Reply To: Creation Financial Services bashing

[Lady London]

JDB wrote:

@Lady London I’m surprised you haven’t commented here re poor @Alex V who had his BAPP cancelled on two month’s notice and is not going to get his 241 voucher (that he was only £98 away from) or points during the notice period. Amex doing the same as Creation – any thoughts for people still to claim via FOS/MCOL?

Well JDB it never occurred to me that I could add anything to Alex V’s case.

Alex V has been getting excellent help and analysis from people who have narrowed down the possibilities here. He seems to be getting the best advice. Namely, ask Amex if they would consider awarding a voucher on a gooodwill basis as he is only less than £100 short. Then the identification by the team here that he has likely been hit by Amex paying closer attention to (or changing, esp based on consumer credit industry experience during Covid) lending criteria. Amex aooearing to be taking some extra steps to manage their exposure currently. I would guess Alex V has an excellent chance of being accepted again if he applies again in another year or two. Especially if he pays any attention he can to credit score factors.

Gut feeling that as Amex clearly has a target value of credit exposure to reduce and quite possibly some stats person has translated that into a subtarget of number of cardholders to eliminate, am guessing Amex wouldn’t agree to keep 1 card open for Alex V with no supps and, say, a ridiculously low credit limut (say £500) because he “values the continuity of the relationship”. I’d ask Amex if I was Alex V but I think Team HfP haa got it right : Amex is on a mission here.

How to distinguish Amex from Creation? Haven’t given it any thought. But off the top of my head Amex are pros. They have behaved and communicated properly. We are not hearing of massive numbers of cardholdets who are being mistreated. They have given 2 months notice in accoedance with teems anddvhaven-t just cut off and not communicated. Amex doesn”t havw operational problems (flaky core IT, poor management) such as failing to credit payments on timw and custlmer accounts being marked as out of order and posdibly the realbdamahe: potentially this being erroneously reported to credit reference agencies.

The Amex offer to customers isn’t a branded card with a core highly valuable benefit cardholders contract to be able to earn, linked to that brand (IHG and free nights for spend and month by month, IHG points which do have a high valuw to the consumers the IHG card entices to sign up as cardholdrrs it’s much morw visceral if the IHG card doesn’t pay out on its core promotion, the free night and refuses to award the monthly points for spend, than if Amex takes a while awarding points for one of their many promotions. Creation has failed to deliver their core proposition for which the user signed up and diverted spend to thw IHG card. Amex and Creation are ompletely different.

I am sure there’s morw but it’s late! Interesting question, JDB.