Using Egg as a mule

Pretty_Thing

In my quest to pay off the remainder of my mortgage interest free - I still fall short with my credit limit.
Egg (Green) only gave me £7500 - I actually need around 10K, so I'm gonna apply for the new HSBC deal. I bank with First Direct so am hopeful of a decent limit.
As I understand it, I can BT the Egg into credit.
If I get the limit that I need with FD, I would like to put the full debt onto this card and just use the Egg as a mule and SBT the whole amount to my current account, then pay off my mortgage. If I did this to the tune of £10K then:

Would Egg allow a large positive balance?

Would questions be asked as to why I am putting £10k positive balance onto my Egg card?

This all seems so complicated - just dont wanna mess things up !!

cheers

Galstonian

Egg, IME, are quite generous. Has your available credit started to make you a less attractive customer? Check your credit reports. Having available unsecured credit in excess of your salary starts to reduce your perceived creditwortiness.

You can BT to Egg and put it in credit, Egg are sometimes fussy about this especially if the credit is greater than your credit limit. It may be a trigger for monitoring money laundering (which they are obliged to do) and may result in them asking questions.
Transferring a fictional balance may be against the terms of the HSBC card but it is nigh on impossible for them to detect.

I would also check on Eggs BT fees - if you transfer to Egg then to current account do you pay fees on that?
Secondly, can you take advantage of 0% transfers with Egg at anytime in the intro period (its a long time ago for me and terms have changed since then). If you can only transfer in the first month you may lose your Egg 0% period.

Perhaps aiming for the whole mortgage is a bit high? I've found it is easier to sustain a certain level and above that it becomes much more difficult with reduced credit limits and rejections.

paultw5

i presume you have asked egg to increase your limit to 10K. They gave me and the missus increases last week in time for the anniversary offer, without a hitch...

Pretty_Thing

My credit reports and score are excellent with both Experian and Equifax.
I have a Yorkshire Bank Mastercard which isnt reported. I closed a Halifax card early September which still shows active (£4750 available), and a Capital One card at the same time which now shows closed. Have asked Halifax twice to ensure they have informed the credit agencies

I have asked Egg to match the total credit on those 2 cards - £12750 but they wont budge, stating my account will be reviewed aftr 6 months. So my credit limit from Egg is somewhere around 25% of my salary.

Yeah - I'm aware of Eggs charges.

Perhaps aiming for the whole mortgage is a bit high? - No I dont think so - £10k - I aim to really hammer the repayments so wont take long to clear it hopefully !! Just fed up of paying interest to the BS.

Galstonian - u really scare me with talk of money laundering monitoring


thanks all

Rafter

Better to do the transfer from Egg first rather than put it into credit.

There have been stories both about money laundering and Egg starting to close accounts that regularly go into credit using balance transfers without any warning.

Getting another 2.5k should be OK. 50% of total income seems to be the level where certain lenders (eg MBNA) start declining.

R.

Galstonian

Pretty_Thing wrote:

Galstonian - u really scare me with talk of money laundering monitoring

I did say they may ask questions because of it, I would assume you could easily answer them and prove you weren't laundering cash but it might be best to try and avoid getting asked. Your answers (I'm avoiding paying any interest) don't make you sound like the ideal customer.

I had assumed the mortgage was for more and you were trying to get the last 10K rather than the whole mortgage is only 10K. SVR interest on 2.5K should be less than £15 a month which isn't that bad for a mortgage (!)

Pretty_Thing

Galstonian wrote:

I did say they may ask questions because of it, I would assume you could easily answer them and prove you weren't laundering cash but it might be best to try and avoid getting asked. Your answers (I'm avoiding paying any interest) don't make you sound like the ideal customer.

I had assumed the mortgage was for more and you were trying to get the last 10K rather than the whole mortgage is only 10K. SVR interest on 2.5K should be less than £15 a month which isn't that bad for a mortgage (!)

My mortgage is an endowment which is gonna be short at the end of term (I did appeal successfully about miselling but only got a small settlement).

I still have 8 years to run. Due to remortgage (divorce) in the late 80's, have been paying the s.o.b. since 1978 (its a long story !!)

Its the first time in my life that I have been reasonably financially secure, so I'm keen to get rid of the mortgage as fast and as cheaply as possible. Obviously I'm gonna keep the endowment payments going till the end of term.

I did speak to my daughter who has worked for HSBC and her thoughts are that if the terms and conditions allow what I'm proposing, then I shouldn't have a problem. If questions are asked by Egg, then I shall tell them exactly what I am doing - and explain why - because they wouldn't give me the credit limit I asked for !! At the end of the day I dont need to be a customer of either card provider forever - just long enough to get what I want from them

thanks for your advice folks

Galstonian

Egg offer one of the easiest routes to getting money into a bank account so I wouldn't dismiss them out of hand.

As for the A&L one the terms and conditions of the balance transfer offer states the 0% is for balance transfers, technically if a balance does not exist you can't transfer it. ISTR that the A&L offer may also include cheques and I don't know the terms of those. The thing about all this is that A&L have no way of knowing if you have a balance or not, the best they can do is ask for a statement but that happens incredibly rarely and usually for other reasons (e.g. matching a card limit)

Good luck