Payment allocation w.r.t balance txfrs

PP1984

Hello everyone,

Looking for some advice on whether my bank has done wrong or not.

On my bank statement is says that the high APR portions of my credit card balance are paid off first.

I had a promotional balance transfer rate on my card, of £2000, up to September 2013.

About a month ago the total balance was arounf £8000, with the £2000 at 0% APR.

A couple of weeks ago I applied for another card with a different company, who offered me £5000 balance transfer at 0% for 24 months. So I took this offer, and transferred £5000 from my original card.

So I expected that the original card would have £2000 at 0%, and an extra £1000 remaining at the standard rates.

But no! I now only have £69 at the 0% promo rate. The rest of the balance is up at 25% or so.

I have emailed the bank twice, each time they say someone will get back to me. I just phoned to get an update, I held on for 15 minutes before the line went dead.

Any info and advice much appreciated.

chattychappy

It does sound like an error to me. The only circumstance I can think of where a received payment (including BT) isn't applied to the highest rated balance first is where it hasn't yet appeared on a statement. But that doesn't sound like the case here.

Which card was it?

Good luck getting it fixed.

PP1984

It's a HSBC visa card.

It's my first query to them in 15 years, so it's not a bad track record. It would just be nice of them to explain.

zerog

The credit card team has been notoriously slow at replying to messages through internet banking. I was accused of not paying the minimum when a refund completely cleared my balance, and it took them 2 months to say that there was no problem.

PP1984

Just in case anyone is interested in the outcome:

The bank say that I paid off too much of my balance during one month, even though there was also a lot of spending that kept the "day to day" balance high.

Apparently any payments only go towards transactions that have already been on a statement. Transactions since a statement are ignored when it comes to payment allocation.

However they kindly agreed to adjust my account to how I expected it to be i.e. the £2000 is back at 0% :T

thenudeone

PP1984 wrote: »

Apparently any payments only go towards transactions that have already been on a statement. Transactions since a statement are ignored when it comes to payment allocation.

This approach is not uncommon but is clearly breaking the spirit (if not the letter) of the regulations which were effectively forced on the CC companies and which were meant to stop CC companies maximising the interest charged by allocating payments in their favour.

It's a good result to have the 0% offer back but you shouldn't have had to ask for it IMO.