Quickest balance transfer

Tony_Soprano

Does anybody know how long it should take for a balance transfer to happen? Or maybe what the quickest method of doing it is, ie credit card cheques, phoning the card company etc?
I have a two week slot that i want to juggle a loan and a credit card, before the monthly payments are due onto my new barclaycard.

When i do a balance transfer - do i have to transfer the whole balance, or can i leave a bit behind (as credit limit of new card wont quite reach)?

Ive read that you have 60 days to do a transfer onto barclaycard - does this mean after that you lose the o%?

Milarky

Barclaycard: The 60 days in this case refers to the BC "0% till August 2005" promotion. Previously you had 90 days. But, as you rightly observe, this limit simply applies to the 0% BTsmade - not to spending made for the remainder of the 0% period.

Balance transfers do not have to match/cover the amount of debt being moved. In fact cards often state: "You are responsible for continuing to make payments on your other card..." So they know/expect some mismatch exists. There are many cases where you simply wouldn't want to transfer the exact balance - e.g where direct debit is already taking minimum payments off the statement balance, or (prudently) where there may be some unavoidable interest incurred at the end of the promotion on the old card, so putting it a few £££s into credit merely ensures that it stays that way, and can be used for purchases straightaway.

A balance transfer should take between 1 and 5 working days from being requested (i.e. applied to your new account). The average would be 2-3 working days. Basically, these transfers all go via the same 'BACS' system as you or I would use to pay our gas bill. They are therefore subject to the same 'clearing-cycle' and take about as long.

I have a two week slot that i want to juggle a loan and a credit card, before the monthly payments are due onto my new barclaycard.

I can't suss what this part is about - can you be more specific about which transactions you hope to perform in what order?

Suzz_2

I normally BT online/by phone. The time varies with different companies but I find it takes about 4 or 5. Don't know about cheques though, I'd expect them to take a bit longer.

You can BT as much or as little as you like - many cards state a min. of £100, and max. of your credit limit (or BT limit for some cards). One card doesn't know what you owe on the others...

For Barclaycard you must complete the BTs in the first 60 days. This transfered cash remains at 0% 'til 1st Aug. You can't do any after 60 days, or you'll pay interest on them.

Do your BTs straight away (they allow 90% of your credit limit or £5000 max), then keep 'topping up' the card with purchases, as these are 0% for the full 12 months. I'd recommend to set up a DD for the min. amount each month.

Tony_Soprano

[/quote]I have a two week slot that i want to juggle a loan and a credit card, before the monthly payments are due onto my new barclaycard.[/quote]

I have a loan of 3100 and a credit card with 800.
I want to transfer these onto another empty card, before the monthly payments for them are due. I will then transfer the new combined balance onto the new barclaycard (to maximise the 0% balance transfer of 3500).

But, having read your post, it appears that i can only transfer upto 90% of this 3500, which would be 3150. Am I interpereting this correctly? If this is so, I may as well just use it for the loan amount.

Suzz_2

Yes - Barclaycard will only let you BT 90% of your credit limit.

See the article here for more details.

Why transfer to the other card first? Won't Barcalys let you transfer a loan?

Tony_Soprano

Do barclays charge a fee for balance transfers?

Suzz_2

Certainly not in the first 60 days.

I'm not sure about after that and can't find anything on it on a quick scan of the the T&C. You could ask them when you call to do the initial BT.

I did my BT when I called to activate the card - a good idea as this is normally a freephone number.

Milarky

The "90%" rule can be bent quite easily, since BC staff interpret this to mean 90% of your available credit taking account of what balance is already on the card.

Thus you should be able to balance transfer £3150 (90%) to one account, followed by £315 (90% of what is left) to another

[At least it worked for me - I had to bring down the balance with payments additional to the minimum payment to get to the position where the minimum amount (£250) could be transferred AND that I had approx 112% of this available on the card (c.£278 ). This was almost on the last day available - within 90 days - it would be 60 for you. Two monthly payments had already been triggered and the BC advisor didn't say a second transfer was not allowed. So it is worth asking before doing a first transfer when they would allow you to do a second - probably straightaway ]

Tony_Soprano

I was under the impression you could only do one BT at 0%, and any further BTs would be at a different rate?

I know purchases remain at 0% though.

Milarky

If that's the case with this new card, then, you would would be limited to 90%, but there must be cases where customers have more than one other card with balances on, so I would have thought BC would not prevent 'multiple' transfers ?

t_i_g_e_rr

This thread has set me thinking. I have an egg card that will allow SBT's to my bank. Suppose I get another card that doesn't allow SBT's. Can I do a balance transfer to my new card even though my egg card would have an outstanding balance of zero. Presumably this would put my egg card in credit. I could then SBT this to my bank account with no danger of being charged interest by egg (which might happen if I did the SBT first and then the normal BT took a long time).

Does this make sense? :-/ Has anyone ever done this.