Barclaycard Penalises Small Spenders

NO matter what fines they have to pay, no matter how much justice we think we are getting, the big banks will always find a way of getting their own backs.

Barclaycard are the latest company to formulate a new get-even-richer-even-quicker-scheme which could involve charging customers £20 if they don’t use their cards enough.

The credit card giant are currently pondering the idea which would affect around one million customers. With Lloyds TSB already penalising its credit card-shy customers with a charge of £35, the likelihood is that this kind of carry on will become standard practice.

A spokesdrone, I mean spokesperson, for Barclaycard says: “We think this is a fair approach and gives customers a choice. We will do everything we can to improve the deal we give people, encourage them to use our card, not someone else’s and avoid fees. As a last resort, we are considering a fee for a minority of customers that simply do not use their card.”

How’s that for service?

Uswitch’s Nick White is less positive. Says he: “Implementing a fee for inactive credit card customer is not the key issue here, the problem is the level of transparency displayed around the criteria used to select the customer charged. Without this, customers do not know how to manage their credit card account to ensure they do not fall into this category in the future.”

Surely its time to bring back the bartering system - one pig for a garden makeover or a box of carrots for high-speed broadband installation etc.

While multi-millionaires such as Jamie Oliver, who himself is looking a bit tubby these days, continue to lecture the poor about their diets, the price of some vegetables have risen by more than a third, with last summer’s heat wave the culprit.

Anorak

Posted: 23rd, May 2007 | In: Money Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink