Barclaycard Help! Not charging my BT interest rate....

oceanscape

Someone please help!

I made a £850 payment to Barclaycard which cleared the account on 2nd October (and put the card balance to zero). I then did a £850 promotional Balance Transfer on 6th October (6.9% for life of balance).

I have just been going through my statements and have noticed that I have been charged the full (standard) interest rate on the £850 Balance Transfer. I called up Barclaycard to complain and he said that because the £850 payment was made in the "same billing cycle" the £850 payment had the effect of clearing the Balance Transfer and NOT my original balance -- is this correct?!

I'm really worried right now because the only reason I did the BT was for the special rate, I really cannot afford the shocking 27.9% standard APR which they are charging me!

CannyJock

Yup, can happen. Standard advice is to wait till you get a nil balance statement before doing a BT specifically to avoid this sort of scenario. Some people have got away with it on other cards, but standard advice is still the same.

chattychappy

Agree with CannyJock, this kind of thing does happen if you don't stick to different billing cycles.

BUT, I would go through the T+Cs and see what they say. I had a similar issue with another bank (forget which now, but it wasn't Barclaycard). The T+C algorithm said one thing, the IT system did something else. Once I got through to a supervisor type, she agreed it was wrong and manually fixed it. It was quite amicable.

They change their rules so often, it's not surprising the software doesn't keep up.

NickX

Good advice to query this with Barclaycard, they may just relent and move your balance over the the 6.9% LOB rate.

However, Barclaycard are pretty evil with this trick. They made a change to their Terms and Conditions towards the end of 2007 which specifically said that any payments to the account will not be reflected until the Statement Date. This, in conjunction with their baised allocation of payment rules, means that the payment has been taken to pay off the promotional Balance Transfer leaving the original £850 accruing interest at the crippling standard variable rate. Sneaky of what :mad:

As an aside, this change also means that there is absolutely no interest saving in paying your card before the actual Due Date as that payment is not applied until the statement is produced. Personally I think this should be challanged as an overtly "unfair" condition against the consumer.

If you cannot get Barclaycard to remedy the situation, then I would advise dumping them and moving the balance to a new card, preferably offering a nice 0% rate. Good Luck.