Interest rates have gone down, but egg have put my interest rate up!

methusala_2

Hi YB,

Trust you had a good xmas. Happy New Year to ya

Meth

justruth

YB,

You are a fountain of knowledge! Methusala, thank you for the post. I understood it was a machine looking at the accounts and worked on the principle that all the account holders with a similar repayment history would have also had the increase and most would not have thought too much about it.

As for emotional attachment I think you may be right, I had already 'snowballed' then they put up the rate, meaning it took longer and cost more to pay things off. I took that personally and should know better.

I shall as suggested make sure to pay off more each month as it is easier to budget a fixed amount anyway. I expect to be clear of this debt by May.

Thank you all!

clio

Ruth
is this the Egg money card or their Egg credit card, i logged into my EM account online to see if my januarys payment got there, and i noticed in the box for apr it says unavailable, "wonder why that is?"
don't you get 30 days notice when they increase the apr or is the notice only effective from Jan 09!

milliemonster

And just one other thing, its best to apply the 'snowball' principle to your debts... all things being equal pay the minimum on each debt except the one with the highest APR.. on that pay as much as possible. In this way you will pay least interest and clear the loans the fastest.
try

http://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx[/quote]

But the OP has been doing this, and this is where the snowball falls down, I am having the same issue, when you pay the minimum on your lower APR debts and throw everything you have spare at the highest APR debt, all your other creditors that are only getting the minimum then start hiking up your APR, presuming you are in financial difficulty, or about to be, because you are only paying the minimum, therefore making it more difficult for you to repay

We are currently overpaying our highest APR debt by £800 a month (which is still leaving us plenty spare to 'have a life') and just paying the minimum on the rest, once that is clear we will then whack this amount off the next one and so on, until they are all clear, in the meantime though some of the other CC companies are starting to increase their APR thinking we are in financial difficulty when we are not

Maybe it would be better to overpay all the cards by a certain amount but throw the biggest overpayment at the highest APR card, that way they all get more than the min payment so less likely to increase the APR

YorkshireBoy

milliemonster wrote: »

Maybe it would be better to overpay all the cards by a certain amount but throw the biggest overpayment at the highest APR card, that way they all get more than the min payment so less likely to increase the APR

100% agree. Even if it's just a £5 BACS payment each month, timed to arrive within the 3 day window before the payment due date, it just might take you off their minimum payment maker 'watchlist'.

Slick50

clio wrote: »

Ruth
is this the Egg money card or their Egg credit card, i logged into my EM account online to see if my januarys payment got there, and i noticed in the box for apr it says unavailable, "wonder why that is?"

I noticed that also when I logged into my Egg Money account yesterday. I've just checked again and it's still showing the interest rate as "unavailable". Strange!

clio

Slick
if ruths was Egg Money maybes we are getting an increase as well, because the apr box is not available could means those that have this problem[ apr box not showing apr] are getting a hike in the apr. Just speculation though i may add.

justruth

Clio and Slick, I believe that mine was the egg credit card, however I would speculate (based on what YB has posted) that they may be doing the same thing to all their product range.

Following YB's advice I am now adding an extra £5 payment to all my accounts with variable interest rates to avoid this situation repeating. As it stands I am planning on having this account paid off by May, what a valuable lesson to have learned. YB is my new credit hero!!!!!

dylanuk

There is a lot happening with the credit card industry and the government at the moment...

While it is true credit card rates don't follow the base rate - even the PM G. Brown is getting a bit ph*ssed off that the rates aren't coming down.

There is a lot about it in the headlines at the moment. Here is a recent one of the latest change: http://www.credit-card-comparison-online.co.uk/news/overnight-interest-rate-hikes-now-over.html

Since the first agreement to give people more time if they are in repayment difficulty, they've now said they propose to no longer increase customer interest rates overnight, and now interest rates can only change once every six months on an account review. New customers have rates held for 12 months before the six-monthly rate reviewing starts.

I think this is starting to go a long way to helping people who do have debts on credit cards. Sudden rate jumps just for the hell of it are not helpful to anyone (except the shareholders).

gbatey

I've had this same problem with Egg; they increased my APR from 17.9 to 21.9%. I fired off an email and I got a similar reply to justruths. It took my minimum payment from around 89.00 a month to over 100 which is a heck of a hike but its my fault for having a cc in the first place. I've sent a cc charges reclaim letter off to them as I didn't realise I could claim for these until not long ago so see what happens.