I don't understand my interest!!

Spongemom

Hello everyone, I am new here and would really appreciate any help you could offer. I am hoping to clear 2 credit cards. They are M&S and MBNA. I have balance transfers on both and I am now paying a lot of interest. I phoned up MBNA today to ask what rate I am on now and they coudn't tell me because it may change everyday, I explained to them that I do not understand any of this and if they could just give me an idea of the interest rate, but they coudn't.

I have checked my latest statement and I owe them £2,150 and was charged £70 interest and £20 PP???, I do not know what this is. The boy told me that I went over my limit by £8 and broke the terms of my promotional offer in June, it was due to end last month. I also do not understand this becuase my limit is £3000.

I would really like to make sense of this, I realise I am in the wrong for not understanding any of this but as I explained to MBNA I am trying to understand and pay this off quickly.

If I can get this sorted then I will work on my M&S card.

Thankyou for any help.

Happytogetdebtfree

i cant say i have had any problems, when you say mbna do you mean virgin is that mbna because i log online but i will tell you this grrrrrrrrrrrr virgin insist my credit card is active but it was out of date in february theywont send me a new card till i clear the debt which i am happy to do but boy does it annoy me when they say i am active cheeky swines !!! once my cc are clear i intend to have a party where i can burn them cut them just damn torture the cards haha ..... i would write an official letter asking for the intrest or i would look at the back of a statement and it shows you what the intrest is ? x

milliemonster

PP is payment protection, firstly I would get this cancelled as it's usually an (expensive) waste of money

Your statement should tell you your credit limit, and current balance. The interest of £70 on a balance of £2150 sounds like an APR of about 39%, but is this £70 just interest or does it include an overlimit charge? (as they are saying you were over your limit?

Sometimes, they will reduce your credit limit, but they should have written to you to let you know, if you cannot find the information on your statement you need to contact them again and speak to someone else

I think the reason they have said they can't tell you what the interest is, because it changes every day, is because I think MBNA don't ever give you an interest free period like other credit cards, so interest is accumulating every day you have a balance on the card, even so if you ask for the APR on the card, they can tell you this

GeorgeUK

I would also suggest looking at the possiblility of getting a new card that offers a 0% promotion on balance transfers. You will need to make sure it's not the same card provider you are transferring from, but that's fairly easy to check.

**kym**

Not only should you cancel the payment protection insurance - you may have a good case for reclaiming it as you didn't even know what it is. for more on this see martins article - you never know if you are successful, the claim might pay off a decent chunk of this card.

Your APR will be on the back of your statement in the small text - look for something in the region of 29% probably - and your limit and balance will be on the front - if your £70 required payment includes an overlimit charge, the statement will tell you this - this is usually £12.

tyllwyd

Spongemom wrote: »

I have checked my latest statement and I owe them £2,150 and was charged £70 interest and £20 PP

If you can't find your APR, you could try looking to see if it says anywhere on the statement that the interest is at, say 1.5% per month. You can get a rough idea of the APR by multiplying the monthly interest by 12 (so 1.5% per month is an APR of roughly 18%)

When they said the interest would change every day, do they mean the amount of interest you will be charged on your next statement, or do they mean the interest rate itself? I don't know much about it, but there are some products out there where the interest rate depends on LIBOR, so I think that would change - is it possible that this is what yours is? It doesn't seem that likely to me though, I'd expect that it was a misunderstanding between you and the person in the call centre. Perhaps try calling back and asking for the APR rather than the interest.

Spongemom

That was quick! Thanks for all your help. You have given me a lot to think about. I am going to go sort out my staements etc and then come back to you.