr M with a £100 limit?”

    Is what would probably spring to mind.

    • Andrew M says:

      8 Oct8 October 12:07

      Good point, I hadn’t thought of that. I have several MBNA cards with £100 limits as well as a couple with very high limits. I m not sure if a lender would look at the whole MBNA picture when making a decision. It hasn’t caused me any problems that I know of – Amex Platinum and HSBC Premier World Elite taken out recently without difficulty. I take your point though and it may be time for a cull of the £100 cards.

      • Callum says:

        8 Oct8 October 18:03

        Unless it’s changed in the last few years, they’ll have no idea whether your other cards are MBNA or not.

        Though I’d expect the underwriters will put a little more thought into it than “why aren’t they trusted with more”. If you have years of on-time payments and stay within the limit, and have decent amounts of credit elsewhere, I think it’s fairly obvious what you’re doing – even without an ability to mind-read! MBNA wouldn’t suddenly slash your limit to £100 (they can see your limit month-by-month) – if you were that much of a risk they’d close your account outright.

        • Andrew says:

          8 Oct8 October 18:27

          We’ve always had a comprehensive break-down.

          I’m not sure why you don’t.

• Vince says:

  8 Oct8 October 10:52

  Well due to ill discipline and a little bad luck I ran up a pretty big balance on my BMI mastercard. I have now managed to get it under control fully paid off, however, over the years MBNA have done very well from me, far better than the should. I got offered the no reward card. Probably for the best!

• Planeflyer says:

  8 Oct8 October 11:26

  I opened my letter just now – no surprise to see I’ve got the basic, no-frills MBNA card 🙁 Sadly, it’s my only card that works with Android Pay, so i’l keep it as a backup for a while, but I might be applying for the Etihad card soon.

• YL says:

  8 Oct8 October 11:28

  Commented on another post yesterday, I am another one that got the basic Visa card….
  It is very annoying as the Bmi Amex/Visa combined cards are also my longest holding credit cards at the moment. In a way I like to keep a card that has a long history, but at the same time, I really don’t want a card that I know I will not even use just sitting there…

• Jerry says:

  8 Oct8 October 11:45

  Yes I also got the no reward card offer. Phoned immediately and cancelled – reminding them that they wrote a while ago promising an exciting new reward. Never paid any interest, put all non Amex spend on it and paid in full every month. Have earned many thousands of avios and not unhappy to kiss goodbye to MBNA’s terrible customer service. Wondering where to put all non amex spend now. HSBC doesn’t work for me. Maybe Lloyds free card is better than nothing, or Tesco?

• flyforfun says:

  8 Oct8 October 12:18

  Nothing for me either, despite an average of £10K spend and up the past few years. I cancelled my BAPP card and went to the free one, but haven’t transacted on it since around 18 months ago. Maybe it’s time to upgrade back onto it.

  I have MBNAs AA card to keep that alive. Maybe I’ll ask for most of my credit limit to be moved over to it.

  The Mastercard “Priceless” is, as posted above, pretty worthless. I did get 10% of at Liberties once, but it’s not a place I shop often.

  I think I will keep the card open just to cost them money. No transactions, but find ways to generate costs for them. 🙂

• Volker says:

  8 Oct8 October 13:02

  If we all keep our now pointless no-rewards cards but don’t use them, we will eventually receive a rewards offer from MBNA to “win us back” – wait and see!

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