Lloyds TSB Airmiles Duo Credit Card

I have banked with Lloyds TSB for over 20 years as my current account provider. As well as various savings accounts I have always had a credit card with them. In recent years I’ve had the Airmiles Duo credit card. This is rather a long review but I have detailed two particular issues I’ve had which are clearly marked with sub-headings if you wish to skip these to the end of the review.


'''WHAT IS AIRMILES DUO?'''

...you have online banking with Lloyds TSB it is very easy to see your transactions listed.

As with other credit cards, you need to make a minimum payment each month - with Airmiles Duo this is £5 each month or 2% of your outstanding balance, whichever is greater. Payment date is usually 25 days after the statement date. You will get charged £12 for late payments or if the minimum payment is not received. There is a 24.9% interest charge ... more

I have banked with Lloyds TSB for over 20 years as my current account provider. As well as various savings accounts I have always had a credit card with them. In recent years I’ve had the Airmiles Duo credit card. This is rather a long review but I have detailed two particular issues I’ve had which are clearly marked with sub-headings if you wish to skip these to the end of the review.

WHAT IS AIRMILES DUO?

With Lloyds TSB’s Airmiles Duo you receive 2 credit cards – a Mastercard and an American Express card. Although the cards have different numbers on them (i.e. your actual credit card number – 16 digits for Mastercard and 15 digits for American Express) they are basically the same account. If you have online banking with Lloyds TSB it is very easy to see your transactions listed.

As with other credit cards, you need to make a minimum payment each month - with Airmiles Duo this is £5 each month or 2% of your outstanding balance, whichever is greater. Payment date is usually 25 days after the statement date. You will get charged £12 for late payments or if the minimum payment is not received. There is a 24.9% interest charge for cash withdrawals (correct at July 2009). There is also a charge of 3% charge for cash withdrawals made on these cards with a minimum charge of £2.50 and a 3% or minimum £3 charge for any credit card cheques you use.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

I really can’t say if the interest rates are competitive compared to other financial institutions as I tend to clear my full balance on my cards every month so as to avoid getting into debt and also to avoid paying interest charges. At the time of writing (August 2009) the advertised APR was 15.9% with 0% interest on balance transfers for the first 6 months (but with a 3% fee and a minimum of £100 spend in the first 3 month for this to be effective).

If you use your Mastercard you can get 1 mile for every £50 you spend and if you use the American Express card you will receive 1 mile for every £10 you spend. I understand this is far better than NatWest who give you 1 mile per £20 spent BUT as American Express is not accepted everywhere you’re more likely to only build up miles by spending at least £50 a time on your Mastercard which personally I feel is not very much in the way of a reward system when using your card offline.

One might ask why would one need a reward system for using a credit card when one really needs the “credit” aspect of using a credit card? Well personally speaking, I want to be rewarded for being a loyal customer and using one credit card instead of another. I have 5 or 6 credit cards including American Express Blue which gives me cash back for using it. I don’t use it so much really as it’s just easier to use the cards supplied by my own bank as I can check all my balances and transactions online on one site when I log into internet banking; which is why my Airmiles Duo cards are my credit cards of choice.

The air miles accumulated are a good bonus and you can exchange these for air miles (one would assume that was fairly obvious) but also for other things as well such as days out, cases of wine, etc. I don’t want to discuss this aspect too much as airmiles.co.uk is a separate entity and there are reviews online for the site which you can refer to if you wish to.

If you use the airmiles.co.uk website to click through to shopping sites you can often earn more air miles this way, such as 1 mile for every £5 spent at Play.com, 1 mile for every £10 spent at ebay, 1 mile for each £5 at Currys, etc. Note that this is on top of the air miles you accumulate by paying for your purchases with your Airmiles Duo card(s).

You can accumulate double the normal miles when you use your card abroad but obviously you incur charges for using them outside of the UK so for me, it’s not worth using them abroad just for the extra miles.

Credit cards cheques are issued from time to time but I've never used these as I don't need them nor do I wish to pay the interest charge for using them.

