Yes and fair play to you for paying your bills, however some people recently as you can imagine have found themselves in unfortunate circumstances where they have lost jobs, taken pay cuts, become ill and unable to work and thats how they havent been able to pay their debts, the problem with MBNA is where most other instititions work with their debtors within reason MBNA do not and have vicious debt collecting tactics.
Isn't that what Payment Protection Cover is for?
And again, what happend to personal responsibilty? Nobody forced anybody to charge that holiday or that hand bag to ones credit card.
If one uses the credit card to charge food because it's the means of last resort fine, but a credit card is a short term instrument (even if MBNA only asks to have 1% of the card balance to be paid monthly). It's not a long term loan facility to rack up charges that one does not need.
When I first came to this country my bank only gave me 100 £ credit card limit despite me having way more on my current account every day. They argued that I needed to proof that I'm able to pay back what I charge and as responsible lender they need to see how I do. Sure over the years I now have 350 times that amount because the bank knows my spending pattern and knows what I can pay back.
MBNA was able to transfer my US account with it's history over and gave me a credit limit that they feelt i could manage and that's that.
And if I carry a balance and get unemployed I have a payment protection, yes it costs but it's the responsibe thing to have if you carry a balance and if I get sick I have a policy for that too because I rather pay insurance premium now than being in the position to have to fight a bank when I'm down. If you can affort to charge that unneeded hand bag, you for sure can affort a small premium.
As a person borrowing money I have the responsiblity to ensure I can pay back what I take out, be it either with insurance or savings. This principle of lending to facilitate a life style that is in excess of what one can affort is really not the right way.
Now is MBNA very agressive in getting money back, sure. Are they sometimes overstepping, maybe but MBNA did not force anybody to use the card in a shop to buy that one item they did knowing they could not really affort.
And if MBNA has broken laws during the collection I'm sure our fine regulator will step in as they have with the overcharging recently.
But I think MBNA or bank slapping is very common these days and personal responsiblity has gone out of the window. No I'm not only blaming people, banks were enganged in reckless lending too but at the end nobody held a gun to ones head to make that charge.
And who says that if MBNA for example sells the portfolio to some other company that collection efforts are not going to be increased? Just because MBNA is going away the phone calls might not stop, in effect they might actualy increase. I know some collection businesses that are way more effective than MBNA and if those buy the portfolio it's going to be even harder. Do you really think that the debt is not longe pursued just because they are closing shop? Unlikley.
But by the looks of it, they will continue business for a while longer in Ireland and try to find someone that takes it off their hands. Hopefully they find a business that continues the accounts and does not stop like Halifax.