Barclaycard for Exisiting Customers - Warning

Catseyez

I've had my Barclaycard for years now and it has been Platinum for some time. I'm a 'common tart' and so am always doing BTs on new cards every few months.

Well, I hadn't used my Barclaycard since 2004 (no attractive deals for exisitng customers) until two weeks ago. I'd been waiting to BT to a HSBC card but it had been taking sooooooo long that I became nervous (0% offers running out on other cards) and decided (after looking at the Barclaycard website), that I would BT my existing debts (from EGG and M&S) to my Barclaycard until the HSBC card came through.

Barclaycard website had an offer of 6.9% lob for exisitng cards, so I thought I'd accept that for a few days whilst waiting for HSBC; a better rate than keeping it in either EGG or M&S.

Ok...my Barclaycard limit was at £3200.
I had £3,400 from EGG and £700 from M&S to transfer.

I began the online transfer for £3,400 and knew it would be queried as it exceeded my amount. Also, it would only allow you to do one BT. There was no option to do a second.

So I was straight on the phone, explaining I'd just that minute tried to do a BT for £3,400 but knew it wouldn't be accepted due to my credit limit. So I asked if my limit could be increased and asking if I could also do a BT from another card.

'Sure', she said. "Is it the 0% for 3 months that you're interested in"? I explained that I thought the 0% was for new customers only, to which she said 'no, it's for exisiting customers but does include a balance transfer fee'. I agreed that I wanted to go ahead with the 0% deal for three months and would accept the BT fee.

She went ahead and increased my limit to accommodate both cards. She agreed that I would be paying a total of £17 for the BT (fine) and it would be 0% until April 1st. She went ahead with the large transfer FIRST and then the lower transfer SECOND. She then read out a few T&Cs and said the transfers would take a few days to go through.

A few days later I received my statement and it had been split into two parts. The LOWER BT of £700 was marked as the FIRST transfer and was at 0%. The HIGHER BT of £3,400 was marked as the SECOND transfer at 6.9%!!!!!! What's more, in those few days, they had already started to charge interest.

No doubt I was furious! So I contacted Barclaycard and a very unhelpful girl said there was nothing she could do about it as it had already gone ahead. I explained that I had been told it was going to be 0% and that the operator had not mentioned it would be split in two, with two different rates. She said that the T&Cs would have been read out to me. There is no way I had been advised of this as I had asked the operator to confirm it would be 0% for the ENTIRE amount. I didn't persue it any further that day but said that I would be calling back.

The following day, I logged onto my EGG account and found that the £3,400 was still in there, despite Barclaycard having already charged me interested since the day I had done the transfer. It was on its last day at 0% in the EGG account and was about to start earning interest.

I was straight on the phone to Barclaycard and immediately asked to speak to a senior representative. I explained what had happend with the BT and she said that she could see on the screen that I had done the £3,400 transfer first! I aslo explained my annoyance of having been charged interest, firstly on an amount that is supposed to be 0% but also on an amount that is still sitting in EGG!! I double-checked and I had given the correct credit card number for the EGG BT.

All this was on top of the fraud department contacting me the day after I had done the original BT to check that I had actually made the payments, seeing as the account had been idle for so long. To be honest, I don't mind that because it shows they are paying attention to something.

Luckily, this particular opertor was able to do an internal transfer so that the £3,400 would also be at 0%. So no interest charge, thankfully.

I've decided that my tarting days are over and have given myself until the end of the year to ensure that I am credit-card debt free! It's too stressful when it goes pear-shaped!

Catseyez

roswell

Talk to EGG not Barclays, It take me 3 days to see any movement in / out of my egg account, be it purchase`s / with draws or credit ...... they must be the slowest company to show changes, Last week i knew id over spent on my egg money card to transfered some money to it, it took 4 days to show id over spent and 3 days to credit the account...

Catseyez

I did talk to Egg - as soon as I saw it sitting there. It was still on 0%rate so it didn't bother me too much. But you're right, they are slow. I only keep my Egg card so I can benefit from their anniversary offer.

My issue was that my transfer for £3,400 was supposed to be at 0% but Barclaycard processed it at 6.9%!