69.3% Apr

Backbiter

That's what Barclaycard charged me for a £50 cash advance last June.

I have NEVER previously withdrawn cash on a credit card, but was forced to late one Saturday night when all the cash points in central Oxford were either empty or not accepting my Connect card, and in desperation I put in my Barclaycard for which I had only this year learned the PIN. To my relief out came £50.
On my next bill I was charged a handling fee of £2.50. Plus, even though I paid the balance in full by the due date, £1 interest, as there is no interest free period on cash advances. Weirdly, they repeated this £1 interest charge on the next statement, presumably to cover the period between them issuing my statement (17th July) and the date I actually paid the bill (11th Aug). So for a period of 47 days they charged me £4.50 for advancing me £50 - which is an APR of 69.3%. I would imagine that if I'd withdrawn say £30 I'd have faced the same £4.50 in charges, which would make the APR 96.95% for the same 47 day period.

Is anyone else astounded by this?

abbecer

It's disgusting. You'll know next time!! I don't know how they get away with it.

Rebecca x

Xbigman

Sorry but it isn't 69%. £2.50 of that was a fee for withdrawing cash and not a direct % charge. Likewise, borrowing small amounts over short periods of time always skews the % figure upwards.
Everyone knows taking money out on credit cards is expensive. Paying £4.50 to get yourself out the !!!!!! on a saturday night is not that unreasonable.
Regards



X

Astaroth

the £2.50 would be included in the APR figure as APR represents the total cost of borrowing £1500 over 12 months - hence why the cheque cashing companies APRs often come out over 200% when there is only a fee and no interest.

Have to agree with Xbigman on it though - not that bad for getting yourself out a problem (assuming it was a problem and not just wanting to continue drinking etc). Of cause the other option if you do have to draw money out as an emergency and always pay your card in full is simply to pay the money back into the account the card off the next day including the £2.50 admin charge and say £1 to cover any interest.

bargains83

Egg Money charges no fee on cash advances, you just pay the standard interest rate which is between 6.9% and 15.9% APR depending on what you are accepted at when you apply. Interest is payable from the date of the transaction but if you repay it sharpish you wouldn't get stung for much.

This seems to be the best card out there for cash advances.

nomoneytoday

LTSB used to be ok, charging 1.5% but with no minimum charge. Nationwide also had a low charge.
Both have now decided to charge "minimum fees" - not good

daveboy

The trick is to not always carry your credit card with you. I always leave it behind....takes away any possible temptation to allow the banks to rip me off.

Taking cash out on a credit card is about as bad as having a secured loan from Picture....borrow £25k, but we'll have a total of £42k back over 25 years.

trets77

and they have the nerve to advertise thier card as THE ONE to use overseas (Jennifer Saunders in Japan and previously Angus Deyton and Rowan Atkinson)
when it does the same nasty trick then.


But people not savvy with this board and site use it...... i live in despair of the british general public sometimes, as a whole we are useless consumers .... and put up with high prices and crap service as the norm......

YorkshireBoy

Astaroth wrote:

Of cause the other option if you do have to draw money out as an emergency and always pay your card in full is simply to pay the money back into the account the card off the next day including the £2.50 admin charge and say £1 to cover any interest.

I've done this before when I've needed cash abroad for the last few days of my holiday, and cleared my entire balance on my return to the UK a few days later. However, the problem comes when there's 3 weeks worth of shopping purchases on the card and there's 3 weeks to 'pay day'.

Far better, in my opinion, is to always carry 2 debit cards in your wallet (from different institutions of course) - or enough cash to see you through the night!

BestFootForward_2

trets77 wrote:

...... i live in despair of the british general public sometimes, as a whole we are useless consumers

From experience, I think this world-wide

trets77 wrote:

.... and put up with high prices and crap service as the norm......

Did you read what Bob Kily from TfL said about the London Tube about us muggins allowing the tube companies to treat us like cattle?

Gorgeous_George

The CC Company's charges are well publicised. It is normal to pay interest on borrowed money.

The credit card companies charge shops 3% or thereabouts for purchases so on a £50 purchase they would have got £1.50. Therefore, I consider a 3% charge for cash advances to be reasonable. Add to this the interest from the date of withdrawal and any fees charged by the ATM operator to get the 'reasonable' charge.

Of course, we all want something for nothing and personally,I would write to the CC company requesting some of the money back (no harm in trying it on).

More importantly, why do you have a Barclaycard? What do they offer? I have GE Money (3% cashback on fuel and groceries), Amex (2% cashback, I think, hardly used because it's rarely accepted) and Tesco (0.5% in Tesco points but used at MFI at 4 times their value). Oh, and a A&L card that was paying 1% but not used since this dropped to a miserly 0.5% - keeping till it pays out next January).



GG