Beware of underhand Tesco Credit Card expiry date notification...
Dear Nigel, I really like your website and know you care about consumers so I wanted to warn people about Tesco Bank and what I feel is very bad practice.
Towards the end of 2015 I took out a Credit Card with Tesco Bank and did a balance transfer paying the usual fee for an 19 month "interest free' period
Since last Christmas I have been aware that it expired around May/June this year so kept looking at the Transactions page of the on-line statements as there is a column titled 'Expiry Date' and I fully expected to see a date appear.
I started looking at options for paying off or moving the balance but thought I had more time as on the early May statement, there was still no Expiry Date shown in that column.
Unfortunately however, I did not notice the small print on the front May statement page which said "If you make the minimum payment of £ 66.00 and it reaches us on the due date of 26 May 2017, your estimated interest payment next month is £105.78". This line was not in bold or anything but I always mainly look at balance figure on the right and the transaction summary on the next page as I am sure most people do.
This month (June), the interest amount has appeared as a transaction on the statement and I have complained to Tesco Bank. To be fair, the man I spoke to was very helpful and understood the issue - he had obviously heard it before and mentioned the missing date in Expiry Date column before I even said it.
Which makes me wonder, If he knew what was coming, why haven't Tescos added a date or at least removed the heading and not confuse or mislead their customers, if they can't put the actual expiry date in?!
I said I was paying the balance off but they would not refund the interest immediately so they have formally escalated my complaint to the standard process which may end up at the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) depending what happens over the next eight weeks or so.
I know I have some responsibility to read my statements in more detail but I feel Tesco Bank have equal if not more responsibility to highlight such key information as this before it happens and certainly not mislead you to check a 'Expiry Date" column which they will never fill in!
The man on the phone did inform me that I had been warned about the expiry - but only once - 2 months before on the March statement - again on the front cover left hand side amongst everything else, in an area that does't normally change much.
Yes, it did say "Important information" but to be honest so many things do nowadays, it is easily missed. The warning wasn't repeated on the April and May statements which in terms of "Treating Customers Fairly", it surely should have been and I would have had 3 chances to spot it.
Obviously they don't want to tell their customers too much because that is how they make their money - but just once ? Hopefully they will be understanding and see it was unfair but I wanted to warn other people via your website so they don't make the same mistake and hopefully Tesco will improve the expiry notifications on their statements.
I have attached some examples of the statement but removed confidential details. Please feel free to publish my story and thank you for your website which I use regularly.
Best wishes.
Gail