I’m not in a great mood today, so it’s probably not the day to post this. Or maybe it’s exactly the day to post this.
I used to like MBNA, as a credit card company – they have a nice setup for generating one-time credit card numbers (that *almost* runs in Safari), rates are low, and they integrate with my bank’s bill pay system.
Then I get an e-mail to my work account that says this in bold letters: Your credit line is $XYZ!, except the XYZ was filled in with the RIGHT NUMBER! I really thought it was spam. In fact, my Postini filter flagged it as spam, despite the fact that MBNA’s e-mails usually get through. But no: it also has the last four digits of my account number in the e-mail. ARGH! They, of all people, ought to know that the last four digits are the worst numbers to give out.
This is a new low. That got e-mailed to my employer (which, admittedly, happens to be a company I founded, but that’s just luck). Someone in our IT department might easily have been spot-checking mails for AUP, for example. And this is useful information: I actually believe that this e-mail came from MBNA because it knows my balance and account number.
Now Anthony in Engineering can phish me much more effectively! Or worse, he could use this information himself – if you’ve ever filed out a request for a free credit report, you know one of the ways they verify your identity is with questions like “You have an account at MBNA ending in ABCD. What is your credit line?” I’m baffled that a financial institution would be this clueless.
So, I’m leaving MBNA, as soon as I get time to do a little looking. Recommendations would be appreciated. Even if this mail is a fake, it has some real numbers in it, so my account has been compromised somehow. But boy, it sure looks legit, the opinion of my spam filter notwithstanding.
I’ve always had a healthy distaste for MNBA, but it has a lot more to do with their predatory lending practices than anything else. I suppose that extends to most credit card/loan companies, but I’ve just found MNBA to be reprehensible in what they do to customers in general.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been pretty happy with my Citibank credit card. They’re very low on the spam, have a nice online payment system (no idea how it compares to MNBA) and have a one-time number system that *does* work with Safari. Also, they don’t spontaneously up your credit limit, which I find to be a terrifying and insidious practice (“Want more fake money to put yourself in real debt? No? Here you go anyway!”) I definitely recommend them as far as my experience goes.