Stoozing newbie faced with a surprisingly large credit limit!

frivolous_fay

I applied for a card with a fee-free 6 month 0% offer, mistakenly thinking my current 0% deal was due to expire this month. In fact I have until April on my 0% balance (which is about £1,300) so I thought I might transfer the balance to my egg or new Mint card and stick it in my instant access savings account.

To my surprise, I have been offered a £5k limit on my shiny new card. (I was expecting perhaps £2k max) Perhaps it's because I recently closed a few redundant credit card accounts down.

I'm feeling a bit twitchy... on paper it all looks ok - transfer the balance, get the cash credited back, invest it... but I don't usually mess around with debts of this size :-) Can anyone reassure me, or warn me of any potential pitfalls?

Thanks :eek:

YorkshireBoy

frivolous_fay wrote:

Can anyone reassure me, or warn me of any potential pitfalls?

The pitfalls are the same whether you're stoozing £5K or £75K, ie DD not set up properly, missing a payment, missing the 0% end date, etc.

However, because the reward for getting it right increases, it follows that the penalty for getting it wrong also increases!

Ted_Bloke

Well I think Martin says somewhere it only works if you keep your eye on the ball the whole time. And even then…

I did it twice since they were actually offering me this free cred. Once with Halifax and that didn't really work because I'd got the wrong card, instead of the interest-free one, another that is called almost the same and looks almost the same. When I saw they were charging me considerable interest I wrote them saying look I would never knowingly, I had no reason ever to want to get a card like this. They paid me back my interest. Then next couple of months they charged me again, I wrote again, they paid me back again. I think this happened again. Then the next time it happened yet again I gave up, what with one month's late payment I think they won the match on points. Other time MBNA were really pressing their cheap credit on me, I eventually said OK if you insist, but (I'm not so total newbie) I phoned them to let them know what a smart operator they are dealing with and asked Hey, I've heard there are hidden charges in this sort of thing and actually your smallprint is a bit hard to decipher, will I have to pay for the cheque or something and they said oh no. Pity I didn't record it because what do I see in the records? A 'cheque fee' of £50 ! Now they are offering even less interest till April so I thought I'll pay back the debt and then take it out again at that reduced interest and even with the new cheque fee by April I would be up, on balance. But for that amount of money, I think frankly most of us have better things to do with our time, like even writing to this site. I just set up my e-banking to take out of where I invested it and pay back the debt end of March and I can forget it. Conclusion: stoozing as a career, there's no future in it. If you need to go into debt, by all means use any free credit you can get rather than pay for it.

Then there's a warning in various places, I can confirm, if you do get a balance transfer just use it for that, the next bit of money you get on the same card will be charged at maximum interest so pay back that extra debt on the dot.