Foolish balance transfer?

DilbertJones

I have already done this, but today it occurred to me that it may not work and I have possibly been foolish.

I have a OD on two old current accounts I wish to clear, totalling around 1.5k plus and credit card debt of £450 I wish to move all to my barclaycard 6.9% life of balance rate.

So what I have done is transferred approx 2k from my barclaycard to my virgin money credit card. My plan was to then close the card and have them transfer the positive balance to my bank account, then I can clear off the OD's

Will this work at all? If not and it's rejected what will actually happen?

nctmum

I think that Virgin may contact you to check Money Laundering as you are putting your account in credit by a fairly large amount but they probably wont reject it - but if it is sent back, you are in the same position as you were before - although whether Barclaycard will charge you the fee regardless is another thing.

You've done it now anyway - fingers crossed for you!

thenudeone

Deliberately putting a credit card account in credit is usually against the T&Cs and even if it wasn't, doing so by £2k will raise some warning flags on the account.

Why didn't you just put all of your new spending on the virgin card for a month or two, then transfer the legitimate balance to BC, whilst using the income that you would have used for those purchases to reduce your OD and expensive credit card debt?

guesswho2000

Or...seeing as Virgin are run by MBNA, they allow super balance transfers...you could have transferred from Virgin first (assuming your credit limit was high enough), then transferred from Virgin to Barclaycard...this is, of course, irrelevant now, but for future reference

DilbertJones

Well I really feel like a ruddy fool now!

I suppose I will find out either way sometime this week. (how long do BT's take anyway?)

If it fails I really hope barclaycard don't charge me for the pleasure.

DilbertJones

To add another complication to the issue, my virgin account is closed, I should imagine this will make it less likely they will accept such a large amount?

If this does fail then I am just going to have to be really strict with my self for clearing the over drafts.

Only problem with this is I know I will slip up

oki25

You will get away with it, just be carefull, repeat offenders won't go un-noticed

DilbertJones

oki25 wrote: »

You will get away with it, just be carefull, repeat offenders won't go un-noticed

Get away with it as in it 'may' go through??

I hope so

DominicJ_2

I'm sure you could have just done a balance transfer to your bank account....

YorkshireBoy

DominicJ wrote: »

I'm sure you could have just done a balance transfer to your bank account....

From a "closed" Virgin card? Or did you mean from the Barclaycard?

DilbertJones

Barclaycard wouldn't allow me to transfer to my bank account.