Goldfish / Morgan Stanley credit cards suck

I’ve had a Goldfish credit card for years. I’ve never paid a penny in interest on it and have had quite a few hundred quids worth of cashback from it in John Lewis vouchers. Up until today I’ve been very happy with it.

A few days ago I got a statement. £518 quid as expected. All looks good until I go to pay it off. According to their website, my balance is £0 so I can’t pay it. I put it down to being something broken with the site so ignore it until today when I try it again. Same thing. I have no balance and it is now showing that the bill I was sent on the 20th has been paid (no, that’s the one I’m trying to pay) and that I was apparantly sent another statement on th 22nd. Dunno what happened to that one. It also show all of my “recent transactions” as having been adjusted to wipe them out. Everything I’ve paid recently has been wiped out! Resisting the urge to go on a spending spree I ring them up to find out what the hell is happening.

After several minutes (5p a minute minutes the bastards) I get through to Laura who is very helpful. Apparantly, Morgan Stanley have bought Goldfish (I did get a letter saying this had happened but nothing about account changes) and it turns out that Morgan Stanley don’t actually have a license to offer Visa cards. As I have a visa card they have issued me with a Mastercard account (they are licensed for that it seems) and everytime I spend something on my Visa card they helpfully pay it off with my Mastercard. They pay it off with my mastercard that I won’t have for 2 weeks. My mastercard that I didn’t even know I had (and that I’ve never actually wanted). Of course, by the time I get this secret mastercard I will be past my interest free period so the bastards would bill me for interest for the last month. They would probably bill me for not paying the bill as well – the bill that I can’t pay as they refuse to admit I have it!

After a minor rant they put me on hold for a while (still at 5p a min. Did I mention they were bastards?) and finally managed to work out a way of allowing me to pay the bill on the account I don’t know I have yet. I have a name and a confirmation number so lets hope it actually goes through.

I now sit and wait for the letter explaining this all and my nice shiny new Mastercard. Would have been nice if they had actually bothered to tell their customers *before* they started pissing around with their accounts.

Interestingly, my points balance appears to have vanished as well – and I should have 40 quids worth of John Lewis vouchers on there. That can be an argument to be had another day I feel. Still, a little digging has found a more useful (ie cheaper ) number to ring them on. For anyone else with a goldfish card don’t ring their customer services on  0870 5111444 try using 0141 2049012 instead