You get one PIN number to use for both cards which can be changed at any Lloyds TSB cash point machine to a PIN number of your own choice – but each card needs to be changed – changing the PIN for one card will not automatically change it for the other.

Some of the rewards you could get include:

• 750 airmiles for a return flight (including taxes) to Zone 1 including Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels
• 300 airmiles for a photo makeover
• 600 airmiles to go scuba diving

You can also have an additional card holder on your account such as your spouse or one of your children (must be over 18).

There is currently no annual fee for having the Airmiles Duo cards and you’re automatically covered against fraud loss including internet fraud loss prevention.

You can read more about the benefits here http://www.lloydstsb.com/credit_cards/airmiles_duo.asp

PROBLEMS EXPERIENCED

*Problem Number 1*

I tend to use my Airmiles Duo American Express card for business spend which can be anything from £200-£1500 a month. In 2008 I used this card to purchase an annual membership for our business which was approximately £1,200. To my embarrassment, Lloyds TSB Card Services declined this transaction without contacting me and several days later my director advised me that the annual membership for this particular company had expired because of this. I had to then get onto Lloyds TSB Card Services to demand an explanation and to my dismay they said they assumed it was a fraudulent transaction. Would you be surprised to hear that the company they assumed was taking my funds fraudulently was Microsoft? I certainly was. I blasted off complaint letters and said I was not happy that transactions could be declined in this manner without checking with me first. After about 6 weeks I received a letter of apology and a credit of £20 to my account which was not in the least pacifying to me but I took no further action. Lo and behold 12 months later, they did exactly the same thing, but luckily this year I put my card details through several weeks before the annual membership was due to expire, even though I really did not think they would do the same thing twice. What happens? Again they decline the transaction without getting in contact with me. This was 7 weeks ago, at the time I was furious and demanded that they resolve this embarrassing situation yet again which took them about a week. In that same week I had placed an order with Sainsbury’s online for over £100 – again this was for the office. Sainsbury’s had the good sense to call me as they received notification only 1 hour before they were due to deliver that the credit card payment had been declined. I explained what had happened and they put the transaction through again (the block Lloyds TSB had put on my card having been removed by this time) and it went through. 7 weeks later I still haven’t received a response from my complaint bar a letter 6 weeks ago saying they were investigating my complaint.

*Problem Number 2*

Hands up if you’ve been the victim of credit card fraud?

It’s more common than one would imagine. A couple of months ago I received a call from Lloyds TSB Fraud Services to ask me if certain cash withdrawals made on my Airmiles Duo card were my transactions. I have never withdrawn cash from these cards, having learnt in my late teens that this is a sure-fire way to pay out lots of extra charges to the credit card companies. I only ever withdraw cash with my debit card, so imagine my shock to have a list of 10 or so transactions read out to me over the phone on a Sunday morning totaling about £2,000! All withdrawn from places I’ve never even been to and at times such as 7am (when I’m always still asleep to be honest).

The fraud team agent I spoke with like sounded like she was 12 years old, very pleasant and very apologetic (obviously they knew it was a cloning incident before they even contacted me). The card had never left my possession and she was very sympathetic and said it was quite a common thing these days, bla bla bla. Oh really, I felt like saying, if it’s so common, why haven’t you figured out a way to stop it happening yet? (Yes, I know there will always be low-life individuals out there devising new ways to scam banks out of their money, but I’m the mug, in this case, who has all the hassle of being on the receiving end of this particular scam). Anyway the upshot of the phone call was that they were going to send me a declaration form to sign to confirm I had not made those transactions and send me new cards within ONE week or so. I gave the agent my work address and stressed that I wanted the cards delivered to the office as I am not at home during the day to receive cards and know from past experience that the delivery company Lloyds TSB uses (Secure Mail Services) are notoriously bad at delivering.

