Llyods TSB Createcard

I applied for the Createcard, MasterCard, from Lloyds TSB back in August 2003. I initially applied because it had 0% for the first 6 months and I had a very expensive Halifax card that needed paying off. I chose the Createcard because of its flexibility and because it is a MasterCard so it works in much the same way in terms of purchasing as other MasterCards.

With the Createcard you have the choice (to a degree) over your annual fee, ...
...other, namely interest. At first I opted for a £10 annual fee with no cash back bonus and a very competitive 11.4% typical rate. This suited me fine as I was trying to pay a card off. If I had wanted to have an even lower APR of 9.8% this would have cost me a £30 annual fee- but if you have a large balance that you are paying off a bit at a time this would have been a very competitive rate.

These competitive rates are conditional ... more

I applied for the Createcard, MasterCard, from Lloyds TSB back in August 2003. I initially applied because it had 0% for the first 6 months and I had a very expensive Halifax card that needed paying off. I chose the Createcard because of its flexibility and because it is a MasterCard so it works in much the same way in terms of purchasing as other MasterCards.

With the Createcard you have the choice (to a degree) over your annual fee, cashback bonus and interest rates, with changing one affecting the other, namely interest. At first I opted for a £10 annual fee with no cash back bonus and a very competitive 11.4% typical rate. This suited me fine as I was trying to pay a card off. If I had wanted to have an even lower APR of 9.8% this would have cost me a £30 annual fee- but if you have a large balance that you are paying off a bit at a time this would have been a very competitive rate.

These competitive rates are conditional though. I had selected to not receive paper statements; only Internet ones and I had also opted to pay by direct debit. This suited me as I use the Internet all the time and just throw statements out (after shredding of course). If I had not chosen to do this, the interest I would have to pay was affected. The lowest available then would be 11.1% percent, with a £30 annual fee and no cashback. If I didn’t want to pay an annual fee this goes up to 13.8% and if I also wanted to add cashback to this it would go up to 15.3% (maximum cashback allowed is 0.5%). These are still, compared to others available, fairly competitive.

Anyway, back to applying, this was very straightforward online application that took about 7 minutes to complete. I didn’t get an instant decision; instead about 2 weeks later an agreement form arrived for me to sign. I got a £500 credit limit (which is good because I am a student and was only earning about £4500 per annum). I signed the credit agreement form- that I probably should have read fully but all that small print is sooo boring!! Anyway 2 weeks later my card arrived and my balance was transferred.

I had a choice of cards, one with a horse and green background or one with a horse with blue background. For no particular reason I chose green and it isn’t especially nice- but since I had no plans to use it for purchases I didn’t really care.

Anyway a few months passed and things were fine, I paid slightly more than the minimum payment but I didn’t clear it by the time the interest free ran out so interest kicked in, and they also increased by credit limit to £800 (since I am a loyal customer apparently), which I promptly spent!! (Actually it came at a good time as I had a big purchase to make!!)

Some more time passed and I applied for another 0% card (review will follow later no doubt) and transferred the £750 balance. I then changed the settings, which you can do free of charge 3 times in a year. I now have 0.5% cashback, no annual fee and 14.9% APR. This process is very easy to do and takes affect when your next statement is issued.

I barely use this card for various reasons. The first is low cashback (I earn more on my other card). The second is that their customer services aren’t especially helpful. As it is mainly an online account the first port of call is email. Nightmare- I asked them to have a reminder of my PIN that took them 4 emails and 7 weeks to get to me. When I had a query next time I phoned their customer services who were unhelpful, impolite and not on a particularly cheap number, and I waited for 20 minutes before my call was answered. Now I work in a call centre so I know that it is not the best job in the world, but if someone in my work had treated someone like that then they would have probably been disciplined.

My query involved them taking a payment (they refused even though it was their error as they had never set the direct debit up) so I had to do this through my own bank. They said they would set the direct debit up then, which is still not in place 3 months on.

The actual online service itself isn’t that fabulous. It is easy to navigate, when the site is working- which it often isn’t. Information going onto statements takes a long time too; I have seen it take nearly 3 weeks for a payment to show.

There are definite benefits to the card- it is very competitively priced and I like the idea of the Internet access reducing the costs, but that shouldn’t be at the cost of reducing ease of use or customer services. The site could be improved, if online debit card payments could be made this would reduce the hassle of the card.

Overall I wouldn’t recommend the card as there are far superior cards and services out there, but I like the idea of the flexibility of the card.

Thanks for reading, I’m sure there will be things I might need to add so if you feel there is anything you’d like me to add let me know and I’ll edit.

Have a good day, Lesley x
 

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