I'm assuming and I may be wrong that this is the plan MBNA had us with. MBNA has lots of credit card plans. Anyway, the reason I'm assuming is we had a Mastercard for our business through Wachovia Bank. Wachovia merged with First Union and my credit card account moved to MBNA. So, if I didn't have this particular MBNA plan sorry but the facts are the facts and MBNA held my credit card.

This all started in 2002. We decided to close our business and Wachovia decided to merge. They all kind of happened around the same time. Because we went out of business, I closed our Master Card account. I still had a balance that I had to pay off but my sales agreement was going to take care of that and I wasn't going to have to worry about that bill any longer. At the time the interest rate on the card was prime plus 3%. Not bad and the payments were fairly low.

Enter MBNA.....We're going to change your billing. Yes, the first thing they did was change the way our billing statements came out and our grace period. We now had no grace period. Usually not a big deal as I like to pay my bills a few days early.

A couple of months later came, we're raising your interest rate. Now, I had had this card since the 80s. I was not happy about someone playing around with my interest rates and you know that they were not going lower but higher. I called to complain but it did no good. Still, the rates weren't that far from other card that I had so it wasn't too bad. Jan 2003 came and the rates once again rose and this time to 19.9%. I really wasn't happy and called to complain. I wanted to know why the rate went up. I paid my bills on time and almost always paid more than the minimum payment. Not only did I not get an explaination but was told that in Feb my rates would be going up to 21.9%!

Well, surprise! My rates didn't go to 21.9%. They dropped to 5.9%. I'm a reservist that got activated and by law they had to lower my interest rates to 6% or lower. I'd like to say that this was easy but it wasn't. I activated in Feb 2003. When I came home on R&R leave in Dec, my rates were still at 21.9%. I called them and explained that they had screwed up. I then faxed them my orders again and my extention orders. They went back and fixed my bills from Feb. I'm not sure if they honored my extention orders. When I got off active duty, my bills were once again messed up. I called and faxed another copy of my extention orders. They said they fixed it but I couldn't tell.

So, I'm home and back to paying my bill at the outragous interest rate of 19.9%. I'm still paying on time and extra. The other credit cards that I have do not have this high of interest. In fact the other card that I have from MBNA has an interest rate of 12.9%. Being the numbers cruncher that I am, I call again to see about lowering that interest rate.

MBNA

Hi, I'd like to see about lowering my interest rate.

Oh, I see you're paying 19.9%. Wait. On your next billing statement your rates will be going up to 27.9%.

WHAT!!!! Why did that happen?

We sent you a letter?

When?

In June.

I never saw a letter. So, why are the rates going up?

Because we can.

Well, I can pay it off too and will today! What is the pay off?

Would you believe she gave me the wrong payoff? Regardless, I didn't know that and called another credit card company who appreciates my business and told them to pay off MBNA.

A couple of days later I called to make sure that the transfer went through without any problems. All of a sudden, I have a credit. So, I transfer out to a customer service representative.

This lady was really nice. She tried to get me to come back to MBNA. When I told her what had been happening, she couldn't believe it. She immediately put me on hold to process my refund check. I think I got it yesterday, only 3 days after I talked to her. I say think because I'm owed money from several sources and this was just a check with no explaination.

Now, my experience with MBNA was not at all good. As I said, I have another account with them. They tried the same things with the interest rates on that account also. And as I did with this account, I paid it off. The difference is, when they called me a couple of months later begging me to bring back my business, I negotiated. I made them put in writing that this account would never have interest over 12.9% While talking to the customer service representative on this account, I got the impression that they would love for me to miss a payment or some how default so they would have an excuse to raise the rates.

Bottom line: MBNA is after your money and doesn't care how they get it. I figure I got the big jump in interest rates due to several reasons. 1) I closed the account and therefore was not charging more on it. 2) I was paying more than the minimum and was paying it off too fast causing them not to get the interest. 3) Last time I was suppose to get an unreal interest rate increase, I activated and caused them to lower my rates for over a year. 4) They need to make up that money they lost while I was activated so they REALLY raised my interest rates.

So, they thought they could screw the returning vet and I would lay there and take it. After all, I owed a large amount of money and would never be able to pay it off. Maybe they should have looked at my credit report a little better.

Good bye MBNA. I won't be back.




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