Can Egg Money still be used as a mule?

kempstar

Can Egg Money still be used as a mule? I have an Egg Money card with a £4.5k limit, and have just been accepted for a First Direct card with a £10k limit and 0% for 20 months (2.9% fee). I would like to either pay off 10k of our mortgage (3.5% rate) or buy 10k worth of shares.
Can the Egg Money card still go into a positive balance? In the stoozing article on here, it seems to suggest that I would need to transfer from EM to my bank account first (up to £4k say) then do a BT from the FD card. So I would need to do it a few times.
Many thanks in advance for any help
Christian

lisyloo

Technically folowing the Ts&Cs - no.
Anecdotally - in the past people have said yes you can still do it.
So no-one can guarantee this will still work I'm afraid but you probably can do it.

kempstar

Are you saying technically you cant go into a credit balance, or technically you cant transfer money into bank accounts at all? As long as I can transfer into a bank account, it will be fine I think, it will just be a bit of hassle with a few transfers needed.

jakesuk

I put my Egg into a positive balance a couple of months back, no issues. Transfer to bank account was fine too.

Just be sure when you make the transfer from Egg card that you do not go into a negative balance by making the transfer else you might incur Eggs BT fee. ie. if you transfer £10k from First Direct to Egg and your Egg then has a positive balance of £10k. Just transfer £9,999 to your bank account or enough to leave a cushion

kempstar

OK so im going to do the following-

Clear egg money balance (it has £120 or something on there at the mo)
Balance transfer £10k from FD
Pay £9999 from EM into my bank account
Transfer £9999 from bank account to mortgage
Profit

Then I should be good to go?

pqrdef

kempstar wrote: »

Then I should be good to go?

Assuming you've got a cast-iron plan for paying off the balance on the FD card in 20 months' time.

lisyloo

Are you saying technically you cant go into a credit balance, or technically you cant transfer money into bank accounts at all?

The former is not allowed by the terms and conditions but my understanding (from anecdotes on these forums) is that they won't complain or send it back.
Transferring in itself is fine but you will may a BT fee on a negative balance and you don't want two fees as that would eat into your profit.

I'd chance the credit balance, but I was just saying the service is not guaranteed, so it might be wise to check regularly that it hasn't been bounced.

lisyloo

Assuming you've got a cast-iron plan for paying off the balance on the FD card in 20 months' time.

If it's a flexible mortgage from First Direct then I'd say it's pretty safe (you can drawdown instantly).
I have heard of one case where someone made a one-off payment and their mortgage limit was reduced (so they couldn't get the money back) but I think there were LTV/arrears issues, so that's pretty unusual.

kempstar

Paying it off in 20 months time will not be a problem. I have plenty of money in my company account (im self employed) but dont want to draw on it until next tax year for tax reasons.

Im going to chance the credit balance- The worst thing they can do is reject it or ask me to withdraw it. If not I will have to do it the slow way (described above).

Thanks everyone for your help.

th081

I did this a month or so ago so it is possible, however i ran into some issues to do with credit limit. I had a limit of 7k and about credit balance of 1k on there, i tried to withdraw (to my account) 7.5k it went through ok but never appeared in my account on calling up it was some issue with withdrawing more than my credit limit.

So unless you do it over the phone you might want to do a couple of transfers one of 90% of your limit then a few days later another 90%

CarlBateman

I´m trying to do this for the first time.

So far, I've been unable to find a facility to withdraw to a bank account.

Also checking the help states that there's a 3% handling fee for withdrawals. Which seems well out of order as I'm in credit.

I´ve contacted Egg for clarification.