MBNA harassment

[GROSVENORIFA]

Having got myself into a difficult situation finacially (not least as a result of penal charges from banks and Credit Card Companies) I have sought assistance from the very helpful Consumer Credit Counselling Service.

 

I general I have found most credit card companies comparatively helpful once CCCS get involved but I have a warning for anyone who gets into arrears with MBNA. They are like vultures after a carcass.

 

I have consistently kept them informed of my financial position - they simply ignore my letters. I have telephoned them on numerous occassions and particularly immediately on receipt of yet another threatening letter. BIG MISTAKE.

 

It so happens that my telephone has been disconnected and I have changed jobs following a divorce. I now live in a rented room with no telephone. I have called MBNA from friends phones, from other peoples homes and from work. BIG MISTAKE

 

MBNA will log ANY telephone number you use and will then call you on that number incessantly. A former employer has been inundated with calls up to 5 times per day, sometimnes on numbers which are reserved for outgoing calls only and not published - these can ONLY be obtained by logging of the numbers when I have called them.

 

I have written formal complaints and received bland non specific apologies but the harassment continues.

 

I advise everyone to refuse to give MBNA your phone number and when calling them dial 141 before the number so your number is withheld. When you do this they have a recorded message asking you to input your home telephone number -- simply hold on! DO NOT GIVE YOUR NUMBER.

 

Grosvenorifa

[Nightmare4banks]

Hi all!

 

Grosvenorifa,I tend to agree with you 10000%+ regarding MBNA.

 

I was in a very bad state during last year - death of a very close relative.

They could not give a damn because I told them about the death in my family - they even accused me of stealing!

 

I have a loan account and a credit card with them.

 

Calls at all hours - including 8.30pm on Saturday from their call centre in India!

 

In the end,I wrote a very firm letter to the CEO at the time regarding creditor/debtor harrassment and the calls stopped(it got so bad that I joined "Choose to Refuse" from BT) but the text messages continued until recently when I told them that their business practices are totally unacceptable.Also,I told them that I refuse from now onwards to speak to anyone and in fact this is what I did and to this date continue to do.Also,I never reply their text messages requesting me to call them back.

 

When I complained about their practices,I did receive an apology but they said we contact our customers with no intent to hassle but make sure accounts are up to date etc etc.

 

I have succeeded to get the loan account payments reduced which I am paying back regularly but they refuse to look into the fact they missold me PPI Insurance in part which is no use to me whastsoever with the credit card which I have had since I received the card over 7 years ago - so I have an ongoing dispute with them.

 

This plus several hundred pounds worth of late payment/over the limit fees.My debt to MBNA is mainly the PPI and late payment fees which I will continue to challenge until they agree to reduce the balance owed.

 

As a general rule,I always write to the creditor/debt collector by recorded delivery post so they cannot say they have not received my letter and limit my conversations if the person on the other side becomes aggressive and the other day I told the woman to get herself some manners and "get lost".

 

I have found that if you do not do this,you get really ill.I felt really depressed last year but now I am feeling much better

 

AND ....

 

wonder if there is any way we could do a class action law suit against MBNA at the end of the day one person maybe saying porkies but not several or a large number of people.

 

Finally,I am more than happy to back anyone up with my bad experiences with MBNA with the view of going to court.

[angry cat]

MBNA are shocking !

they do not answer letters-

they appear to have two Customer Assistance Departments -

one @ PO Box 30 - the other PO box 1004 Chester.

 

I have been at logger heads with them for some time and even took my complaint to the Financial Ombudsman, who seems to be unable to assist because unlawful penalties are not within the FOS jurasdiction (they FOS cannot rule on contract law) but my complaint also involves their rubbish Payment Protection Insurance Racket !! and I was fined 52 times with penalties whilst I had an insurance claim in place

 

MBNA have many Heads of Customer Assistance but my view is that they are not employed to assist customers "They are MBNA COLLECTIONS" and some of the names are most likely computer 'nom de plumes'

 

