Egg’s reliable credit card customer being penalised

Financial giant Egg has disappointed many of its reliable credit card customers that have never missed any repayments on their credit card balances, by announcing that they will have to pay a far higher rate of interest on their borrowing because their risk rating has changed.

Thousands of credit card customers have been affected by this decision, and Egg has given these customers only one week's warning that their interest rates could be rocketing.

According to officials from Egg, each customer's account was reviewed on an individual basis in order to assess the level of risk for each card user, but this has done nothing to calm the angry credit card customers that state that they have never missed any repayments and therefore cannot understand why they are being targeted.

One credit card customer said that she had never missed a repayment on her Egg credit card account, yet her interest rate shot up from nearly 17% to nearly 22%.

The customer, Jane Green, said: 'I have two cards with Egg and a loan. I always pay on time and make more than the minimum payment, I have never exceeded my credit limit, I have never received a default charge and I work in a job that requires my finances are in order. So why does Egg deem me to be a higher risk than before? I also received an email offering me a loan a couple of days later, so why are they saying that I'm not risky enough to have a loan, but I am for my credit card? It just doesn't make sense.'

Another Egg credit card customer stated: 'I phoned to complain about the increase but was told that I could take out a loan to repay the balance, which I thought was a disgrace. It seems that the FSA clipped the credit card companies wings by clamping down on default charges, but they are just trying to find money elsewhere.'

Tom Smith
24th March 2007