Credit Card Cheques

4Chickens

I have recently been accepted for an AOL card, operated by MBNA. The promotional offer is 0% on balance transfers and credit card cheques for 9 months. And the BT and Cheques can be used at any time during the 9 months; not just in the first month. Here's my question:

Are the credit card cheques a round about way of getting interest free cash from my AOL card?

If there are any pit falls to this please let me know.
I am quite an experienced card tart but have never used credit card cheques before.

The reason for my curiosity is that I may need an emergency £2k after Christmas because the tax man is a greedy impatient creep (and we did'nt bother to save for our tax bill).

So folks all advice, thoughts and tips welcome.

Rafter

Don't see any reason why you cannot use your cheques for this. Although you won't get the full 9 months, just the time between using the cheque and the 9 month anniversary of opening your account.

I imagine the AOL card has a BT fee on it too? You may be better off taking the full credit limit to your current account using one cheque (and therefore incurring just one BT fee). Then transfer the money to savings or use it to pay off higher interest debt and keeping 2k in reserve for your tax bill.

Just make sure you apply for your next 0% card in plenty of time to avoid paying MBNA loads of interest in 9 months time.

R.

bob_builder_2

I think CC cheques have no upper limit on 2% fee.

teksat2k

Worth checking small print on CC Cheques.
Virgin (MBNA) have offerred me 0.9% until April next year with max. BT fee of £50 (still profitable if I transfer 95% of £11,400 limit). Unfortunately they've also suspended my account after a credit check re increasing limit to take advantage of this offer (something to do with 58k on other cards).
Does anyone know if these cheques would still be honoured? I suspect that not only would they be rejected on basis of no available credit, but I might also be subject to bank charge for a failed transaction if I submitted one to another company.

ti1980

They did a credit check on you because you wanted to increase your limit? Had you been with them long?
I thought what they mainly looked at was how you have managed your account in the past.

YorkshireBoy

bob_builder wrote:

I think CC cheques have no upper limit on 2% fee.

The AOL card T&C's seem to be the standard MBNA ones with the £50 cap...

"2c We will charge a handling fee for all balance transfers, cheque transactions and cash transactions. All handling fees will be 2% of the amount of each transaction, and will be at least £3. For cheque transactions and balance transfers the handling fee will be no more than £50. There will be no maximum handling fee for cash transactions. We will charge an annual fee of £0."

https://wwwa.applyonlinenow.com/UKCCapp/Ctl/validate?eid=6EC24DD

teksat2k

ti1980
This was listed as being a follow-up check on credit file.
Been with various flavours of MBNA for around 18months.
I also have a 6k A&L card and asked for limit increase on that as well.
When I phoned MBNA they confirmed withdrawal of credit due to exceeding 100% of income. They will re-instate when I drop below 50%.
Was advised that bank statements showing salary and all card payments, together with details of £130k savings and credit file showing no late payments on any card made no difference to this decision.

Rafter

Sounds like you have been caught by MBNA's anti-stoozing activity under the guise of 'responsible lending'

R.

YorkshireBoy

Rafter wrote:

Sounds like you have been caught by MBNA's anti-stoozing activity under the guise of 'responsible lending'

R.

Agreed. There have been 2 or 3 examples posted recently where MBNA have withdrawn credit facilities.

These all seem to involve cardholders asking for limit increases prior to taking up the offer of special BT terms.

teksat2k

Yup. Sounds like it. Not too gutted.
Just hope that around April they have another offer as I'll have paid off at least 30k by then.