I have been a MBNA customer for about 5 years and have seen a change in the way they do business.
In the early days MBNA, flooded my doorstep with mail outs. Cheques to use to open an account, offers of credit cards. until one day i gave in and sent off for a card.
To be fair to them the service was good, the card arrived quickly with a few credit cheques and all was well. But still the circulars kept coming and coming, it got to the stage that i was getting four or five a week offering me the same deal as i had. anyway for the first few months this was not a problem, but i got fed up with it after a while so started to phone them. All they could say was "its our marketing, we can't stop them sorry".
So whats happened since i took out the card, the service has been good and i have enjoyed several credit limit rises (not all of them wanted). But now five years on i'm a platinum card holder (no different than normal), with no more circulars, i think the cost of the circulars to exsisting customers must have been huge, as my friends who also took out
So would i recommend them, probably not as the credit card market is so competitive now, i still have mine but use others which give cash back. I do wonder how much longer MBNA will be around, i feel it will have to change its policy, maybe reward users with cash back or something similar.
To answer a few comments posted, I'm not sure of the criteria required for the Platinum card. But i have had an MBNA Silver,Gold or Platinum card for about 5 years.In those years, i have seen my limit rise from about £1000 upto £5400. I am not a high salary earner, but have always had a small balance running until recently. The interest rate i pay is 1.4566% for retail and cash withdrawls per month. With regards to statement frequency, these come once a month.
As i said above i feel now with the competition in the credit card market place, Is so competitive that MBNA in my opinion are going to or are losing alot of business. I hope that they can restructure to offer something to keep customers like myself, because if not i'm sure another company would be more than happy to take my business.
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You may be interested to know that in October 2000, MBNA Bank spent more money on direct
marketing than any other Company. October expenditure alone was £4.06 million. Kind of backs up
your comments.
apai 29.01.2001 09:59
Yes, me too! I agree with the comment made before. More details would really be helpful, especially interest rates comparison. ciao!
tommartin 29.01.2001 09:56
I would have liked more info about the product, what rate of interest do you pay? What is the minimum income you need to get a platinum card? How often do you get statements? How long before you start paying the interest? I don't have a MBNA card but regularly recieve the info pack from them, yes they keep telling me that it is marketing too.
Advantages: MBNA are one of the most accessible banks around, and seem to want to please their customers Disadvantages: Balance Transfer Fee, poor points scheme
debcrane 04.05.2002 (08.01.2006)
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Review of MBNA Platinum Card
Jan 29th, 2001
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