another 0% balance transfer offer

juxta_3

Already have a 0% transfer on the go, due to end in Feb but keep getting offers from same card company for another 0% balance transfer for 13 months presumably from a different card - how does that work? ie would the fresh one be treated as a separate deal to the original one or do they combine them for the 13 months?
Surely if separate it would mean a separate account?

thanks

sistafromanothermista

:wave:
I'm not sure either
Without meaning to hijack your thread i too have a related Q to this.

Lets say i have a limit of 11k
I currently have 6k @ 0% until May
I have been offered a deal to BT from another card @0% until sept


If i do a BT from another card, lets say an additional 4k and the 0% ends on the 6k (hope i'm making sense) how would i, in May, transfer just the 6k (to another provider<tarting>)about to be gaining interest and leave the 4k to run for the offered 0% until Sept???

sfax

They would be treated separately and in Feb when one deal expires, anything you pay would pay off the balance that has the highest interest which would be the 0% BT ending in Feb. I'm not sure how they would treat the payments between now and Feb as they would both be on balances with 0% interest. Could be split or an arbitrary choice

sistafromanothermista

What about transferring the balance which is interest bearing?....

gglaze

Yes, it is an arbitrary choice, or could be specified in your T&C - but often this can be set up to work against you. I have seen cases where for example you have a BT expiring in Feb, and another in Sept, and we make a big payment in Jan to clear out a chunk - and it turns out that payment is applied to the Sept expiring balance, meaning that you are left with less longer term 0% and more shorter term 0% which will shortly become a higher rate and need to be paid off!

The new regulations in the last few years ensure that banks don't do the obvious thing to screw the customer over, by applying payments to lower rates before higher rates, as they used to do quite often. But as far as I know, there is nothing to say the bank must apply payments to the "worst" of the two balances if both balances are at the same rate - and therefore the one expiring earliest qualifying as the "worst" from the customer's point of view. Banks are not stupid, so of course they can and will take advantage of this.

So that is the one big caveat with running multiple BT balances on the same card - first test with some smaller payments to be sure you understand how payments are being applied - usually all to one or all to the other - and then once you understand which is which (if the statement even gives you enough detail to understand this), then you have to make the right judgement on whether and when to make large pre-payments.

This makes it particularly difficult to, for example, avoid any interest at all - because if you pay off what you think should be the remaining balance for the Feb expiry, just before Feb, hoping to clear that off and then have only the Sept expiring balance left - you may very well end up paying off the Sept balance instead and effectively be stuck having to also pay off the Feb expiry balance again. So for this, the best bet if you are not sure is to wait until the day your statement comes out with the Feb expiry, and make the payment on or just after that day.

gglaze

sistafromanothermista wrote: »

What about transferring the balance which is interest bearing?....

From the point of view of the card currently holding the balance, a transfer is just another form of "payment" - in fact most if not all BTs show up as "Thanks for your payment" transactions on the card the balance is transferred from.

So all the same rules apply (or don't apply) whether you do a cash payment or a balance transfer or whatever other form of payment.

sistafromanothermista

I understand that, what i guess i mean is how would the BT differentiate between the part of the balance gaining interest and the bit that's not??

gglaze

It's not up to the card doing the BT.

Forget for a moment you are doing a BT. Imagine you just send a cash payment to pay off your credit card balance. It's up to the card company to decide how to apply your payment, i.e. to which part of your balance to apply your payment.

When you do a BT it is the same thing - a lump sum is sent as a payment to your credit card, and your credit card company decides how to apply your payment, based on whatever rules they use for any other payments.

sistafromanothermista

Knowing CC's it'll be in their favour then
Thanks for that. I guess it's not really worth doing.

jo-bo

Usually in the ts and cs it will state the order in which your payments will be made and what will happen if you have seperate balance transfers and how they will be paid.
The safest way to judge is to get out your ts and cs for your card, as all providers are different, and check how they'll do it.

sfax

jo-bo wrote: »

Usually in the ts and cs it will state the order in which your payments will be made and what will happen if you have seperate balance transfers and how they will be paid.
The safest way to judge is to get out your ts and cs for your card, as all providers are different, and check how they'll do it.

I've never seen it covered in any of my Ts and Cs and I currently have 4 BT cards. All they say is that they will pay off the balance transfer with the highest interest first. The decision of which of two 0% interest balances with different expiry dates is never explicitly covered in my experience