Bank of Ireland Credit Card Rip-Off

DMT

First they reduce the interest rate on credit balances from 2% to 1%, then a couple of months ago they get rid of it all together unannounced, and now they're getting rid of the personal accident travel insurance you get with your credit card from August 1st.

It seems they're doing everything they can to get rid of their credit card customers.

spongebob

Normal Gold or Platimum card ?

DMT

Originally posted by Muck
Normal Gold or Platimum card ?

Normal.

seamus

Originally posted by DMT
and now they're getting rid of the personal accident travel insurance you get with your credit card from August 1st.

It's useless apparently. They've never had a claim on it.
Seemingly it only applies while you're in transit, and not while you're actually on holidays.

spongebob

upgrade to a Gold card if you can, its a better deal .

M

grumpytrousers

It seems they're doing everything they can to get rid of their credit card customers.

Erm - lemme get this straight, you're finding it hard to fathom a bank treating its customers with anything other than something akin to contempt. For gods sakes, you hold a 'normal' card, not even a gold one. They sure as hell don't give a continental f**k about you. I'm not having a go at you - i'm sure you're a very nice person,

The approach of the banks would be that credit cards are the one area of financial services that could be seen to be almost a 'toy'. In other words, most people could, if push came to shove, deal without one.

Sure, you'd not be able to book your plane tickets on t'interwebulator, you'd have to write cheques when you fill up with petrol and have cash ready when the pizza delivery guy arrives, but by and large, credit cards tend to be for 'luxuries' (unless it's for corporate stuff in which case you don't prolly pay the interest, and thus don't have a problem!).

With this in mind, the credit card companies don't feel any sort of moral obligation to their customers, in fact, their job is to get as much out of you as possible - normally done by

a) facilitating you getting into more debt by increasing your credit limit
b) giving you credit card cheques
c) bringing the 'minimum payment' as low as possible thus increasing the chance of you having an outstanding balance on which you pay....Zzzzz

Face it - with just a handful of banks offering cards, and only one independent that i can think of (MBNA) BOI or indeed any other bank don't have to make their cards that attractive - they just have to make it convenient for their own current account customers to have one...the chances are that you won't shop around!

spongebob

Originally posted by grumpytrousers
the chances are that you won't shop around!

or find it too expensive to so do

email minister@entemp.ie , the fat one who tells us to shop around but won't let us without paying BoI an €40 exit charge .

M

Sleepy

The one thing I'd point out here is that if you're considering switching to MBNA, make sure that you ALWAYS pay in plenty of time, they have massive penalties in place for going over your limit, paying even a day late etc. etc. etc.

BuffyBot

It's useless apparently. They've never had a claim on it.

Yes the cover on normal cards is pretty crap tbh.

Thank god I don't have to depend on Irish banks anymore!

deRanged

one thing about BOI cards - the travel insurance on ordinary cards and (I think) ordinary gold cards was transit insurance. on a gold affinity card it's full travel insurance. you pay 78 quid a year for it but it gives good cover and also covers anyone travelling with you provided you buy their tickets on the card along with your own.

It took me quite a while to find that out - took them a year to send me the proper documentation about it too.

I think I'll cancel the card anyway - because I now get cheaper travel insurance elsewhere and I can get a better rate. If only the government didn't tax me for shopping around I'd have done so already.