Creation Financial Services bashing

[NorthernLass]

Rui N. wrote:

No. IHG closed accounts when people were signing up for promotions that were not targeted at them. There is no indication whatsoever that they’ve closed accounts for MS.

So – they closed accounts for something they had actually allowed people to do – that’s not remotely reassuring!

[Lady London]

Rui N. wrote:

No. IHG closed accounts when people were signing up for promotions that were not targeted at them. There is no indication whatsoever that they’ve closed accounts for MS.

There’s also been incidents reported elsewhere that for balances exceeding around 1.5 million IHG points, even earned only by years of staying a lot with IHG, IHG has found trivial reasons when there was a hotel dispute to close the person’s account, removing their access and all the high bakance of points, and refused to communicate further.

Be very careful with IHG. There have been a lot of negative changes in recent years, and they don’t seem to have control over hoteliers that evade giving promised scheme benefits.

I’ve said a few times that I suspect they are up for sale since Covid but I had the impression my comments were deleted when I said that. Let’s see how this one goes.

[SteveJ]

So it’s sounds like IHG are just as nasty a piece of work as Creation then? Perfect bedfellows.

[Lady London]

SteveJ wrote:

So it’s sounds like IHG are just as nasty a piece of work as Creation then? Perfect bedfellows.

No Creation is really special. Stupidity and mistakes made, then lack of basic knowledge on the limits there are in contract law, and if the FOS would only get its act together : requirements not to abuse consumer cardholders in the UK financial services industry…so Creation have compounded their errors by non-allowed and plainly nasty actions against cardholders. So just a clusterf of incompetence really, by Creation.

For IHG it’s probably just extreme business pressures and the fact that they are dependent on contracts with hoteliers using their brands but they don’t have ultimate control as they don’t own their hotels and hoteliers. So if there are massive problems facing the industry as now then things will tend to fall apart.

Whereas Creation should always have been able to turb some level of profit except for their own incompetence. And now having realised their errors they are mistreating people many of whom had no fault in Creation’s errors and trying to walk away from promises they made.

[Lady London]

SteveJ wrote:

So it’s sounds like IHG are just as nasty a piece of work as Creation then? Perfect bedfellows.

No Creation is really special. Stupidity and mistakes made, then lack of basic knowledge on the limits there are in contract law, and if the FOS would only get its act together : requirements not to abuse consumer cardholders in the UK financial services industry…So Creation have compounded their errors by taking non-allowed and plainly nasty, actions against cardholders. So just a cluster of incompetence really, by Creation.

For IHG it’s probably just extreme business pressures and the fact that they are dependent on contracts with hoteliers using their brands but they don’t have ultimate control of the value levers in tbeir business. As they don’t own their hotels and hoteliers. So if there are massive problems facing the industry as now then things will tend to fall apart for IHG.

Whereas Creation should always have been able to turn some level of profit -except for their own incompetence. And now having realised their errors they are mistreating people many of whom had no fault in Creation’s errors and trying to walk away from promises they made to people who signed up to the IHG card.

SteveJ wrote:

So it’s sounds like IHG are just as nasty a piece of work as Creation then? Perfect bedfellows.

[ChrisD]

It still surprises me that IHG appear to have been ignoring the issue, especially in the current climate where I would have thought that hotel chains are desperate to recoup losses over the past couple of years due to the pandemic, and here are IHG potentially about to lose hundreds of what were their previously most loyal and active customers.

[Olly]

ChrisD wrote:

It still surprises me that IHG appear to have been ignoring the issue, especially in the current climate where I would have thought that hotel chains are desperate to recoup losses over the past couple of years due to the pandemic, and here are IHG potentially about to lose hundreds of what were their previously most loyal and active customers.

Only in the UK though. Probably a rounding error as a proportion of their global sales

[Aston100]

ChrisD wrote:

It still surprises me that IHG appear to have been ignoring the issue, especially in the current climate where I would have thought that hotel chains are desperate to recoup losses over the past couple of years due to the pandemic, and here are IHG potentially about to lose hundreds of what were their previously most loyal and active customers.