I sent a letter of complaint to Philip Crocker MBNA Head of Customer Assistance and Mr. Michael Rhodes (ceo) 31/03/2006 today is 12 April 2006 and I have not received a reply. Under FSA / FOS rules a complaint should be acknowledged within 5 working days. MBNA dislike answering letters, because they may incriminate themselves! MBNA will always ask you to telephone them and thereby record the conversation - Unfair

 

MBNA appear to ride roughshod over its customers and because they are the largest credit card issuer, they seem to get away with "BAD SERVICE"

 

Just check out the complaints about MBNA America by doing a google search - complaints about MBNA credit card USA - I am sure that you will not be surprised as the story is just the same as here in the UK

 

I am so exasperated with MBNA, I have decided to make a FORMAL COMPLAINT to The Office of Fair Trading.

 

angry cat

[Mustard]

I was in all sorts of trouble with MBNA and have a very large outstanding Credit Card debt with them. They are the sneakiest bunch of snakes you could ever come across. For example.

 

They kept on trying to call me, unfortantley my phone message when Im busy goes to a message along the lines of "Hi your through to (my company name) sorry I cant take your call" The idiot calling then thought he was being a genius by finding my website. When he did get hold of me he said "Hello Mr Mustard, ive managed to find your website and see you have a nice number of (my stock) on there, so I can see your not short of a few quid. Now pay us our money!"

 

What Inspector Closeau failed to understand is that I dont own ANY of my stock, I act as an agent for customers. It was the equivilent of him looking in an estate agents window at the houses for sale and deducing that the owner of the agent must have £millions as he owns the houses for sale. What a complete EDITED

 

Another one was a text message that read from 'Alex' (notice the unisex name to attract male and females to call!) saying...

 

"Hi I need to speak with you urgently, call me on..." and then a MBNA number.

 

I saw straight through this immediatley so decided to have some fun with it (witheld my number of course!) I called up pretending to be a jealous boyfriend who was going to come down there and kick 'Alex' arse for texting my girlfriend. Another was I just acted really dum and kept on asking when Alex was in :D

 

Immature I know but the gits deserved it :o

[Unholy Alliance]

Id be inclined to file a complaint with the police under the 1997 Protection from harassment Act. You may initially get a brush off, but follow it up via yr MP, and sit back and wait. In my own particular circumstances my complaints are being investigated by an area Commander, and the interviewing Inspector is sending a report to the CPS.....give these banks what they deserve. Feel free to pm me if you want more detail on the process.

[iwannabedebtfree]

Have to admit i suffered with MBNA, once i had to sell items on ebay to make the monthly payment, and then they asked if i could pay more!! have to admit that i did hit back and decided to only deal with them in writing. I currently have an agreement to pay, which they try to cancel every year after 11 months claiming that the arrangement has expired!

 

When i am forced to call they do ask to update my income / expenditure to see if i can pay more, however, they relent when i advise that i have to speak to my debt adviser / solicitor first! finally, i would advise that dealing with their customer service assistants, you can have fun with! i was told this week i had arrears, when asked when from as i had an agreement to pay, i was told i was charged interest in july, then told i was a day late in june, i then asked the person which month she was in, at which point she told me it was on the July statement and relating to July but advised the arrears were in June, she was asked if she could tell me how i came into arrears when i had an agreement to pay in June and i stuck to it, she couldnt and so hung up. I have just checked my credit file, so a letter to MBNA telling them to remove the arrears off £11.37 will soon ensue!

[kellyplanet]

I was in all sorts of trouble with MBNA and have a very large outstanding Credit Card debt with them. They are the sneakiest bunch of snakes you could ever come across. For example.

 

They kept on trying to call me, unfortantley my phone message when Im busy goes to a message along the lines of "Hi your through to (my company name) sorry I cant take your call" The idiot calling then thought he was being a genius by finding my website. When he did get hold of me he said "Hello Mr Mustard, ive managed to find your website and see you have a nice number of (my stock) on there, so I can see your not short of a few quid. Now pay us our money!"

 

What Inspector Closeau failed to understand is that I dont own ANY of my stock, I act as an agent for customers. It was the equivilent of him looking in an estate agents window at the houses for sale and deducing that the owner of the agent must have £millions as he owns the houses for sale. What a complete pratt!

