I have a Virgin credit card. Last August I was about a week late with a payment, my mistake, stupid I know. A little while I get a letter stating that my interest rate would go up from 16.6% to 29.9%! ? I phoned them up, apologised, guy on the phone was really friendly and even took the late payment fee off. I was at the time on a 0% interest rate (balance transfer) and was worried that I would all of the sudden go from the 0% to the 30%. But I was told I would keep my 0% rate until the promotion was over and then go to the normal rate. I wrongly assumed that the normal rate would have been the original rate and that when the 0% deal ended that I would be on the 16.6% rate. Stupid assumption of me again. My 0% deal ended recently and I am now slapped with the 30% rate. ☹️
Since that 1 late payment in August, I've set up a DD with them so I wouldn't be late again (should have done this from the beginning, but as I'm usually very punctual with these kind of things, I hadn't bothered). All has been fine with the account, no late payments, no problems with the DD.
This morning I received a letter from Virgin Money telling me that from July this year my rate will rise to 34.9%! WTF?!?! WHY???
The letter states examples of reasons why they may raise my rate:
- changes in your circumstances or in our credit assessment of you
- changes in the cost of admistering your account, our systems and services
- changes in external influnces and ecomic conditions such as interest rates
- changes in the legal or regulatory obligations which affect us
what a load of ****! I know they are in their right to do these kind of things, but why does my rate get such a hike (twice)? I know of other people with Virgin credit cards who have been late paying more than I and are still on a low rate of 15.9%. It's a good thing that over the next 2 months I should have enough extra money coming in to completely pay off this card, but otherwise I would have been screwed. Won't ever get a Virgin card again ?