I will still remain an IHG hotels customer despite losing the use of my Creation card and the denial of points that I feel I rightfully earnt through it.
I don’t blame the card issues on IHG.

[memesweeper]

I think if Creation had closed all the IHG cards IHG UK might have taken an interest — it would be a significant loss of revenue for them.

A few thousand, albeit with some very high spenders in there, I don’t think they’ll care much.

The lack of a card availability for new sign ups will eventually spur them to try and find a new UK card partner, but as Rob has pointed out, wanting a partner doesn’t mean one will materialise.

[NorthernLass]

Has anyone made a submission to the FOS yet? We’ve had the final 8 week “response” from Creation for one of our cards (“you’re not getting the free night”, no mentions of the 37k outstanding points) and it would be helpful know what other people are putting in their complaints as I haven’t done this before.

[Geoggy]

Have still had no reply to my complaint.

I now have another issue, in that I got a refund recently for a year old transaction when this card was my main spending card and therefore have £140 credit sat on my now “inactive” account.

I messaged them to chase the complaint and to ask for my £140 but no reply.

Any advice?

[toddy]

NL,
I’ll be submitting mine tomorrow.

My 8 week period has elapsed. I replied saying I would give them an extra 2 weeks for them to submit their final response. The 2 weeks elapsed yesterday.

[wideboys182]

I would be intrigued to see what people are writing to the FOS.

My complaint with IHG ends on 2 February so 2 more weeks left

[wideboys182]

Though Creation hasn’t closed all accounts they have limited the market. There is no ‘active’ IHG credit card in the UK market.

[JerrySignfield]

Geoggy wrote:

Have still had no reply to my complaint.

I now have another issue, in that I got a refund recently for a year old transaction when this card was my main spending card and therefore have £140 credit sat on my now “inactive” account.

I messaged them to chase the complaint and to ask for my £140 but no reply.

Any advice?

Phone them up

[JerrySignfield]

memesweeper wrote:

I think if Creation had closed all the IHG cards IHG UK might have taken an interest — it would be a significant loss of revenue for them.

A few thousand, albeit with some very high spenders in there, I don’t think they’ll care much.

I would assume the 2000 lost probably made up about 80% of spend so likely a large revenue loss for IHG and costly for Creation

• This reply was modified 54 years, 4 months ago by .

[SteveJ]

JerrySignfield wrote:

I would assume the 2000 lost probably made up about 80% of spend so likely a large revenue loss for IHG and costly for Creation

Not sure if this is what you meant, but from Creations perspective the idea is that getting rid of these customers saves them money, as they were loss making for Creation.

[marks7389]

NorthernLass wrote:

Has anyone made a submission to the FOS yet? We’ve had the final 8 week “response” from Creation for one of our cards (“you’re not getting the free night”, no mentions of the 37k outstanding points) and it would be helpful know what other people are putting in their complaints as I haven’t done this before.

Yes. Incidentally it was the same for me in that Creation didn’t respond on the missing points in their final decision letter. I pushed them on that and I did get clarification by email that they are refusing to transfer them just before I made my submission to the FOS. That was my assumption anyway- just I had to tweak my FOS complaint to reflect that it was (belatedly) confirmed.

[marks7389]

Regarding sight of what is in my complaint, I have no issues with sharing mine with other former cardholders, though obviously some of the specifics will vary. I’m not going to post it here though, partly because there’s quite a bit in it and partly because I’d rather not give Creation an advanced view.

Shame there’s no private message facility 😉

Broadly though I set out the specific points of my complaint and Creation’s response to them (or not) on a front summary page and then went into more detail on each point. In my case those points were about a withheld night voucher and missing points. Obviously Creation have provided no justification for what they have done other than that they made a business decision to close the accounts, so on the former I’ve argued why the night should be credited despite their unilateral closure decision.

I also attached a number of bits of supporting evidence referenced in my arguments, including a copy of the terms and conditions, the marketing information on the website at the time I signed up (see my previous post referencing web.archive.org) and copies of my Oct/Nov/Dec statements (with all the covering information such as I had on my November statement setting out the points reward structure). Of course I also included a copy of the relevant email trail in which I raised the complaint to Creation and pushed them on the missing points transfers at the end, and their decision letter.

