Virgin Promotional offer of 0% on BTs

Lilith1980

Hi all,

I have a credit card with virgin and have about £3,500 left on it (at 27%!). Really proud as not so long ago I had about £8k left but managed to whittle the balance down.

They keep sending me letters saying they have a 0% promotional rate on balance transfers. I have another credit card with Halifax which is at 17.9% but if I transferred this to Virgin, would that mean that my £3,500 sits there gathering interest while I pay off the 0%?

Thanks

[Deleted User]

You payments would go towards the £3,500, leaving the BT's amount sitting on 0% for the duration of the offer.

You could BT the interest bearing balance to the lower Halifax card - or even then BT is back to the Virgin at 0% but you would need to factor in the BT fees.

Lilith1980

Thanks zx81, I'd never even thought of that.

How long would the Virgin amount that's transferred to Halifax have to sit with Halifax before I could BT it back to Virgin without either party getting funny about it?

[Deleted User]

As soon as it's appeared on your Halifax account, you could send it back.

Normally you would want to wait until it appears on the next statement, but as it would be the only balance on your account (having already BT'd the original balance to Virgin, you could do it immediately.

Lilith1980

Thanks, that's really useful.

For some reason I thought the 0% would be paid off first and they'd keep adding interest onto the interest-paying part as I thought that's where they'd make their money.

exel1966

From the Virgin website.

If you don't pay off your balance in full, your repayments will be allocated to balances at the highest rates first. If you have balances attracting the same promotional rate, we will allocate your repayments to the balance with the earliest start date – and if the start dates are the same, repayments will come from the one with the highest standard rate.

Please note, this applies whether or not lower interest rate transactions have appeared on your statement yet.

MABLE

exel1966 wrote: »

From the Virgin website.

If you don't pay off your balance in full, your repayments will be allocated to balances at the highest rates first. If you have balances attracting the same promotional rate, we will allocate your repayments to the balance with the earliest start date – and if the start dates are the same, repayments will come from the one with the highest standard rate.

Please note, this applies whether or not lower interest rate transactions have appeared on your statement yet.

If however you use the card for purchases and you have a BT in force they charge interest from the moment the purchase hits the account. Found this out to my cost a little while ago.

Lilith1980

Thanks for your replies. I had searched the Virgin site but hadn't found that statement!

MABLE - thanks for that.

InsideInsurance

Lilith1980 wrote: »

For some reason I thought the 0% would be paid off first and they'd keep adding interest onto the interest-paying part as I thought that's where they'd make their money.

It is exactly what credit card companies used to do but they got their wrists slapped about it and all changed (there was talk about it being a statutory change but dont know if it got that far or if they all decided to play ball without having another piece of legislation to be compliant to)