Repeat Offers - You've got to love 'em!

multimillionaire

A public thank you Abbey/MBNA for the 6 month £15k 2nd repeat offer you so kindly 0% BT'd for me after I sooooo wanted to close the card (- Not!!)

£35 fee but so what, heck - loadsamoney quids in!!

(Just in time before they increase it to £70 too !)

Muhahahaaaaa!

MM

AndyRat

Hmmmmm, what did you tell them, when I went to close mine, they made no offer at all, although they said that an offer may be made later, so I kept the card open, but with a reduced limit.

michaels

multimillionaire wrote:

A£35 fee but so what, heck - loadsamoney quids in!!

(Just in time before they increase it to £70 too !)

Muhahahaaaaa!

MM

What's this about an increased transfer fee? (My VS card needs paying back mid Sept and I was hoping for a second follow on)

Luke

Virgin Money. I got their 9 month 0% last year only to follow it with another 6 months. Finishes September so am on the look out for another card. I want 12 months from virgin this time as that is there offer to new customers.

sly_dog_jonah

Blatantly cross-posting from stoozing.com forums, but here's my recent experience...

Repeat offers are definitely the way forward. I recently got a repeat deal with my Natwest Platinum of 0% 6 months with no fee! :cool:

Background: I've had the card just over a year, it was a 9month 0% on BT+Purchases which I paid off in full at the end of the deal (credit limit just over £3k). Used it for a couple of small purchases after the deal ended and paid off in full.

Phoned up to see what they could offer BT-wise and what fee would apply, as T&Cs had changed over time. Their offers went along the lines of:

• Standard APR (16.9%) with no fee. 'Can't you do better than that?' Said I.
• 3.9% for 6 months with 2% fee. 'If that's the best you can do, I'd like to close the card'.
• Transferred through to Retentions who came back with 0% for 6 months with 2% fee. 'Getting closer, but I'm really looking for fee-free and I'm sure at least one of my credit cards will give it to me.'
• 'If I were to offer you 0% for 6 months with no fee, would you keep the card open?' Said the nice man. 'Yes I would!' I exclaimed. 'Would you like a credit increase too?' Hmm let me think about that for a moment.... 'Yes please!'

It was only a token half a grand extra credit limit, but as Tesco's say 'Every little helps'.

When I've paid off my work expenses on my M&S &more card, I'll give them a try too. The game has plenty of life in it yet, you just need to learn the tricks of the trade, like YB.

Pricy147

this didnt work for me with three of my cards. Actually closed Barclays, RBS Platinum and Capital One - non offered anything decent before closing. Did work for LTSB though - and this is the one I want to renew - even if its the only card - 32k limit - over 100 bucks a month interest from one card! Wish I could get a few of these on the go!

Trying MBNA and MSDW at the mo but not getting much luck - will threaten to close in the morning and see what they offer.

Lopo

Repeat Offers Rule - OK !

Its all in the suave approach to be successful gaining another few months at 0%...

Does depend on a multitude of factors though, you have to figure out whether the voice on the phone is willing to bend a little just to begin with so you have an indication of whether its worth a go or not. Start by asking something trivial about the account. If the voice is not doing it for you....hang up, call back and retry so you get to chance it out with another lemon answering the call...

Often found the older sounding women type live by the rule book, and simply show you the exit door. SO....with that in mind, I never have the "want to close the card" conversation with them as I often wonder that they have some mystical powers and can sense your game and close it on your first hint of such a request...! RUN - Run - runaway! - save yourselves! Lost many a double figure limits that way....

Regarding "What's this about an increased transfer fee?" - MBNA sent out letters indicating terms and conditions changing.....and that the fee would increase in September, cant recall the exact date though - yada yada yada....

Hope that helps...

YorkshireBoy

Lopo wrote:

Its all in the suave approach to be successful gaining another few months at 0%...

I'm not so sure. Sometimes it's just pure chance! I do have a theory though (and it's worked for me several times) that paying off the card with several ad-hoc payments (eg a couple of BT's, the minimum payment DD, a BACS transfer, and maybe a debit card payment) seems to increase your chances of a repeat 0% offer. Maybe they have 'systems' that detect one payment from one current account source? After all, if I SBT'd £15K to my current account for 9 months, and then paid it back from the same account...the chances are I'm a stoozer - right?

If the voice is not doing it for you....hang up, call back and retry

Won't work with MBNA, as they annotate your file with the outcome of your discussion. ie offered 1.9%...declined. Offered to cap BT fee...still declined. I speak from recent experience when I called 3 times to obtain a repeat. With each call, the CSA could see from my file exactly what was discussed during the previous call(s).

...so you get to chance it out with another lemon answering the call...

I prefer to call them Customer Service Assistants. 'Lemon' is so disrespectful - don't you think?

Regarding "What's this about an increased transfer fee?" - MBNA sent out letters indicating terms and conditions changing.....and that the fee would increase in September, cant recall the exact date though

For Virgin, it's the 9th September and it'll be 3% (max £75).

Lopo

Agree with you YB, but my comments were intended as more general than that....

Chance is a factor ! Like I said, you have to determine who your dealing with to simply begin with...."chance" comes into it at any point thereafter....

Lemons are there to be squeezed for all they can be! £££ Hardly disrepectful and I doubt many CA's lose sleep over my sweeping statements - besides, I like lemons!

Bit more simpler than that in my humble opinion - If you pay of a card completely without making them a penny in fees/charges/profits AND having never made a single charge to the card - then your more likely to stand out as a stoozer rather than them figuring out the source of all your payments!! Some people dont have "many" current/savings accounts so "generally" activity will be mostly from there.

Everyone has their own methods and approaches that they feel comfortable with...

Roll on repeat offers! _party_

Lopo

Moggles_2

I do have a theory though (and it's worked for me several times) that paying off the card with several ad-hoc payments (eg a couple of BT's, the minimum payment DD, a BACS transfer, and maybe a debit card payment) seems to increase your chances of a repeat 0% offer.

Based on 10 years of credit card shuffling with more than 30 cards (not all at once of course!), I'd say it's the balance transfers that are the most significant.

MBNA stands out in this respect. The more balances I transferred to other card companies, the better the repeat offers. This was particularly noticeable when, due to three 0% introductory offers and a take-over, I had balances on four MBNA cards simultaneously. Whenever I cleared a balance largely by requesting a transfer elsewhere, a repeat offer was a near certainty, whilst accounts that were cleared from my own funds went largely undetected (or ignored depending on your point of view) After nine years, I closed the MBNA cards because of the balance transfer fees, which so far I've managed to avoid.

At the other extreme, a large number of balance transfers from Royal Bank of Scotland (I won't go into the reasons as the terms no longer apply) made no measurable impact whatever.

... If you pay of a card completely without making them a penny in fees/charges/profits AND having never made a single charge to the card, then your more likely to stand out as a stoozer

You would think so, wouldn't you? Yet, in my experience, the fact that you've made money from them, rather than the other way round, seems to have no effect whatever on the repeat offers you can expect.

Of course lenders may vary, in this respect, as with everything else and things change over time. It would be interesting to hear other MSE's experiences.

M_Thomson

Luke wrote:

Virgin Money. I got their 9 month 0% last year only to follow it with another 6 months. Finishes September so am on the look out for another card. I want 12 months from virgin this time as that is there offer to new customers.

I think you are pushing your luck there You may get 6 months, but you won't get 12 if you already have the card.