[NorthernLass]

Thanks @marks7389, that’s really helpful. I wasn’t sure if it was up to the complainant or to Creation to demonstrate what the Ts and Cs are. Is there any way of checking exactly what they were when one was accepted for the card? I realise I’ve been a bit sloppy here but having always acted in good faith and paid off every credit card I’ve had each month I’ve never seen the need to examine them too closely!

[Geoggy]

JerrySignfield wrote:

Geoggy wrote:

Have still had no reply to my complaint.

I now have another issue, in that I got a refund recently for a year old transaction when this card was my main spending card and therefore have £140 credit sat on my now “inactive” account.

I messaged them to chase the complaint and to ask for my £140 but no reply.

Any advice?

Phone them up

Just did “wait times are over 60 minutes”

[marks7389]

NorthernLass wrote:

Thanks @marks7389, that’s really helpful. I wasn’t sure if it was up to the complainant or to Creation to demonstrate what the Ts and Cs are. Is there any way of checking exactly what they were when one was accepted for the card? I realise I’ve been a bit sloppy here but having always acted in good faith and paid off every credit card I’ve had each month I’ve never seen the need to examine them too closely!

I wanted to include everything of relevance up-front so I could reference them in my arguments. I think it’s a given that they’re going to say no free night voucher because the card was closed, so I’ve tackled that head-on. I really have no idea what they’re going to say in their response to the FOS about the missing points, so I simply pointed out that the terms set out what is due, there is nothing that gives them the right to unliterally stop awarding them without notice, they didn’t give any warning in the closure notices and even continued to promote the earning rates to cardholders who has been given notice.

With regard to the IHG award terms and conditions I don’t believe that Creation provided paper copies of those, and certainly no updates since being accepted. I had an email on the day I applied (December 2019) referencing the terms online at their current location:

https://www.creation.co.uk/ihgcctermsandconditions/

So we really can’t do much else than go on what is there.

The main card terms and conditions on the website as the latest are dated (May 2019 from memory?). In my case they haven’t changed since my application. I didn’t include a copy of those in my FOS submission as they weren’t directly relevant to any of my arguments but I have a copy if I need them later on.

[JDB]

@marks7389 I think it is sensible to address everything up front as you have done and, although you don’t mention it, that presumably includes the status of the annual fee/refund thereof and acceptance thereof. The FO has previously made the connection and as Creation has argued this successfully before, they will no doubt do so again. I’m not saying it is correct, but their position will be that you didn’t reach your anniversary, the refund/acceptance of the refund is evidence of that/your tacit acknowledgment.

[EwanG]

I think you’re right @JDB with how Creation will see it.

On the other hand from the consumer perspective you could look at it as Creation (reluctantly) refunding the annual fee because they cannot (well have chosen not to) provide the service for a full year.

Given the choice I expect most here would pay part/all of the annual fee in order to benefit from the free night!

[marks7389]

JDB wrote:

@marks7389 I think it is sensible to address everything up front as you have done and, although you don’t mention it, that presumably includes the status of the annual fee/refund thereof and acceptance thereof. The FO has previously made the connection and as Creation has argued this successfully before, they will no doubt do so again. I’m not saying it is correct, but their position will be that you didn’t reach your anniversary, the refund/acceptance of the refund is evidence of that/your tacit acknowledgment.

Well that’s an interesting one in its own right. My anniversary date was the 30th December and I made a conscious decision not to ask for a refund or partial refund. I had most of the year anyway and I didn’t want them to use a fee refund as an excuse not honour any of the card benefits.

Regardless of that they refused to refund me the fee anyway in their complaint decision….

My FOS complaint makes it clear that I never asked for a refund and it is not one of things that I’m asking them to investigate either. However the fact that I paid the fee (and they have made it clear that they would not refund it) is one of the arguments I’m using to justify why I believe I’m entitled to the card benefits earned during the year, including both the night voucher and the outstanding points.