Ulster Bank Balance Transfer - Feel I've been tricked!!

sarah1980

I took up the Ulster Bank BT offer, got my card this week and rang up to do the BT. HOWEVER, I was told that I couldn't transfer the balance because my current card is issued by Natwest who are part of RBS (as are Ulster Bank). Did anyone else know about this?! Because I thought Natwest were part of "The Big Five" and therefore independent.

So now I have a credit card with 0% on BT's and purchases but nothing to transfer onto it.

As luck would have it, I also have a Sainsburys Bank card with around half the credit limit used up. This is offering 0% on purchases and 5.9% on BTs for the life of the balance (and I am still within 6-month limit for BTs).

Soooo..... what i am thinking, is can I transfer as much as possible of my Natwest balance onto the Sainsburys Bank card (to take it up to the limit), then transfer the whole amount to my new Ulster Bank card?

Then....

Seeing as my Sainsburys Bank card has a lower limit than the Ulster Bank card, could I transfer the remaining Natwest balance to the Sainsburys Bank card, then transfer as much of this as poss from the Sainsburys Bank card to the Ulster Bank?

This will still leave me with some debt on the Sainsburys Bank card, but considering its at less than half the interest rate than the Natwest card (and that is valid for the life of the balance) it seems the best option.

To illustrate this, say I have £2k on my Natwest card and £500 on my Sainsburys Bank card.

I transfer £1000 from NW to SB to take me up to the 95% BT limit (total on SB card = £1500).

I then transfer the full £1500 to the Ulster bank card.

I then go back and transfer the remaining £500 from the NW card to the SB card.

Then I take £200 of this SB card balance and transfer it to UB to take me up to 95% BT limit (total on UB card = £1700).

This leaves me with £300 on the SB card which is at 5.9% and £1700 on the UB card at 0% for 6 months.

What do you reckon? Is this even possible? Is Sainsburys Bank part of the RBS group? Will they be able to tell it originated from an RBS card?

If anyone knows somewhere I can find a list of credit card issuers and who the actual lender is, this would be a massive help.

Thanks in advance.

DeepSporran

Try this:

http://www.stoozing.com/cards.htm

Phantom_Flan_Flinger

NatWest merged with RBS back in 2000.

Admittedly it was a while ago, but it was well covered in the press.