 

Another one was a text message that read from 'Alex' (notice the unisex name to attract male and females to call!) saying...

 

"Hi I need to speak with you urgently, call me on..." and then a MBNA number.

 

I saw straight through this immediatley so decided to have some fun with it (witheld my number of course!) I called up pretending to be a jealous boyfriend who was going to come down there and kick 'Alex' arse for texting my girlfriend. Another was I just acted really dum and kept on asking when Alex was in :D

 

Immature I know but the gits deserved it :o

 

Glad you had fun with it!!! They kept on texting me and I honestly thought the texts were from a psychotic ex. They stated that and I quote

We can't go on like this. Please call me

 

I wrote a letter of complaint but if only I knew then what I know now!!!!

[HDS]

MBNA are the lowest form of life on the planet.

 

Not to mention the arrogant and aggressive. I have just finally won a battle with them which has lasted years.

 

Going back three or four years ago I was made redundant, I had a fairly large credit card bill at the time and as I had always made payments regularly I had good credit rating.

 

Fortunately I had payment protection on the card, which I then claimed and which was approved by the insurance company for payment.

 

Plain sailing then you would think eh?

 

Nothing could be further from the truth. I started getting aggressive and threatening phone calls from MBNA telling me that I hadn't made any payments. I informed them that the payment protection should be being paid to them. I then phoned the insurance company to find out what was happening.

 

They said they were waiting for some pieces of key information from MBNA, which they had requested. MBNA had not responded. I phoned MBNA and basically to pull their fingers out and get the information to the insurance company.

 

Did they? No.

 

Did they carry on harrassing me? Yes they did - especially one very nasty woman credit controller, who was aggressive, rude and obnoxious. How sweet it was that the b**ch had to phone me back and admit she'd been wrong.

 

Did this result in MBNA getting their act together? No. It all went very quiet, during which time, I assumed that the payments were going through as MBNA hadn't phoned me.

 

Next thing I hear in the beginning of 2004 was that a Debt Recovery Agency (I will refer to as DRA for speed) now owned the debt. They phoned me and said could l start making payments to them? I said immediately that I would be happy to do that once I had been assured that MBNA had collected the money that had been waiting for them for ages. They said they'd get back to me - they never did.

 

This procedure I went through a further two times with the Debt people saying they'd get back to me. They never did.

 

I wrote to them in April of 2006, demanding to know what was going on. THey didn't reply. I wrote again in May. No replay until July, where they wrote to me and told me they would get back to me. They didn't.

 

Eventually I lost my temper and phoned the DRA and spoke to a woman (bless her, she did do what she said she would) who was shocked that her company had had the debt for nearly three years and done nothing. (BTW the interest on the account had gone from £12,000 to £17,500) I told them that I would pay not one penny more interest than I had too due to MBNA's cock up in the beginning.

 

She chased MBNA, MBNA got their money from the insurance, and I am paying off £8K as opposed to the 17,500 which they would have wanted.

 

All of this was MBNA's fault. Their internal communications are terrible, their attitude to their customers is disgusting and they demonstrate corporate arrogance rare even in the world of banking.

 

I want people to know what this bunch of idiots are like. It starts with this post on this forum. I hope other people read this and think twice about dealing with this filthy company. I also want compensation for a damaged credit record thanks to their incompetance. I would like some acknowlegement from these vile creatures that they were wrong.

[Harlow_WRU]

I totally agree with your comments regarding MBNA, who in my opinion are also nothing more than a bunch of clowns. Securing company employment for graduates is hard enough without having people like them constantly contacting you to ask where their money is......to be honest I think all they're trying to do is push you down a blind alley simply to suit themselves! There's nothing that I'd like to do more than give them a kick and ensure their non-existence. They issue of phone harrassment has been controlled though.....go to Moneysavingexpert.com, download the letter regarding this isssue and see how they react!

