Egg says sorry for Internet credit card blunder

Egg has apologised after wrongly telling customers that they could apply for a new online credit card service this week, when the service won't launch until next week.

Yesterday VNU Newswire reported that disgruntled Egg customers who had successfully applied for an Egg credit card could not use the online service, which lets them check account details and shop online, despite assurances that they could do so from 28 October. see yesterday's story

A statement from Egg, the Prudential's online banking division, said: "As soon as customers receive their cards, they will be able to activate them and start using them."

"It was always our intention that successful applicants will be able to activate their cards in around 10 days and indeed the first Egg card holders will be able to log on with their cards from next week."

"A small number of letters were unfortunately sent out to customers telling them they could log on before this time which was incorrect and for which we apologise," the statement added.

Customers had complained that the application processing had been slow since the card's launch. But Egg said it had "been processing applications as normal."

A spokesperson for Egg said that the Web site was down yesterday "for only 10 minutes" which was "not related to servicing issues but to essential maintenance work."