A quick halifax clairty card question

chopper78

rb10 wrote: »

You may be able to switch your existing card over to a Clarity card; phone up to see about this.

I had an old Halifax One card, I wanted a Halifax Clarity. I phoned up saying I wanted to cancel my card, they asked why, I said it was because I wanted a Clarity card, I was put through to the retentions team, and they agreed to replace my Halifax One account with a Halifax Clarity (new paperwork, new card, new account number)...

The_Enforcer

I will have to wait as I want to reach the next £15 withdrawal threshold for the cashback on my existing card before cancelling/converting. Not enough time to obtain a clarity card prior to my next foreign trip anyway, but definitely one to watch.

lisyloo

Ideally you should start paying it off ASAP, including while you are on holiday

I would not recomment taking the risk of using a shared computer abroad to carry out financial transactions.
The interest for 2 weeks is about 0.5%, so my advice would be to forget about the dififculties in trying to arrange it from abroad and make the payment (by BACS) when you return home.
If a statement has not been generated and you do not have a debit balance you will be unable to make a payment via the Halifax interface but you can make a BACS payment from your own telephone/on-line banking.

rb10

lisyloo wrote: »

I would not recomment taking the risk of using a shared computer abroad to carry out financial transactions.
The interest for 2 weeks is about 0.5%, so my advice would be to forget about the dififculties in trying to arrange it from abroad and make the payment (by BACS) when you return home.

However, if you have a balance on the account when you leave the UK, then you can set up future-dated bill payments from your current account for a few days after you anticipate making ATM withdrawals.

Assuming your trip is for a relatively short time, then by making the total value of all the bill payments less than the total you've spent since your last statement date, you won't be able to bring the account into credit.

However, you will reduce the interest that you have to pay, since the payments would firstly go towards any ATM withdrawals on the card, before purchases.

lisyloo

then you can set up future-dated bill payments from your current account for a few days after you anticipate making ATM withdrawals.

You can, but it's tricky as you don't know when you will able to use the ATMs.
I went to Egypt in November.
For some reason the ones at the airport weren't working, the hotel ATM that I had planned to use was broken and it was a weekend.

Personally I would recommend paying a quid or two in interest rather than going into credit and running the risk of having your card stopped (and subsequently paying a lot more on a higher charging card).
I took out £1200 in Egypt and the cost was about £3.

There is no point taking risks or getting all worked up over the cost of a coffee IMO, but it's down to personal choice at the end of the day.

You need to balance up the costs of a small interest payment compared with having your card stopped or cancelled because you broke the terms and went into credit.
You could also get someone else you trust back home to make payments for you.
But again you have to weigh up the cost (of phone calls/emails) and the hassle whilst your away.

I had a laptop with me and just for interests sake, the wifi charges were about £12 and my interest was about £3, so again you have to consider whether it's worth the charges.

rb10

lisyloo wrote: »

You can, but it's tricky as you don't know when you will able to use the ATMs.
I went to Egypt in November.
For some reason the ones at the airport weren't working, the hotel ATM that I had planned to use was broken and it was a weekend.

Personally I would recommend paying a quid or two in interest rather than going into credit and running the risk of having your card stopped (and subsequently paying a lot more on a higher charging card).

That's why I said to keep the total value of the bill payments less than the balance of recent transactions on your card at the time you leave the UK.

Worst case scenario and the ATMs are out of order - the payments just pay off part of the balance of purchases that you made in the UK. There is no risk of your card going into credit, you do not have to access your account from abroad, but you have a high chance of being able to reduce your interest.

Of course, we are only talking about a pound or two, but when it's so simple and there are no risks involved, then why not?

Venusflytrap

SecLender wrote: »

Statement date is irrelevant for cash withdrawls. you start paying interest from the the time of withdrawl.

Ideally you should start paying it off ASAP, including while you are on holiday, to minimize interest.

Was referring to purchase spends only. Of course cash withdrawals do not have any 'grace periods'.