[peter2b]

I've just had a fun time with mbna, 3 months ago i had a stroke and spent 2 months in hospital, on leaving hospital and getting home i found a letter from mbna saying my card was on hold as i had missed a payment , I phoned them straight away to explain why i had missed the payment and was now claiming disablement payments , the person i was talking to noted all this down then demanded full repaymet of the outstanding ammount £3496.00, on telling her i was self employed and on diablement entitlement of £61.00 per week she said OK I will just take £60.00 of that to clear the arrears then £21.00 per week from then on. I have managed to get that down to £15 per week,

On another mbna card with a ballance of £614.00 I have a payment protection insurance, I contacted the policy office, suplied the correct paper work, they told my the repayments would be 5% of the outstanding ballance which should have been enough to cover the repayments, wrong , mbna increased the interest to 34.9%, only found this out when after checking my statement 2 months later the debt had gone up to £650.95, on asking them why they had increased the interest % they told me it was because i had missed some payments (when i was in hospital) after spending 3 houres today on the phone the have agreed to lower this to 27% so that the insurance will just cover the repayments, don't you just love the way mbna do business. :sad:

[steven4064]

I have called MBNA from friends phones, from other peoples homes and from work. BIG MISTAKE

Just a small tip that not everyone knows - if you dial '141' before a number then the number you call from does not get passed to the person called. This works from any phone, including mobiles. Of course, standard advice is not to talk to these 'people' on the phone at all.

[balloon1435]

Hi all,

 

Every comment that has been made about the incredibly poor customer services at MBNA are echoed by me. I have been struggling to clear a credit card debt with them for nearly 8 years, I still get phone calls and texts despite asking them to stop. With the text messages I save them and log them as a record of harrasmen, I log the calls aswell but I have a little more fun.

When they call it is apperent it is them within a couple of seconds, as soon as they say they are calling from MBNA and wish to discuss your account, reply with this:

 

"Yes no problem but could you hold the line for a while as I am just in the middle of something.........."

 

At this point I find it highly ammusing to leave the phone of the hook and just carry on what I was doing before, housework, cooking, watching TV ETC. Or put them on loud speaker and see what happens..... I never actually get back to them in time as they tend to hang up after a short period of time bizarrely. This also works with Double glazing salesmen and the like.

 

I hope I have not offended any salemen and the like !!!

 

Balloon

[kellyplanet]

They seem to be one of the worst companies for harrassing people in all manner of strange ways!!!!!! As I said I had some wonderful texts from them. My partner went mad as she actually thought I was cheating on her becasue some of the texts seemed so personal!

 

Things like 'We can't go on like this' & 'The last time we spoke you said somethings I didn't like can we talk about them!'

 

The strange thing was I was alway polite on the phone to them but refused to pay 'their' payment plan. I am a student who gets £550 pounds per month and they wanted £120 per month from me!

[steven4064]

If you are being harrassed by phone (or text) you don't have to put up with it. Send them this letter

[fridayaft07]

Hi there,

 

I have only just found this site, and I am currently going through a DMP with Payplan, which is a huge weight off my mind. In the meantime however I have MBNA calling me at every hour of the day pretty much, calling my mum (who I used to live with a year ago), calling my work etc, and this is after they have been contacted ny the DMP and after they have accepted my initial payment.

I do not want my famiily to be aware of the fact that I am going through a DMP, however my mother has been getting so may calls that she is getting worried about my financial situation.

I am getting to the point whereby I do not answer my phone at work, as I get about 4-5 calls a day from MBNA saying that I need to call them urgently.

1.) I don't want to have this type of conversation at work and

2.) The reason I have gone through the DMP is because I can't handle having these phone calls anymore.

 

I don't know what to do though about this ongoing harrassment.

 

Anyone else suffering in the same way?

[steven4064]

I don't know what to do though about this ongoing harrassment.

Hi friday and welcome to CAG. You will find lots of help here.

 

In the first instance you should send the letter linked in my previous post. You shoud also keep a record of all phone calls you receive, if you are not already - dates, times, where they called you. See what that does, althoug MBNA are a pretty nasty lot by all accounts. However, even they cannot flout the laws on harrassment with impunity.

[noomill060]

You know what would be a really useful addition to the CAG template library?

 

 

Particulars of Claim for a claim for damages under Protection from Harrasment Act 1997.

[noomill060]

You only have to prove two separate occasions of harassment.

 

A call log obtained by means of a SAR would evidence dozens of harassment contacts.

[noomill060]

An avalanche of claims against DCAs could persuade them to change their ways, and the damages awarded used to repay any lawfully owed debt.

 

Just a thought.

[steven4064]

You know what would be a really useful addition to the CAG template library?

 

 

Particulars of Claim for a claim for damages under Protection from Harrasment Act 1997.

I've passed on your suggestion nm- thanks.

[noomill060]

"However, even they cannot flout the laws on harrassment with impunity."

 

Yes they can, but only if we let them.

 

As with many unlawful acts comitted by the credit industry, they do anything they think they can get away with.

[noomill060]

Good stuff Steven! This would another powerful weapon in the arsenal, probably quite devasting against DCAs, as P from H also carries a criminal sanction.

[Harlow_WRU]

I agree, as do quite a few others given what I've found out during the past few months, that MBNA are a complete waste of space and seem to enjoy the issue of phone harassment.

 

A few words of advice to help you here....look at MoneySavingExpert.com and read Martin Lewis's notes on this issue. When they call, make them aware of the fact that you understand the laws regarding company phone harassment and, if you're with BT, arrange a system of call barring to prevent MBNA achieving their intended goals.

 

It does work!!

 

------------

Hi there,

 

I have only just found this site, and I am currently going through a DMP with Payplan, which is a huge weight off my mind. In the meantime however I have MBNA calling me at every hour of the day pretty much, calling my mum (who I used to live with a year ago), calling my work etc, and this is after they have been contacted ny the DMP and after they have accepted my initial payment.

I do not want my famiily to be aware of the fact that I am going through a DMP, however my mother has been getting so may calls that she is getting worried about my financial situation.

I am getting to the point whereby I do not answer my phone at work, as I get about 4-5 calls a day from MBNA saying that I need to call them urgently.

1.) I don't want to have this type of conversation at work and

2.) The reason I have gone through the DMP is because I can't handle having these phone calls anymore.

 

I don't know what to do though about this ongoing harrassment.

 

Anyone else suffering in the same way?

[noomill060]

harlow- Its a nightmare, isnt it?

 

There are ways to handle these people, believe me, but you will need to start a thread of your own for advice which is specific to your own situation.

 

First thing to do is start harlow v MBNA- just go to the MBNA main section and clicky "new thread" then away you go!

 

Second is read as mant threads as you can, you'll get a feeling as to how this works. Its suprising how quickly you can pick up things up.

 

No doubt youve had penalty charges. You need to put the entire amount claimed legally into dispute. (do this by claiming back your penalty charges- (follow CAG guidelines to do this AFTER youve twigged the logic behine this) and force them to prove you actually owe them anything.

 

(You do this by forcing them to provide a copy of your original agreement, if they dont, they cant hassle you.) look for a thread about Consumer Credit Agreements and use the template letter. Costs a £1. Money well spent for the silence it generates, as they will take ages to comply.

 

You can then get you head back together and reclaim all charges and interest on those charges.

[Topaz2]

MBNA in my opinion are the greediest low life on the planet I just posted on here but I think it went to the wrong thread...albeit MBNA rip off issue...please read...as if you didn't know about them already. However if anyone like me has received a back dated letter from them .... can only think it a purposeful delay to accrue interest on interest!!! It would appear the Ombudsmen are not so impartial as they advertise...I even formed the theory they may be on the MBNA payroll!....mad rantings ...still seething at their legal rip off...But the question is: What can people do to strike back? their arrogance and failure to respond to letters ...their lies when they promise to call you back...The Inland Revenue and Tax Bailifs have better ethics and codes of practise.... than pond life MBNA...yet we are supposed to be customers! They use a hard sell to sign you up...but the niceties soon drop when they employ the above **** tactics to legally extort your cash into their account.. greed greed and more greed...They even have the audacity to form a department called 'customer satisfaction' dept

I will write again to JOANNE JOHNSON the CUSTOMER ADVOCATE OFFICE MANAGER I urge everyone else to find time to do so... just tell them what you think of them...and tell them to have a look at this site. Perhaps some their employees will read this site get a better insight to what kind of company MBNA really is....