From: "Nebulous" 
Newsgroups: uk.finance
Subject: Re: Goldfish - payment clearance times
Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 20:14:06 +0100


"Robin Cox"  wrote in message
news:J19Rc.1073$0W.9716911@news-text.cableinet.net...
> I've been told that Goldfish now require five working days to process a
payment made by
> my bank (similarly Capital One, MBNA and Amex), while other card companies
> only require the payment to be made three days before the due date.
>
> Also, the payment "goes into a holding account for two days".
>
> Why are these four companies different?
>

Different from which other companies? I don't know about the others, but I
have a card from MBNA.  I am registered online with them and pay my bill by
Switch. I fairly regularly pay it one or two days before it is due with no
problems whatsoever. Prior to that I used to post them a cheque. I usually
posted the cheque first class two days before the due date, again with no
problems whatsoever. I think the back of the envelope said allow seven days
if paying by post, but I never did. At one point I forgot to pay and phoned
the day before it was due to ask if I could pay by Switch. The adviser said
no and advised that my quickest option was to pay by cheque. A bank payment
would take 3 days to go through, but if they had my cheque in their
possession on the due date they would backdate the payment to then. I posted
it first class- after six o' clock and it still got there on time. I know
they said they had tightened payment times a few months ago, and I no longer
send cheques, but the change diesn't seem to have affected me at all.

Neb