A Long Way To Go (Egg Card)

Member Name: thanatoszane

Product:	Egg Card
Date:	05/07/01 (787 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 0% on balance transfers

Disadvantages: poor customer service

I decided to try egg out after I heard a few of my fellow dooyoo-ers praising the egg card and it’s 0% balance transfer offer. Since they’re related to Prudential I thought I could trust them more than some unknown company, and despite feeling rather negative towards online banking having seen Barclays’ offering, I decided to give them a shot.

I can only write in detail about the Egg card, as this is the only service of theirs that I have used, but I can say that before applying for the card I tried their loan, and was refused.

I’d reached near max on my Barclaycard, and found their appalling interest rats quite a killer - payment wise it seemed futile having so much payments taken away in interest. I did a spreadsheet that made me gulp when it showed how long it would take to pay the thing off, and decided to take action.

A Barclayloan wasn’t for me. Instant acceptance almost guaranteed, because Barclays know me and consider me to have a good credit rating, but no flexibility. With a Barclayloan you pay a set monthly amount. OK, you can pay the whole lot off in one go, but you can’t pay a little extra every now and then. With Egg, you can.

So, I applied to Egg. Their form was a little unclear about a few things to me and I wasn’t sure what to put down. I’m a part time student in receipt of benefits, so what do I say - unemployed or student? Do I put down the benefit I actually see in my bank account as my income, or do I add my council tax / housing benefit / etc, on to that?

I put down student on the amount of benefit I see as real money: they turned me down, quite curtly. I asked them if that meant I’d be turned down for other products and they said no, although the woman I spoke to did mumble something about students, so I decided to apply for the Egg card, this time putting down unemployed and adding up all the benefits I get. Strangely enough this go
t me instant acceptance! OK, so the credit limit I got wasn’t quite what I wanted, but it was a good start.

I was told that there would be a credit agreement in the post within a certain time (two weeks I think, but the laptop I started writing this op on at the beginning of this little saga got it’s power supply blown in the last thunder storm, so I can’t check). After twice that time it still hadn’t arrived, so I called Egg and they told me that they had no record of it even being sent, so they’d send it again. This time I got it the next day, filled it out and sent it back.

A similar ridiculous wait and telephone call later I got the actual card and went to the web site to activate it.

The site is a nice green site with some funny, presumably ‘trendy’ pictures - quite simple, but fairly easy to navigate. Some people have complained that it’s slow and unreliable, but for me it’s usually quite fast and hasn’t timed out on me yet (touch wood.). If you have a more than one account with them the my money page can be quite handy - it shows how much you have in, or how much you owe, on each of your accounts - perhaps nice for people with a small loan and an ISA to see that they’re still fairly rich, but it’s a bit more depressing if you’ve only got a card!

The first thing I did was transfer the maximum amount from the Barclaycard to the Egg. The time I chose for this was coming up to a bank holiday around Easter, so instead of taking seven to ten working days it took a whole lot longer - counting working days it was fourteen - add in the Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holiday (and Good Friday, etc) and that’s quite a wait! I’d tried to schedule this all so that the bill date for my Barclaycard would fall just before the payment went through on the Egg, so I wouldn’t have to make a payment on the Barclaycard in ‘real money’
; that month - as the Egg statement date was at a similar time - I was getting very antsy when it took so long!

I discovered however that Egg let you change your statement date. I called them to cheekily ask if I could schedule it to effectively give myself a whole extra month to pay, and was quite amazed when they said yes. Flexible or what!

In the end there was no need to worry as the balance transfer went through in time. The extra time was still appreciated though.

The next month I was emailed to say my statement had arrived and went to check it. The log in process for Egg requires you enter your first and second name, mothers maiden name, your date of birth, post code and a password.. This is quite a process and it’s frustrating to have to enter it again if you make a typo, but I suppose it makes it secure. Once you’re in everything is OK though and you don’t have to repeatedly re-enter data.

I was happy with a direct debit of the minimum payment, but decided to pay off a bit more - this can be done by entering the amount you want to pay and a debit card number. It takes a few days to go through, but it’s easy enough.

The one thing I dislike about Egg is that if you want to make a request by email, you must log in to your account and use their secure email form - they don’t accept normal emails - even if they’re signed with a digital certificate!

Once I’d paid off £200 - I had enough to make another balance transfer (there’s a £200 minimum on balance transfers) - so I put this one through. It only took 5 days to appear on Barclaycards end this time, indicating that the delay the first time had been down to the crazy number of Bank Holidays around that time.

I’ve called Egg a few times in the few months I’ve had the card. The average time spent on hold per call is about 5-10 minutes - not great, but better than many other Interne
t companies. The staff have ranged from very helpful to downright rude, and on one case patronising yet lecherous! I don’t wish to be called darling, pet and love by a stranger and found it slightly off-putting when discussing matters of personal finance!

That said if you can stick to the Internet they’re much better. Now that I have an account and it's up and running it is working well. Their special offer of 0% on balance transfers is too good to refuse in my opinion, and the flexibility the account offers in changing your statement date and your payments is also very handy.

If you like paper, you may be put off by the fact that they charge for paper statements, and also for calls to the call centre that were unnecessary (meaning you wanted them to do something that can be done just as easily on the web site.) that said, they seem flexible about this, and haven’t charged me for any of the calls I have made so far.

Their attitude to students seems a bit unfair - I’d think a student with an income sounds better than an unemployed person with an income, and question how much credit checking they do. I know my record is good, but perhaps they only check if you pass a screening test - say earning > whatever K a year and not a student? Otherwise how come only my second application got accepted?

I’ve rated 3/5 because they have great offers and once you’re up and running they’re good - it’s just a shame that their telephone manner is so abrupt and their customer service in general is rather distant. It may seem harsh knocking two stars off for this, but customer service is key to any business, and if I hadn’t read positive opinions on here, that first bad telephone call (my initial contact with them) would have had me hanging up and never coming back.

Do I recommend them? Yes, I suppose I do, but only if you’re patient enough to jump through the initial
hoops.

Summary: