Spot the Difference

I was very excited to receive a letter from my good friends at Barclaycard this morning. Had I won two tickets to the annual dinner and dance? Alas, no, it was yet another missive about how they are creating a "ring-fenced" bank, simultaneously telling me how important it is and that it will make not a jot of difference to my day-to-day banking experience. Included was another yawn-inducing notification:

We're making important changes to your minimum monthly payments

I glanced over the next paragraph, as one does whilst readying the left hand to scrunch the whole thing up prior to filing it in the recycling bag but my attention was arrested by the following:

See below to get an idea of how these changes affect your account

If your standard balance was £100.00 your minimum payment would've been £5.00. Based on the new calculation and the below assumptions the minimum payment for this balance would be £5.00

Clearly I am missing something here. The important changes, so vitally important that they bothered to put "would've" instead of "would have" (nice saving of an entire printed character there, give yourselves another £1m bonus all round, boys), are going to increase my minimum payment (assuming I only spent a measly £100 in a month, which quite frankly is hardly going to keep Mrs. Commuter in the style she aspires to) by a whopping 0.00%, correct to 2 sig.fig. Or, to put it another way, the important changes are not going to make any difference at all. Why couldn't (sorry, could not) they have said that? Or could not someone have had the basic sense to realise that, because there is a minimum repayment of £5,  the change (which is an increase from 2.0% to 2.25%)  only affect people whose balance is  in excess of £222.22. You see how I did that? £5 / 0.0225. An easy job for my desktop calculator.

My piece is now written, the letter is on its way to its rendezvous with a landfill site but before I lay down my pen I should note that another business communication reached me this morning. I changed car insurers recently; the jilted party has now written a sad little note asking me why I no longer love them and please would I get in touch, they promise to be nicer this time, honest. What a waste of money - I called them a month ago and told them I was going. They'll have to do a lot better if they want to win me back - a nice big box of chocs will do for a start.