Barclaycard Interest Rates ?....Illegal ?

Droffats

Hi zx81, thanks for helping with this.
Yes, on the back of the statement it says that the Minimum Payment is "2% to 2.25% of the amount you owe us on your monthly statement".
Yes, the £362.25 figure is definitely just interest. It says "Interest On Your Standard Balance, INTEREST 1.873%" next to the figure.
That is on page 2 of the statement.
On page 1 it shows "estimated interest" for next month as £115.19.

opinions4u

Droffats wrote: »

Gambling ?....how on Earth did you work THAT one out ?

I didn't. I guessed.

Sorry to disappoint you, "opinions4u", but I am self-employed and have to use the card to purchase materials for my work...sometimes this can involve fairly high sums of money.

I'm not remotely disappointed. Does your accountant offset the interest charges against tax? Ask if it's poosible. I fit is, there's a big moneysaving for you.

I have never "gambled" in my life and, to be honest, I find your suggestion rather offensive.

There was no intention to offend and I'm sorry that I have done.

As somebody who used to gamble on credit cards, the spending pattern reflected that and I was merely trying to identify a cause for the problem.

Droffats

That`s interesting, izools, so they tried the same with you ?
Ok, I`ll try ringing them again, then, but last time I tried that it got me nowhere.
Perhaps I was just unlucky with the "Agent" that took my call ?

[Deleted User]

izools will be right then - it looks like a straightforward mistake. You'll need to contact them again and ask for it to be escalated. Would be usefiul if you can find the previous month's statement, where presumably it will have said estimated interest something like £115 - so that will help them see its a discrepancy they need to investigate.

The only other possibility I can think of is that they somehow didn't charge interest last month, and have added it to this month's. But this should have come with some sort of description (eg interest adjustment) or separate letter. So I don't think that's likely.

Droffats

Apology accepted, opinions4u.
Sorry I took your post a bit too personally, but I am just a normal, hard-working chap trying to make a living for myself and my family. Things are quiet, business-wise, for me at the moment + the last thing I needed right now was an "interest" charge of this magnitude. I`m sure you will appreciate why I am a bit "touchy" about the subject.
Yes, I expect my accountant would probably be able to off-set the charges against my tax bill to some degree, but that doesn`t make the charges "right" in my view, so I am not comfortable with accepting them.

Droffats

Hi zx81.
I`ve just looked at my December statement and that shows an estimated interest figure of £394.30 ! (which, I must admit, I hadn`t noticed before....).
However, the interest charged on that statement was just £27.27, ie approximately "correct" for the previous month`s balance of £1565.24.
This tends to suggest that THIS month`s interest charges of £362.25 can only be based on the purchases since then, does it not ?
If the latest charges were accumulative from previous purchases, surely the December interest charged would have been really high too ?

[Deleted User]

Blimey. This is making my head hurt.

What was your closing balance on your December statement?

chattychappy

Take a simplified example (assume no other transactions and zero balance carried forward):

5th Jan - purchase £1000
1st Feb - statement generated (no interest will be shown)
20th Feb - pay £50
1st Mar - statement generated (interest will be shown)

Now the interest shown 1st March will be for the period 5th Jan to 28th Feb (mostly on the balance of £1000). About 7 weeks. Ie 7 weeks interest appearing in one month.

Could it be some effect such as this?

Also I recall one provider (?Barclaycard) did have a system whereby there is some kind of allocation to individual purchases. So only when the full amount of a purchase has been paid for does interest stop running on the full amount. That would hit harder where you tend to make fewer but larger purchases.

Degenerate

Droffats wrote: »

That`s interesting, izools, so they tried the same with you ?
Ok, I`ll try ringing them again, then, but last time I tried that it got me nowhere.
Perhaps I was just unlucky with the "Agent" that took my call ?

Trying to get a real issue resolved by Barclaycard's indian call centre can be tortuous.

Droffats

Hi zx81
The closing balance on the December statement was the high one...£12,124-79 but 1.873% of even that figure, which the balance had, obviously, not been at for the entire month, is only £227-10, so I just can`t see where the £362-25 that they have charged me this month comes from.