Barclaycard charging interest on purchases made this month???

auntynet

December's bill came with a balance of £2485.06. This consisted of £1995.06 on an interest free balance transfer and the difference was new purchases.

I made a payment of £490.00 which cleared 5 days before the due date - this covered the new purchases and actually took a few pounds off the interest free amount.

January's bill came today which shows new purchases of £79.00 plus interest charges of over £5.00 !!!!!

The first call to the the Indian call centre ended with my husband being cut off after 20 mins. The second call lasted only 10 mins before he was cut off.

The third call lasted over 90 mins!!!! They explained that we were being charged interest on the £79 purchases made less than two weeks ago. We explained that on the back of the bill is a paragraph that explains all about when/if interest is charged - Front line staff at the call centre just couldn't grasp that interest should only be charged on new purchases if the balance isn't made in full by the due date, which in this case was 14th Feb. As usual, their supervisor/line manager wasn't available and could they call us back within 48 hrs? No way - we'd been on the line for over an hour and wanted to speak to someone that understood how credit cards work.

Another 15 mins later and we eventually spoke to someone who said that last months payment was taken off the supposed interest free balance transfer because the transfer was made before the new law came into effect, therefore the interest was chargeable on almost £500.

We then argued that whilst the balance transfer agreement was made before the new law applied, Barclaycard offered the new rules to its existing customers before the rules were compulsory.

This prompted another 15 min wait until they checked this out . . . . . the outcome was that they actually apologised to us cos we were right, they are refunding the interest charged on our last two bills and are giving us a £15 "good will" payment to compensate for our inconvenience.

The moral - check your bills carefully, especially if you've recently arranged a new balance transfer!! And stick to your guns when asking to speak to a supervisor.

jonesMUFCforever

Are they charging you interest on the balance transfer fee?
Will they appropriate all of your payment to the lowest charging (BT) portion of the debt and charge you interest on the purchases?

This will probably change with this month's statement as all lenders will have to put any repayment on the highest charging part of the balance.

auntynet

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

Are they charging you interest on the balance transfer fee?
Will they appropriate all of your payment to the lowest charging (BT) portion of the debt and charge you interest on the purchases?

This will probably change with this month's statement as all lenders will have to put any repayment on the highest charging part of the balance.

The balance transfer was done at the beginning of november but we were offered the new rules , ie, any payments come off the highest interest balance. The transfer fee was paid last month so it wasn't that.

When we finally got it sorted on the phone the guy we spoke to didn't admit they had done anything wrong - our opinion is that the billing process hasn't yet been updated to include the terms that we were offered - however they did agree to refund us the interest charges from the last 2 bills.

izools

The interest on January's bill covers the period from the date the purchases were made and the date the payment for them reached the account.

This period is still chargeable for interest because the statement balance wasn't cleared in full.

Perfectly normal.

Only difference is that due to the new rules you won't pay interest on them next month as you've now paid them off.