Halifax offering me O% on purchases and B/T

doodle_bug

Got a letter the other day saying that they were going to send me a C/C without any need for me to apply. I did used to have a Halifax card and don't rmemember if I still do, I have bundles of cards which I've used for the 0% in the past. They say I can have 9 months 0% BT plus a fee and 0% on purchases. Now I like to make purchases on my American express for the money back but having thought about it I'd be silly not to spend the £2000-£3000 on Xmas on the Halifax. I'd only earn £30 on AE but if I saved the £3000 for 9 months I could just about earn £100 in interest. Convinced myself.

PS. I wonder if they have done a credit check on me.

kuohu

doodle_bug wrote:

... I'd be silly not to spend the £2000-£3000 on Xmas on the Halifax...

Wow can I come to your house for Xmas? :beer:

Phoenix79_2

£2k-£3k on xmas? Are you sure you are a moneysavingexpert?!

MarkyMark_2

All halifax customers are getting that deal cos they halifax have changed over to mastercard from visa, so guessing you must still be a customer with them.

Rosie75

I was offered that deal when I went into the branch. I didn't want another credit check done as I have recently arranged a mortgage and car loan, but I was told that I was pre-approved and they wouldn't run a check. (They can't have already credit checked you because they can't do this without your consent). The credit limit they gave me was rather scary though - £7500. Will be ringing them to get this reduced.

Welliesorter

I had the letter too. I believe it's illegal to send you a card that you haven't applied for. What they are actually doing is replacing an existing Visa card with a Mastercard. There's therefore no reason for them to do a credit check.

doodle_bug

Phoenix79 wrote:

£2k-£3k on xmas? Are you sure you are a moneysavingexpert?!

LOL

I'm only going by past perfromance, I have 4 kids and normally the bill which comes through in January is about that.

I normally spend about £300 on each of them, my normal food bill is about £400 a month, sometimes it is a lot lower if I have plenty of money off coupons on the go. I'd say the general bill would be £1000 so £2000-£3000 is a fair guess. January food bill tends to be a lot less using all the food up from xmas.

Clarety_2

Please be aware that if you use this new mastercard, and you already have outstanding items on your visa bill - any payments you make will be applied to the 0% purchases first. You will thereby incur interest chrges on the rest.

Eg- We were offered the card on 15 October, when we had £400 already incurred on the old visa card. The Halifax lady said that any purchases we made with the new card would be interest free. It being a different card we assumed it would be billed separately to the VIsa bill......and used the master
card for a further £200. The bill arrived on 6th November with £600 oweing. (Mastercard and Visa purchases).

We had planned to pay off the original £400 in full, but now because we have used the mastercard if we do pay £400 - Halifax will use that to pay off the £200 spent on the mastercard (0% interest) and then use the rest to pay half of the £400 we had incurred on the Visa card.

We feel cheated of our 9months 0% interest. A valuable lesson in not to trust these banks.:mad: :mad: :mad:

tom188

And another reason why you should always read the terms and conditions of an account.

King_Of_Fools

Clarety wrote:

Please be aware that if you use this new mastercard, and you already have outstanding items on your visa bill - any payments you make will be applied to the 0% purchases first. You will thereby incur interest chrges on the rest.

Eg- We were offered the card on 15 October, when we had £400 already incurred on the old visa card. The Halifax lady said that any purchases we made with the new card would be interest free. It being a different card we assumed it would be billed separately to the VIsa bill......and used the master
card for a further £200. The bill arrived on 6th November with £600 oweing. (Mastercard and Visa purchases).

We had planned to pay off the original £400 in full, but now because we have used the mastercard if we do pay £400 - Halifax will use that to pay off the £200 spent on the mastercard (0% interest) and then use the rest to pay half of the £400 we had incurred on the Visa card.

We feel cheated of our 9months 0% interest. A valuable lesson in not to trust these banks.:mad: :mad: :mad:

But if you pay off the full £600 you can still take advantage of the remaining 8 months 0% interest free on future purchases. So you have only really lost the interest free on the £200 spent so far.

yaacov81

if you have o% on purchases does that mean you dont even have to make the min payment?