Combining credit limits on RBS cards?

JasonW_2

Hi all, I've had the most stressful time since the end of Jan trying to get 0% rates!!

A quick recap, and background... applied for HSBC and Mint 0% at same time at end of January. HSBC said yes OK after weeks of waiting, then said they meant no. Still fighting that one. Mint said no, then after I appealed said yes LOL. Got my Mint card the other day with 3k limit. I also have a tesco card 3.5k limit, £0 balance and a BOS One card, 9.9% (not increasing the rate either ) £4.5k limit, 3k balance.

The BOS balance is now on the Mint card @ 0%, so far so what.


Now, when I got the card I called up to transfer my balance and asked for a slightly higher limit since the whole limit would be wiped out with the transfer but they said no can do... Spoke to a supervisor who said after looking at my tesco card as well said I could lower my tesco limit and add it to my Mint card. Thats great I thought, so agreed. He said he would speak to the lending team the next day to do this and call me in the afternoon. Now, of course the afternoon came and went and no call, so I called them. He was "talking rubbish" I was told and that it's not possible, but the worse thing was he had left NO notes on my account at all to even say who he was first of all and I didnt have his name, and what he had said to me, so they said it wasnt possible. I'm now in the position where I don't know who is right and what is going on!? I want to close my tesco card anyway, but am hanging off now just incase I can up the limit on my Mint card. I've written to them - also reminding them they are obligated to ensure all notes are updated under the data proptection act:) - but if someone could give any indications of likeliness of this being resolved, or maybe you have experience of this? Customer service in this country is just a complete joke, they tell you anything!

J

Milarky

I tried this with my Natwest card - appealed an initial refusal. I used the fact that I had both Mint and Tesco with reasonable credit limits to ask for a comparable amount saying that I would give up that amount on the other cards if made available from Natwest - pointing out that I would then have less available to borrow from RBS in total - which you would think they would warm to.

However there appears to be no link between Mint/Tesco and other RBS-issued credit cards' limits. You can phone up Tesco yes and ask for an immediate reduction of credit limit but they won't then increase it again for 6 months. This I did and then asked Natwest to take that into account after issuing the card with a small limit. But they said that they couldn't review the limit for six months anyway! Catch 22

If you ask them they can raise the initial limit by 200-250 (better than nothing) but that is all.

BTW, with all RBS cards there is a cunning way to get 99p a month out of them called the 'small balance writeoff'. Basically you use the card as normal but instead of waiting until you get a statement from them showing this you pay off all but 99p. If you have a statement balance of less than £1 they just adjust it to zero and you go into the next month with nothing to pay. (Only RBS cards have this feature)

YorkshireBoy

We were discussing the Mint card over on the stoozing site a couple of months ago, and the general consensus was that Mint had 2 credit limits per customer! - the one they gave you and a 'shadow' limit.

Based on the experiences of several stoozers, we concluded that this shadow limit was set 20% higher than your given credit limit.

Maybe if you just asked for another £600 (on the basis that every little helps), they would be able to give you that without waiting the usual 6 months for a review?

roswell

as you have 0 oweing on the tesco card close it then you will in theory have that amount of new credit to get

JasonW_2

Thanks for the replies guys. I asked if they could increase the limit even slightly on the phone but they said as I had been declined then appealed it was definitely the max I could get. I still think 3k is a healthy limit, just wanted a bit more if I could so I could make purchases on the 0% rate as well. I will close the tesco card, but was keeping it open until I got either the Mint or HSBC, as I like to have 2 cards incase one doesn't work etc. However, I want to keep the tesco card open just now until they get back to me with the official line about moving a balance across. I explained in the letter I was unable to make full use of the superb features and security benefits of the mint card as per the litereature they sent me, and also unable to make use of the mint cheques too Worth a try at least!!

I find letters get a better response, then at least it's in black and white what they say, and maybe in line with the fact I was told it could be done by an incompetent supervisor then they might be able to say ok, close your tesco card now which I will, and here's an extra £x for your Mint balance.

I wouldn't have thought that they would be able to shift limits between RBS cards personally, but it's they fact he asked me if I wanted to do that without me even asking that I clearly believed him as I had no reason not to, then thought that's a great idea, excellent! Time will tell when Mint get back to me anyway, just wondered if anyone else had experience of trying to do this.

J