MBNA gambling charge

Shadowdude said:
What gives MBNA the right to decide what is a 'cash transaction' and what is not?! .
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Possibly the fact that there is not physical "item" involved here and to be honest i'm surprised that they have only started charging this as a cash transaction now. If you don't like the charges you should just stop using your card. They sent you a hard copy of the Terms and Conditions and now you're giving out because you didn't read them and didn't know about them. I doubt you'll get much sympathy from them.
 
For anyone with a problem with this charge, the gambling sites will gladly take your money from a laser card.

There is always a choice.
 
MBNA also recently cancelled their free purchase protection insurance. This covered anything bought with the CC against accidental breakage or theft
 

I hold my hand up that I didnt read the terms and conditions and I have never given out about not knowing about them. Yes they did send them to me and yes I should have read them.
There is no "physical item" with loads of other transactions too and there is no charge.
 
bullworth said:
So they have no justification for charging a cash advance fee because its not a cash advance.
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Did you ever try to walk into a Bookie Shop and place a bet, using anything other then cash!

Funds can be lodged to a betting account and withdrawn by other means, i.e converted into cash.

Both Mastercard and Visa describe such transactions as quassi cash transactions and treat them as such.

A similiar situation arises with prefunding of stockbroker accounts, using credit cards.



MBNA is not the cardholder, but is the Card Issuer - big difference.

These transactions represent a high level of risk for an issuer, and should be priced accordingly.

I have




bullworth said:
The cardholder is prefunding the account with credit, not physical cash.
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Physcial cash has nothing to do with it.

If I make an electronic payment from my bank account to yours, I bet you would consider that just as nicely as physcial cash.

bullworth said:
The gambling company does not get cash any faster than any retailer. The gambling company is doing the customer a favor by not making him wait for the money to clear.
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If I withdraw money from an ATM, the acquiring bank will not receive the funds any faster either.
 
Blackberry said:
Did you ever try to walk into a Bookie Shop and place a bet, using anything other then cash!
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Nope. I'm not much of a gambler.



The cash received from a betting company is taken from the betting companys' cash. The bank does'nt part with any of its own cash any more quickly than it does when giving cash to Arnotts for a suite of furniture. They should be honest and admit they' re charging extra because they can get away with it.


Blackberry said:
MBNA is not the cardholder, but is the Card Issuer - big difference.
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Issuers can and do have different charging schemes for their cards.



Blackberry said:
These transactions represent a high level of risk for an issuer, and should be priced accordingly.
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Why ? Every customer has a risk of not being able to pay no matter what the transaction. A credit limit is supposed to be given to someone who has the means to pay it off.

Blackberry said:
I have
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You have what ?




Blackberry said:
Physcial cash has nothing to do with it.

If I make an electronic payment from my bank account to yours, I bet you would consider that just as nicely as physcial cash.
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Not until it clears. The gambling company doesnt receive its cash any faster than any other retailer selling a service. If Card companies are going to discriminate against the customers of gambling companies by saying they are receiving cash then the gambling companies should demand to have the cash immediately.


Blackberry said:
If I withdraw money from an ATM, the acquiring bank will not receive the funds any faster either.
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Thats just an argument to add this extra charge to every transaction so that gambling companies providing a service are not discriminated against. At the end of the day every transaction with any company amounts to cash but the Gambling company e.g Paddy Power doesnt receive cash any faster than say Arnotts does for selling a suite of furniture. If they did then I'd say you had an argument. Since they dont then in my opinion you dont have an argument. If Paddy Power decides to give cash to its customers, its own cash since it hasnt received cash from the credit card company then thats its own business.
 
If you use a credit card to gamble, then you are borrowing money to place a bet. That cannot be recommended for anyone. Surely that is the bigger issue here, not the charges the credit card companies impose
 
Blackberry said:
Funds can be lodged to a betting account and withdrawn by other means, i.e converted into cash.
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That's not strictly true (in most cases)

Most, if not all, gambling sites now will not allow you to withdraw money from your account by a different method to that which you used to depsoit the funds in the first place until you have covererd the amount of deposits first.

Eg - I lodge €100 to Paddy Power using a VISA card and have a bet which wins another €50. Paddy Power will not allow me to withdraw €150 in cash. They will only allow me to deposit €100 back to VISA and then I can withdraw the other €50 however I like.

This is to combat money laundering.

There is however an issue with Mastercard as Mastercard do not accept refunds from some sites, gambling sites being one of them.

As an aside, the Lotto website ONLY allows customers to pay via Credit Card - they don't accept laser card at all (at least they didn't back in July when I registered)

I find this incredible that the National Lottery are encouraging people to play with money they don't have!
 
Well, Tesco Credit Card have recently charged this charge on me when I transferred 50 Euro to a poker site. I rang up and asked what the story was... they assured me it was in the terms and conditions. (They also blocked my card due to this transaction which is way over the top in my opinion)

However I have read the terms and conditions from Oct 2009, and the definition of 'advance' includes cash, foreign currency or travellers cheques.. nothing about gambling sites. So I have rung them today 'coz of this thread and asked for clarification as to where the appropriate clause can be found... they should be getting back to me.


The charge also applies to the purchase of lotto tickets I think.. but if you purchase them with food for example the charge doesn't apply.

Keep in mind you can buy meals in a casino (where the charge doesn't apply)... so the credit card companies rely on the retailers identifying the gambling transactions, .. but why should gambling sites do this as it disadvantages their customers?, ... most likely it's in the Retailer terms and conditions but still a rogue site could mis-identify the transactions...


What about transfer to a site like Paypal?.. as the money can then be withdrawn, or transferred again to a gambling site... so is money transferred to Paypal considered a cash advance?

