Sainsbury's reject credit balances from BTs

koru

Sainsbury's just wrote to me with a raft of changes to their T&Cs, including this new term:

"You must not transfer funds from another credit card to your account that would leave a credit balance on your account. We may return any funds that exceed the balance owing on your account from which the money has been sent."

Presumably, this is intended to make it harder to use this card to stooze other cards. Or maybe it is some sort of anti-money laundering measure?

klondyke

Halifax sent a similar letter.

koru

So it isn't just MBNA cards. I wonder if this is an across-the-board coordinated move by card companies? The big question will be whether egg have agreed to introduce this new term.

MarkyMarkD

I've said before, and I expect I'll have to say again, there is NO reason to leave a credit balance on any card.

For goodness's sake. Transfer the money from Egg (presumably) to where you really want it. As soon as you know the transfer has happened, get the balance transferred from Egg to the new card account.

Result = loss of a few days' interest in your stoozing account, or a few days' interest paid to Egg or whoever the intermediary account is. Big deal. A few days out of 6 or 9 or 12 or 18 months.

Why does anyone imagine they have to leave any account in credit during this process? It's simply not worth inviting hassle by doing this.

koru

But the procedure you outlined involves putting your egg card into credit for a few days. It would not work if they simply sent back any cash in excess of what you owe to egg, and this is what Sainsbury's say they will do. If egg adopt the same terms then I think it will make stoozing harder.

I agree that there is no sense in leaving a credit balance sitting there earning no interest for weeks or months. But I don't think anyone proposes to do that.

zcaprd7

If Egg did this can you imagine how many customers they'd lose?

MarkyMarkD

My original post amended to clarify what I meant - thanks koru for pointing out my error.

koru

There are circumstances in which you might want to go into credit.

eg, you get a new 0% card, which has a £25,000 credit limit, so you want to transfer £25k from it to your current account. It doesn't do SBTs, so you need to use your egg card, but this only has a credit limit of £15k. You could SBT £15k from egg to your current account, then pay that off via a £15k BT from your new card. Then repeat the process for another £10k.

But if your new card charges a 2% BT fee, capped at £50 per BT, this is going to cost you £100. You might therefore prefer to just do a single BT of £25k and save yourself £50 of fees. But this will not work if egg reject the excess £10k of BT.

simonleblank

I have just phoned egg and blagged 0% 'till Sept. My anniversary 5 months 0% kicks in during November, This will certainly help.