Mums debt - is this irresponsible lending?

[deltaguns]

Hi,

I actually posted about this a while ago but I need some further clarification/perspective. Please can I ask that if you respond, it's to answer my questions and not to flame/criticise my mum - We already know that this is not an ideal situation.

Mum is 75 and widowed. She was struggling financially over a year ago but was too proud to tell us. At that point she had about 10K in credit card debt. She applied for a further card from the a different bank ( mainstream bank). She applied online but received an error message. She reattempted later on and it worked. A week later two cards arrived - the exact same product. She was issued with two different customer numbers just one digit apart from each other.
She has run up a balance on both cards that is not affordable. We know that this has to be paid back and WE ARE NOT ASKING FOR IT TO BE WIPED. However I think that it was wrong/erronous of the company to allow two cards.
So my questions are -

1 - would it been a banking error to issue a customer two identical credit cards ( identical limits etc) on the same day?
2 - would this class as irresponsible lending
3 - mum's income is a pension and a very small private pension - I know that they can't discriminate for age but should this have not been considered
4 - would we have a change of getting the interest wiped?
We are currently waiting for a response and I have permission to speak to the bank on her behalf. I am disappointed that she didn't ask me for help earlier but I also feel that she has been treated unfairly.
I know that she should have cut one up/sent one back etc, but in the middle of some financial issues she made the wrong choice -surely they should never have issued these cards?

AIBU in thinking that this was irresponsible of the bank?

And the 2nd card was sent in error ie. She didn’t actually apply for two. But the bank’s systems would not produce a card without an approved application so I don’t understand it still.

This cannot be both a banking error and irresponsible lending, to be irresponsible it would have to have been deliberate. Banks do make mistakes. If they had accidentally sent your mother double the money she was due and she spent it, that would actually be classed as theft so it could be worse!

Contact the bank and tell them she is having difficulty repaying the debt, they should negotiate and they may even freeze the interest.

I can't find the first OP's post but if I recall the mother made the application but there was an error but she tried again - both applications went through and she ended up with two cards. tnh it's a pretty shitty system that allows that to happen.

Good Lord, I knew this day would come but VivienneMary has actually made a reasonable post! Mazel tov!

Thanks. The OP hasn’t I think said whether it’s two cards with the same account number or two cards with different account numbers. If the former, then there will only be a single credit limit so no “extra” borrowing available even though for some bizarre reason 2 cards with exactly the same account number were issued at the same time. If it’s the latter then yes in theory there are 2 separate lending “pots”.

I think that this is her earlier post:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/money-matters/5221754-irresponsible-lending-mums-credit-cards