Massive balance transfer muddle. Help!

speedbird1973

If the debt with Barclaycard is purchase interest rather than cash interest get put through to the retentions team and ask them to crystalise the existing debt at 6.9% they did it for me. The transfer the rest on top with the same phone call. You'll have to tell them you're considering leaving - but as i say worked for me.

sillyme

Ooo what does crystalise mean?

sillyme

Sorry for the shameless bump - I've only got a limited time to address this so I'm really hoping some bright spark will be able to help me!

JesseJames_2

sillyme wrote: »

Ooo what does crystalise mean?

It means that the existing £300 on your Barclaycard currently at 20% will now be charged at 6.9% interest, but as Speedbird says, you will need to phone their retentions team to ask them to do that.

theoretica

If Barclaycard won't be nice about the interest on the £300 you probably would be better off transferring it to another card and back (say 2.5% fee of £7.50 then back -another fee 2.5% = £7.50 + the interest on a year of 6.9% = £20.70) total cost over a year = £35.70. Unless there are admin fees in addition to the percentage?

If you kept the £300 on the Barclaycard and it is indeed paid off last you would be paying 20% interest over the year with presumably no way to clear it- so £60. A savings of £24.30 is not huge, but for every following year until the balance is totally clear you will have a saving of the difference in the interest rates £60 - £20.70 which is £39.30.