Ooops

Looks, like I owe egg an apology. Just fished the letter out of the bin and it does start "Dear" and end "Yours sincerely".

Still a horribly rude letter though. No "Sorry to inform you" or "Thank you for your business" - even if they didn't mean it!

Being an Egg customer...

... There is plenty to say about Egg.

1. Paypal payment done on your Egg cards is not considered a cash advance, but Neteller was. Their argument was that Neteller was usable to extract cash from your credit card. Wow. So are credit card cheques or Paypal. In fact, MoneySavingExpert.com gave you ideas how! I had a very long argument with them about this, mostly because Neteller was a service that allowed people in countries WITHOUT Paypal to accept payment from the rest of the world (South Africa being one example - you can use Paypal to PAY, but not RECEIVE payment).

2. The login page is somewhat disconcerting, isn't it? Keyloggability is something that should not happen but we know that it will. I've raised this with Egg time and again. No response.

3. The problem with credit card companies (and now Egg) is that:

- If you only pay the minimum after using balance transfer deals, you are likely to be tarting. Tarting costs the card company, not you (well, it costs you 3.5% + interest over the tarting period, but it's less than what your deal costs the card company).

- If you always pay your balance on time, you are costing the card company (free credit) even if the company makes that a marketing thing (up to 58 days free* credit - blah blah fishpaste). You are borrowing money for the period up to your interest date. You are not generating the company money.

4. Egg is not killing the cards of those with loans, those who use their card a lot and only make partial payments (I pay a quarter of my outstanding debt a month, but spend that same amount on the card, so the company earns three months of interest out of me at any given time). You are probably not going to have your card cancelled if you have both Egg Money and Egg Card (former a MasterCard with cashback, latter a Visa).

They are dumping those whose credit profiles no longer match what they would prefer to have (people who generate interest for them, who are likely to pay back more than the minimum amount but not the complete outstanding).

There is always the possibility that marketing/public relations took what they were given from risk management and tried to spin it to something more palatable, and ended up scaring the bejezus out of those who had excellent credit ratings, who paid on time and who paid everything off before the cut-off date. When I see what public relations sometimes spins out into the world while having an inside line into what was really the case, I would not be surprised.

That said, Citigroup and Bank of America now own the two major, third-party credit card vendors in this country. MBNA is owned by BoA. Citi owns Egg. Who is left? Considering the crap you get from the British banks (9 of them trying to weasel their way out of their overdraft mess with the OFT), why would you want to trust them with your money? Just because they are British? Get real.