Two weeks went by and no cards received, in that time I also found that I was unable to see my credit card details online anymore so couldn’t even organise to make payment for the transactions that were actually really mine. I made a payment of something I assumed was the amount that was outstanding (and luckily it was just slightly over what I owed) and called Card Services to find out where my cards were. They said this time that it could take up to THREE weeks for cards to arrive. I said I had been previously advised ONE week and was now told this was incorrect. I again gave my work address and stressed that the cards MUST be delivered there.

A week later my husband called me at work and said there was a yellow card on the doormat as he was leaving for work from Secure Mail Services saying that they had tried to deliver my cards. What was interesting here was that the card was just dropped through the letterbox when my husband was at home and could have opened the door to them (never mind signing for them, he could have shown my passport or something as ID). I grimaced when I heard this and did nothing. A few days later, yet another card was popped through the letterbox from Secure Mail Services and this time it was even more galling as I was at home myself at the time and no one had even rung the doorbell or knocked on the door. Still I did not bother calling the bank; I was way too annoyed by now so I continued using my alternate credit cards where needed.

I got a call from Card Services Fraud Department (sounds posh doesn’t it? Well it’s not)! They asked me if I’d received my new cards yet, I told them I hadn’t and that they had attempted to deliver the cards to my home address when I had specifically asked them twice to deliver to my office. They were again very apologetic (they seem to be good at apologising) and said they’d call me back shortly to rearrange delivery. I was called back later that day to say my cards would be delivered to my office the following day before 5pm. My cards were delivered to my office the following day before I even got to the office; luckily someone was there to take delivery. The envelopes clearly state “I.D. REQUIRED” – curious then that they were both left with my colleague with no ID requested.

As of now I have received the PIN numbers for my new cards, and imagine my surprise to have received the same PIN number for my Airmiles Duo Mastercard as I had before but a completely different one for the American Express Card. This makes NO sense to me as the previous cards had the same PIN number - the new cards have completely different card numbers so why not just issue the same NEW PIN number for them? I'm somewhat confused about the rationale behind the 2 different numbers (and the fact that one PIN number is the same as the previous number). I received a letter from my car insurance to say that payment had been declined on my card and I was furious to say the least. I rang up Lloyds TSB yet again and was told that my card hadn't been activated. I told them in no uncertain terms that I thought they were having one big joke with me, the very same day I received the new cards at my office, I called the number on the sticker on the front of my American Express card and gave the card number on the front of THAT card (there was no sticker on the front of the new Mastercard) yet they told me that only the Mastercard had been activated from that phone call. Yet more hassle for me and more time wasted and I'm now hoping that nothing else can go wrong!

I have now also received a copy of the letter responding to my complaint in which I felt the whole tone of the letter was extremely condescending. There was lots of "I understand you are not happy with..." and "I understand you did not...." but no real resolution to my complaint. Basically they've said that it is standard procedure to decline transactions without contacting the customer and I can only assume that it will happen again next year.

TO CLOSE

It’s all been rather a shambles and it was extremely annoying that I had to chase a response to my complaint quite a few times. I never received any declaration form to sign to say the fraudulent transactions weren’t mine, just advised to cut up the American Express card, but on later conversations with the Fraud Team I was advised to not use the Mastercard either under any circumstances – so it’s lucky that I didn’t try to use it or it might have been quite embarrassing if the police had been called! I was advised over the phone that I had already been credited with 150 extra air miles in response to my complaint but the complaint didn’t explain how a valid transaction was declined 2 years in a row yet it’s so easy to clone my card and withdraw up to £2,000 in cash from my card account, transactions which I got charged for cash withdrawals and the interest on those (which have all been put back into my account now).

I find myself not wanting to recommend Lloyds TSB for the customer service aspect of it when things go wrong, although I would admit unreservedly that the staff I have spoken with have always come across as polite and friendly (aside from being somewhat ineffective) but for the rewards side including the fact that you can get air miles on so many different online shopping sites I would recommend the Airmile Duo cards.

Overall 2 out of 5 stars but with a mention that it’s quite possible that you're quite likely to receive similar customer service levels from other credit card companies.  

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