MBNA Virgin Miles Balance

I just received my first Virgin Credit Card statement. I spent £211.31 last month and only got awarded 195 airmiles. Hmmmm, what happened to the 1 mile for every pound you spend?

Does this happen to anyone else?

[Nottingham Nick]

Jonathan

The way MBNA work out the number of points remains a bit of a mystery to me.

I think the reason that the points does not equate to the pounds total is answered by the fact that they 'round down' each tranaction - therefore if a pruchase is £5.99 - they will only award 5 points and the 99 pence you have spent goes into the ether[:(!]

IMHO This system of adding up means that over the course of the month's purchases there are a lot of pence (which add up to pounds) worth of points that you don't get credit for.

Nick

** THE ANSWER **

Well I worked it out with help from Nottingham Nick and MBNA!

Firstly, they round your transactions down so over the course of your statement you loose a bunch of miles there (Naughty [V])

Secondly, they calculate your monthly FlyingClub miles 5 days before your statement is released so you may lose the last couple of items that way.

So in my case the math is as follows:

May Balance: £211.31
Balance minus last 5 days: £198.67
Balance after rounding: £195.00

FlyingClub Miles for May: 195

The MBNA guy said that the miles from the last 5 days will be included on my next statement so I dont miss out [^]

Still, its a bit naughty rounding down on each purchase Makes it worth getting stores to add the penny onto each purchase so you can get the extra mile

It works out I lost 3 miles this month through rounding, thats works out at 1.5% lost.

[mitchja]

MBNA have only just started rounding down, as last month was the first month I'd received an odd number of FC miles, even though I have the 2 points per £ card.

Regards

[Nottingham Nick]

I was under the impression that they have always rounded down.
Even allowing for that - the idea that the mile earning month doesn't match your statement month strikes me as bizarre. It makes it very, very difficult to work out your exact entitlement, even though Jonathan has managed to do it.

Nick

I have the BMI MBNA card, and i haven't received my first paper statement yet, but the online statement says 57.37 MILES BALANCE at the bottom of it. The first line says .00 TO DIAMOND CLUB which i tihnk means nothing had been transferred out in the previous month (because it's a brand new card). I think this suggests that the BMI card keeps the decimal part and carries it forward until it a full mile is available to be transferred, but I can't quite figure it all out!

I too have a MBNA virgin credit card and have never been able to reconcile my expenditure with the miles awarded. Why is it so damn difficult for them to match the miles with the amount of money posted to the statement?

I have to say that the practice of rounding down is particularly mean spirited, if this is what is happening. Can giving us the proper number of miles actually hit their profit that much?

I had a Tesco Credit Card for years before getting my Virgin card. This doubled as a Clubcard plus you got 1 point for every £2 spent anywhere.

They also rounded down in terms of in store shopping (probably on other purchases too) and never published the from and to dates so you could never really reconcile.

Don't know how airmiles and others work?

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, the rounding down obviously has a lesser effect if you put a lot of higher value transactions through the card. Losing 99p from a £5.99 transaction is a lot - wheras 99p on 229.99 is barely noticeable. As I use my card for everything I've got a mixture of high and low value and the effect on this months transactions so far is <0.9% or 38 miles (19 x 2 with fee paying card.

I completely agree that the miles earned should co-incide with the billing period - or at least they could put a line in after the last transaction which has been included to say something like "Entries after this line have not been included in your points total for this month and will be included next month" - at least then you could do a reasonably simple reconcilliation without guessing which were and which weren't.

Just received a second identical statement in the post [V] Good ole MBNA [|)]