Halifax Clarity Card - Please read and help me make the OFT aware of this issue!

rb10

dalesrider wrote: »

You use a credit card to withdraw cash......

While it maybe fee free, is it interest free? As cash = interest from day one.
A customer drawing large amount of cash in a short period will set alarm bells ringing.

Would have been better to do a cashline to your current account and using that to draw cash at a atm.

A few pence interest on a good credit card is significantly cheaper than a few pounds (per transaction) on a debit card.

And it's also cheaper than getting foreign currency in the UK before you leave, as you get the perfect Visa/Mastercard exchange rate with no loading. Even the 'commission free' foreign currency providers add a loading into the exchange rate.

No idea what you mean by the term 'cashline' - care to explain?

dalesrider

Cashline is where you transfer a sum from your credit card to your current account.

YorkshireBoy

dalesrider wrote: »

Cashline is where you transfer a sum from your credit card to your current account.

That sounds like the RBSG 'money transfer' facility. I'm not aware of anyone else (excluding the SBT providers) outside RBSG who offer such a 'cash advance' at purchase rates of interest and fee-free. Are there any you know of?

chanz4

Short thing, its their money and they can restrict or remove limits at anytime.

jonesMUFCforever

Saru - just one question for you - did you advise Halifax beforehand that you were going abroad?
Risk is a double edged sword - it is fact that a lot of fraud originates abroad with both debit and credit cards. Had they known you were going abroad they might have treated you differently.

lisyloo

While it maybe fee free, is it interest free?

I've done it interest free yes, where I've initiated faster payments to the credit card around the same time as the withdrawal.
You are not meant to go into credit, but for small amounts for small periods of time you can generally get away with it.
So yes it can be done interest free, more usually there is a small amount of interest but it can still be very cheap.

sarumane

Hi All

A response to some questions:

I did inform them about going abroad. They did not have any fraud concerns.

Additionally, once I paid my money on the card prior to using it abroad in order that the withrawal was my cash and not Halifax's. They contacted me and told me they would remove the card from me if I operated it like that. I was free to withdraw cash but I could not run my account in credit.

Debit cards are too dear to use abroad.

The Delphi scoring effect has impacted me on a wider basis now - initially it was just Halifax that lowered my credit limit despite paying every bill in full.

Anyone need any more information? Is there anything we ca do about this?

Made a complaint about T & C's, however, as another poster stated there reply was literally 'What you going to do about it? You can bank elsewhere'.

Regards

Saru