MBNA transfer fee

margrace

I have been told by the Abbey that if I want to transfer the outstanding balance on an MBNA card that is coming to the end of the interest free period, onto another interest free card I will be charged at 2.5% by MBNA. Is this correct and is there any way around it?

Milarky

Welcome margrace,

Such fees are common now - even on new credit cards. See https://www.stoozing.com for an informal list of which cards do and do not currently charge. On MBNA, their fees are usually capped (at £35 or £50) PER TRANSFER which means that it is still worth transferring with these provided you can get Abbey/MBNA to give you a large enough credit limit and only doing a single transfer - not several together.

The tip with MBNA is that they will usually combine limits from other cards issued by them (eg Virgin, A&L other MBNA) onto the newest card.

Good luck

grumbler

margrace wrote:

I have been told by the Abbey that if I want to transfer the outstanding balance on an MBNA card that is coming to the end of the interest free period, onto another interest free card I will be charged at 2.5% by MBNA. Is this correct and is there any way around it?

For me it is difficult to understand where are you going to transfer balance from and where to.
If you transfer a balance (debt) to Abbey or MBNA (or between them) then BT fee is 2.25% (max. £50), not 2.5%. Abbey CC is run by MBNA. I am not sure that it is possible to make a BT from Abbey to MBNA or vice versa, although I cannot find anything in T&C forbiding this.
If you want to transfer a balance (debt) from one of these cards, there still are many cards around that don't charge for BT. Follow through the link in Milarky's post to http://www.stoozing.com/0fees.htm.

margrace

I don't think I explained the original issue properly. I went to the Abbey to see about transfering my existing balance that is on an MBNA Co-op card to the Abbey card. I soon discovered that the Abbey card was and MBNA card as well so this would not be possible. But I got into discussion with the Abbey rep. who told me that in any case no matter who I transferred my balance to MBNA (my existing card) would charge me at 2.5% for transferring from my existing card. I said I thought this couldn't be right as why would MBNA charge me for effectively paying off the balance. However, the Abbey rep phoned MBNA who confirmed this was the case. I wanted to find out if anyone else had had this problem and if there was a way around it.
Thanks to those who have already replied I would be interested in your opinions of this scenario.

DJ1UK

The way I thought it was, is that you are charged a balance transfer fee on the card that you transfer a balance too. So for example if you are transferring a balance of £100 onto a card - you would be charged a fee (say 2.5%) of this £100 on the card the balance is going to.

DJ

grumbler

margrace wrote:

...But I got into discussion with the Abbey rep. who told me that in any case no matter who I transferred my balance to MBNA (my existing card) would charge me at 2.5% for transferring from my existing card. I said I thought this couldn't be right as why would MBNA charge me for effectively paying off the balance. However, the Abbey rep phoned MBNA who confirmed this was the case. I wanted to find out if anyone else had had this problem and if there was a way around it...

I think this is another example of branches staff incompetence. I am absolutely sure that no CC providers charge for transferring balance (debt) from them. They have no control over this as a BT looks just like any other payment to your CC account (you are right about this).