Nat West Visa. Is this right?

Cell

I'm just checking out that my understanding is correct.

My wife's credit card was taken out last year with a 22 month interest free balance transfer. She's used it for work expenses, and as a result a small amount of interest has been charged, which I understand. However payments made to the account have been taken off the Interest Free balances, not the purchase balance.

This is the relevant extract from the T&Cs:

6 Payments
(a) Payments to the account will not reduce the balance until the payment is cleared. Your statement includes information about clearance periods.
(b) We apply any payment to overdue amounts from previous statements before reducing the Minimum Payment. Balances will also be reduced according to their
interest rates with the highest paid first. Payments in excess of the statement balance will be applied in the same way to reduce amounts charged to your account
but not yet shown on any statement. If parts of the balance have the same interest rate, items on which interest is charged on interest will reduce first.
(c) Where balances have the same special ofer interest rate, they will be reduced according to their special ofer expiry dates, with the earlier paid first.

http://www.natwest.com/downloads/personal/nw_sample_tscs.pdf

On her June statement the summary was as follows (approx, rounded up or down):

Balance £1185, of which £1165 was 0% intro and £20 purchases.

In the next statement period she spent around £230 on business expenses and when these were reimbursed I paid that back plus around £30 extra. All these transactions occurred in the same statement period and are correctly recorded.

However on the July statement while the balance has reduced to £1153 the split is as follows:

£924 0% intro and £229 purchases.

Surely my payments should have been applied to the purchases balance rather than the 0% figure?

Before I get my wife to go through the process of speaking with them can anyone confirm my understanding is correct or point out any obvious mistakes I've made.

Thanks in advance.

JournalGirl

I think it's because you paid before the next statement, so at the time if payment, only £20 of purchases were 'statemented' and these have been cleared. The remainder of her expense payment went against the existing statement, which was mostly her balance transfer

Cell

I thought that at first, but these are the transactions (some details deleted) and dates:

19 JUN 20 JUN MANCHESTER GBR 10.43
19 JUN 20 JUN M'CHESTER M90 5.30
20 JUN 20 JUN FASTER PAYMENT RECEIVED - 22.00
20 JUN 22 JUN MILANO ITA 107.74
130.00 EUR EXCHANGE RATE 1.206609
20 JUN 22 JUN MILANO ITA 8.28
10.00 EUR EXCHANGE RATE 1.207729
21 JUN 25 JUN MORTARA ITA 94.33
114.00 EUR EXCHANGE RATE 1.208523
06 JUL 06 JUL 00084367 FASTER PAYMENT RECEIVED - THANK YOU 235.00 -
07 JUL 09 JUL 00061956 FASTER PAYMENT RECEIVED - THANK YOU 4.94 -


But now I think about it I get what you mean. It's the statement, not the transaction date that's important. I would have been better holding back the last two payments until the current statement period.

It seems a bit unfair that by paying earlier we're penalised and now hold a larger interest attracting balance than we would have, but you live and learn.

Thanks for your reply:)

JournalGirl

Exactly....I've heard of people being charged a late payment fee for paying before their statement date because their account showed extra payments in the first month but no payments in the statement month.

Next time, stick her expenses money in a savings account until it's due.

cats2012

Not anything major to add, just wanted to say this is almost certainly what's happened as it's happened to me in the past.