In recent weeks there have been a few candidates for the recent PR disaster award. There was Ryanair and their salacious school girl ad and the Qtrax music download service which never was.
These were all completely eclipsed by the news yesterday that Egg, the credit card people cancelled 130,000 odd accounts due to their enhanced risk, however the overwhelming feedback from the cancelled account holders was that Egg made no money out of them because they paid off their balance each month.
From what I have seen I can’t see much upside on this one. Surely, anyone looking for an example for an organisation with masochistic tendencies should look no further! On the one level its an organisation rejecting its customers and on a more sinister level utter corporate hypocrisy, from one of the worlds biggest banks (Citigroup) at a time when they need all the friends they can get!
I agree, seems like a blunder of mind-boggling proportions. I am one of the unfortunates who has had their card cancelled by egg. I was panicked by the tone of the letter (“The decision to end this agreement has been based on an assessment of the credit profile of this account…may include payment history, account conduct and other information”).
I checked my credit profile with two credit checking agencies and it turns out I have an excellent credit profile, I have never missed a payment to ANYONE, EVER, and I have never got to within even 50% of my credit card limit.
The only conclusion I can draw (and I am forced to draw a conclusion as egg customer services only read me a script when I called them to query this) is that I am not worth having as a customer as I pay my credit card bill off in full each month, thereby earning them little interest.
Fine, I have no problem with that, by why couldn’t they just say that rather than implying I’m a “risk”.