Credit Balance on my M&S Card and they won't send it back!

ste_coxy

Hi guys, I am wondering if anyone can advise me what best to do.

I recently applied for a Barclaycard which is 20 months interest free and was accepted.

Now, my plan was to transfer £4500 of the £5000 limit I was given and use this to pay off my M&S Card which had a balance of £1700 and then use the remainder to pay off 2 overdrafts that I had. I planned to send the remainder from M&S to my current account and then transfer onto the overdrafts.

The balance transfer went through yesterday and has left me £2800 in credit however, after contacting M&S Money they said they could not transfer the money over to my bank account as the balance transfer was for the wrong amount (i.e. I'd transferred more than I should have done) and I'd need to ask Barclaycard to request for the excess funds back.

Is this correct, are they able to do this?

I have wrote in to them and requested for them to close my account and asked them to send a cheque or transfer directly into my bank account and I hope the fact I have requested to close will force them to do this.

I'd planned to close anyway as I want to improve my credit status and by having a satisfied listing on my report rather than having another credit provider with £4000 credit available, I thought this would be better on my report.

Has anyone got any advice on this or had a similar experience?

Degenerate

You shouldn't have paid the M&S card into credit, it's against the T&Cs. I believe they are within their rights to insist the money can only be returned to the point of origin.

I think your best way to salvage the situation is to spend the positive balance buying £2800 worth of Sterling Traveller's Cheques from M&S. This will cost you £28 in commission (1%). These can then be paid into a bank account. Ask on the Stoozing sub-forum for more info.

ste_coxy

Degenerate wrote: »

You shouldn't have paid the M&S card into credit, it's against the T&Cs. I believe they are within their rights to insist the money can only be returned to the point of origin.

I think your best way to salvage the situation is to spend the positive balance buying £2800 worth of Sterling Traveller's Cheques from M&S. This will cost you £28 in commission (1%). These can then be paid into a bank account. Ask on the Stoozing sub-forum for more info.

I did not think this would be a problem as I have heard of people doing this before when going on holidays, travelling, wishing to purchase expensive items etc. They also advised me when I'd rang up before enquiring about transferring a balance that they would only do it if the account was in credit otherwise I wouldn't have done so.

Thank you for the idea re the traveller's cheques.