DJ_JAIMEJ: surely they are charging interest as part of their service for actually having the card?

My feeling is that, if you were paying an annual fee, you could reasonably withhold that as the fee would be paying for the service. However I feel that the interest being paid relates more to the money that has been borrowed rather than the service. It's certainly poor customer service but you can't use this as a reason not to pay the debt and interest although it is reasonable to withhold a monthly payment until/unless you've received a statement (as long as you inform the bank).

Your best bet is to use someone who offers a better service and make a complaint. It's unlikely that you'll get any money by making a complaint (beyond, perhaps, a refund of any penalty charges) but it will encourage the bank concerned to give better service in the future.

Make a complaint in writing. The address for complaints should be noted within the details sent to you.

Let them explain in writing what has happened and if you remain unhappy after 8 weeks, you can ask the FOS to review your complaint.

Thank you for your response. Are you saying that they are within their rights not to supply a card, even if there have been no defaults etc on the account? As that doesn't seem right to me, surely they are charging interest as part of their service for actually having the card?

The debt is all but paid off, but it's frustrating to think that we have paid all this interest when we haven't even had a card!

You are within your rights to cancel a direct debit, or ask the bank to reverse one, if you are not properly notified of the amount and approximate date that the payment will be taken (it's part of the "Direct Debit Guarantee"). However, you are still liable for interest, purchases and other transactions although you can dispute any penalty charges that you feel are unreasonable.

It is worth establishing that the payments that have been taken are correct but I would not advise missing any more payments or cancelling the direct debit until the debt has been repaid (or transfered).

I would suggest that you try not to damage your credit record through this dispute until you have obtained another credit card from another bank and been able to transfer the balance to the new card. You can then avoid using the credit card issuer who has given poor customer service.

We lost our credit card about 18 months ago and moved house about a year ago.

When we lost the card initially they never sent a replacement card out to us, we tried a few times but with no joy.
We then moved house, and although we informed the bank (who also provide the credit card) of our change of address, we received our regular debit account statements without any trouble but for the best part of a year, despite several phone calls and trips into the branch we were unable to get statements sent to the house.

Through out this whole period we continued making the direct debit payments. Until a few months ago I cancelled the direct debit, one day after the first missed payment we received a phone call from them asking us to make the payment plus charges, our response was that we were refusing to make any more payments until we started getting our statements through, our statement came through 2 days later, so we made the missed payment and set up the direct debit again.

As it stands we still haven't had a card yet for the account, am I within my rights to with-hold payments until we receive a card for the account? And will we be able to demand a refund on previous interest payments that have been made while we haven't had a card (despite several requests).

It seems a bit unfair to me to be paying interest on the balance when they can't even send us out a card. The account had never previosuly defaulted and our credit rating is pretty decent.

Your thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks