MBNA said its earnings were “impacted by unexpectedly high payment volumes” from its U.S. customers. The move by customers to pay down their credit card bills, particularly on high-interest-rate cards, reduced the dollar value of managed loans in MBNA’s portfolios.
Card companies don’t make as much money when customers either pay their bills on time or pay down their outstanding credit card debt.
Ah, isn’t that just too damn bad? Maybe if the bastards would quit pulling crap like triggering Universal Default rate clauses at the drop of a hat, their customers wouldn’t be so quick to reduce their credit load with them.
Or maybe they’re transferring their balances to more reasonable CC companies’ because of tactics like this months bit o’ trickery: I noticed they made my payment due date the 17th, which just by happenstance would be a Sunday. Certainly in hopes that I’d send it at the last minute without realizing that ‘hey, mail doesn’t get delivered/banks don’t do business on Sunday – I better send this a few days earlier…’, thus triggering a late fee. Followed by that Universal Default rate, no doubt. Not that they have a chance in hell of trapping me with this tactic – I schedule a series of automatic payments throughout the month as soon as I notice the billing period’s ended. But I’m sure every month they catch quite a few.
‘What goes around…’ 
