MBNA not allowing balance transfer to pay off their debt!?

bairn7

Hi all

I have built up quite a bit of debt over my student years and I'm now in a position to start paying things off. I have calculated that if I stick to a budget, I should be able to pay-off my £7k debts in 12-18 months.

I had two MBNA credit cards, both with c 2.5k debt on each. I also have a 0% loan from my employer of around 2k. The MBNA rates are quite poor (18%) and I was recently shocked to receive a letter from MBNA saying that they were increasing my standard borrowing rate on one of my cards from 18% to 27% (therefore matching the cash transfer rate!!).

I contacted them to reject the increase and I know that I must now pay off the balance and the card will be cancelled once cleared. The account is now marked as 'suspended' online.

I obtained a barclaycard with 0% for 29 months and enough of a credit limit to transfer both of the MBNA cards for a 2.85% fee. I've transferred my active MBNA card but the 'suspended' account transfer was rejected. It appears that because the account is suspended, I cannot transfer money to the account via a balance transfer. I'm waiting to get confirmation from MBNA on this, but does this sound right?

I'm pretty gutted because I thought I was being smart geting a 0% card to reduce the interest payments (currently around £120 per month).

The only options I can think of now are paying the 18% debts first (using the 0% card, which gives me 0% on purchases for 6 months, to do all of my shopping etc so as to maximise the amount I repay) OR do a cash advance from my newly cleared MBNA card so as to have the cash to repay the suspended account, and then do a new balance transfer for the cash advance. The latter will incurr a 5% cash advance fee and 2.85% balance transfer fee but interest should be minimal.

Gutted that I now have a large available balance at 0% for 29 months and I can't use it!!

Any other ideas?

Thanks

bigadaj

What you are doing sounds right, presumably it's mbna that are creating the problem with transferring the debt on the suspended account?

If so they shouldn't be doing this, raise it with them as a formal complaint, that in itself should provoke them to allow the transfer to occur, if not they have up to eight weeks and you can then go to the ombudsman which costs them money.

bairn7

Thanks bigadaj

What is dp? Is it denying payment? If so, I don't know. All I know is that I processed a balance transfer with barclaycard and it didn't go through. When processing the transfer I have to give the card to transfer the funds to. Obviously my MBNA card is blocked so I presume this is why the transfer go through.

Is it worth taking it up with MBNA? It's in their favour to prevent the payment so I have to pay the interst but it doesn't seem fair given that they absolutely hiked their rates.

bigadaj

Sorry just a typo.

I'd check with barclaycard that they haven't any problems with the transfer but I'd have thought the issue would be with mbna, so complaint to them and threaten and go to the fos if they don't allow the transfer.