I don't see the point about the charge hitting the small gambler... this is similar to saying that the cash advance fee in general hits people more who frequently withdraw small amounts rather than a single large amount.. simple solution is to only withdraw large amounts.. (of 166.67 Euros or more, as then the 1.5% rate kicks in... the 2.50 charge is used for all amounts up to 167 Euro, as p er the OP credit card company)

Cheers
 

Because if you only bet in 10s or 20s then you get shafted with the fee.

Not everybody has > €167 a week/month to bet with!

Also if you went for a mortgage no bank is going to be impressed to see large sums of money being deposited to a gambling website. At least if it's small sums it's not too damning.
 
Mpsox said:
If you use a credit card to gamble, then you are borrowing money to place a bet. That cannot be recommended for anyone. Surely that is the bigger issue here, not the charges the credit card companies impose
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Sorry but this is not strictly true in all cases. I keep my credit card in the black and then sometimes back a horse on a Saturday. I am not borrowing to gamble. Therefore, MBNA are charging me to use my own cash. Yes, I understand they need to make money too. And they do, when I have a big purchase to make, I use the card and sometimes pay interest while I am clearing it off.

Can anyone recommend any other credit card? One that does not have this gambling charge? It seems from the other posts that the Tesco card has it too. I thought it was just MBNA.
 
callybags said:
For anyone with a problem with this charge, the gambling sites will gladly take your money from a laser card.

There is always a choice.
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no. lotto.ie only takes credit cards no visa.


Unfortunately due to restrictions placed on us by the national regulator, we can't accept debit cards on our website. We can only accept credit cards issued within the Republic of Ireland.
Sorry for the inconvenience. This is a precaution against problems such as age verification.

-Aaron
The Support Team
Thank you for playing National Lottery games.




===================================================
Contact Customer Support at support@lotto.ie or 1890 244 344
An Post National Lottery Company, Abbey St Lower, Dublin 1.
===================================================



 
Yes - minimum of 2.50 per transaction - seems though (if you win) and pay the money back on to the card from the gambling site the 2.50 is also credited back to your card.

MBNA are also charging interest per day on it until it is paid, from the time it goes on your card not just when it is overdue.

I'll not be using MBNA anymore anyway, I have long ago reached the end of my tether with them.
 


I'm with you on this. But what credit card company are you changing to? Any advice on who we should go to?
 
An update (see my post above)

So, I requested the Terms and Conditions from Tesco showing that gambling is treated as a cash advance... they swore to high heaven that they were correct (in saying that gambling was mentioned as a special case in the T&Cs),... despite the fact that I had their T&Cs in my hand and was quoting from them, and they didn't have access to their own T&Cs, which is quite incredible.

They claimed to have posted the T&Cs to me on three to four occasions, including by Registered Post,.. however I never received any of the letters, although I have received over 5 years of statements with no problems. (There was a postal strike in the UK though in late 2009, to be fair.. but I still received all statements though)

Eventually they accepted that they were wrong, that their customer sevice was wrong, that the supervisors were wrong, and that they had no right to treat gambling transactions any differently, and that the Irish T&Cs didn't mention gambling. I insisted that they write to me when they had decided how to correct this issue and the overcharging.

So nothing happened for four to six weeks, ... so I rang them... they said all refunds had been issued... so I pointed out that mine hadn't.. they said they couldn't see any refunds due on their system, until I read from my statement of Sept 2009, clearly showing a cash advance interest charge... so they retracted, and then said that yes, I was due a refund (of 50c, it's not the money...).. . but they also claimed that my situation was unique, a one off, and that all other refunds had been processed correctly. I asked what evidence they had for that... they had none... except the dubious evidence that one customer sevice Rep had not heard of this issue and didn't receive any calls about it. So Tesco assume that everything is fine unless customers are complaining, so they're clearly re-active rather than pro-active.

I told them I had lost confidence in their ability to correctly administer my account and charges, and asked why should I have confidence in their systems given this acknowledged failure and Tesco's poor response and dismissive attitude. They seem to be ignoring this issue.


Do people feel I should report the matter to the Finincial Regulator??

... quite simply I don't believe Tesco when they say they have processed all refunds, I don't believe them when they say they have issued letters to all those affected, and I have actually, genuinely, lost confidence in their professionalism and their ability to correctly and fairly apply charges. Prior to this I had considered Tesco Finance to be a very professional company, and I am actually shocked at their dismissive attitude to what I see as a serious problem.

Cheers
 
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Did you ever get a final response letter from them? You will need one to take the matter further.
 
No, no final response letter... they were supposed to be witing to me and they never did...

However it was only on the 28th of Jan or so that I was last on, and they agreed again to write a letter setting out their side of things... it was around the 10th of Dec when they agreed gambling was not mentioned in the T&Cs, and when they agreed to send a letter,.. they did stop short of guarantee-ing (spelling?) a refund even though they acknowledged that there was nothing in the T&Cs which allowed for the charges.

I'll ring them once a week asking about the progress, if after about 2 to 3 weeks nothing seems to be happening I'll request to enter into a formal complaint procedure, this will likely have to be done by registered post. If that doesn't help then I'll consider going to the Regulator.

They don't provide an email address for queries, only a phone number and a postal address.

Cheers
 

They gladly take my Visa Debit Card issues by Halifax.
 
I know they definitely charged me back in Sept/Oct last year, I must revisit this with them. When I queried it with them at the time they said it was in their Ts & Cs. Didn't use it again for gambling purposes. As far as I know the Regulator would have to approve this charge under the CCA. I'm going to follow up with Tesco next week.
 
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