Balance Transfer Fees

smartsaver

PS Well done A1B ;D

Someone following my own heart..

Next year I hope to earn approx £3000.00 interest... 8)

Popsie_2

My husband was about to apply for a Barclaycard, on their internet site when, just in time, he was sent another invitation to apply for one through the Woolwich (they are in some way connected to Barclays now). The original Barclaycard terms & conditions stated he would have to pay £35 max for balance transfers, whereas the Woolwich offer was for free Balance Transfers. It's worth reading the small print! His new card is now in the post.

Smitty

Next year I hope to earn approx £3000.00 interest...

Bladdy Hell Smartsaver! Is this all from borrowing off CCs? You must over 50k sat in the bank.. how do you manage to shuffle this lot around.

Oh - Well played by the way!!

indigogirl_3

I just made a BT of 2k to Morgan Stanley 1.9% for 5 months and got charged the £35 too.

I'm no mathemetician so I'm not sure how robbed I have been.
I just needed to move it fast as the interest free on my other card had expired.

Does that mean Morgan Stanley are part of MBNA too ?

smartsaver

Bladdy Hell Smartsaver! Is this all from borrowing off CCs? You must over 50k sat in the bank.. how do you manage to shuffle this lot around.

Oh - Well played by the way!!

Did have £78.000  ::) but just paid back accucard £4300.00 so is now reduced a bit... until I get someone to 'loan' me some more... This is hubby & I.. most we have had stoozed is £84.000  :o ... joint income of £55.000 ish ... not bad really...  ;D Takes some attention to detail and not put off by the odd rejection... Pay everything online as soon as the bill comes in. See the credit card freebies thread except I am thinking now of a holiday in Antigua instead of a BOSE ;D

frankysponky

I thought it was time to add a few lines of my experience with the balance transfer saving scheme.  I read about this earlier this year and took out a MINT card each for my wife and I.  Between us we had a credit limit of  £12,000 and advantage with MINT was that you could write yourself a personal cheque for the credit limit.  This we did and paid into an EGG savings account.  Each month we simply paid the minumum amount requested by MINT and then wrote another cheque back to the savings account.  2 months before the 6 month 0% was up we applied for an ABBEY visa card each (9 months 0%).  Both accepted even having managed debt with MINT and a bonus - increased credit limit.  My dilema was how to move the money to ABBEY without removing the money from EGG (and also ABBEY charge for personal cheques).  Solution, ABBEY did a free balance transfer which had to be done on signing paperwork and not to another MBNA account.  They do this transfer upto 95% of credit limit.  Next step when all this had taken place was to phone MINT (using alternative tel numbers - see Martin's tip) and cancel the card.  Bonus here is because the MINT card is in credit MINT now send you a cheque for the balance.  Double bonus is that original money is still in EGG earning interest.  Final bonus is that MBNA have a minimum payment of £5 per month rather than a % so have now set up a standing order for the next 8 months.  Only job now is to check the statement each month to see it is all working.

Hope this helps someone and many thanks to others because reading a review like this enabled me and my wife to earn nearly an extra £1000 a year in interest for doing very little!!!

Thanks for a very clear and informative post!
just one question you stated you needed to sign paperwork to get an free bt thru Abbey?
can you clarify, did you request the paperwork or was it part of the application?

imark1

WARNING: MBNA, VIRGIN, A&L, ABBEY and LLOYDS TSB CREDIT CARDHOLDERS:  

Existing customers of MBNA (which also manages all the above cards bar Lloyds) who do a balance transfer to the card, apart from when they first get it, pay a fee of 2% (Min £2 Max £35) this is being increased to a max of £50 on 1 November for the majority of customers. This is start of a worrying trend to charge fees for BTs, it looks like Lloyds will be introducing an existing customer balance transfer fee from November 1.

I had a letter from MBNA this morning indicating a maximum handling fee of £75.00 for balance transfers from November 1st. I am beginning to thing they have worked out I only use my 3 MBNA cards for balance transfers and usually transfer as much as possible

Tim

johnllew

Does that mean Morgan Stanley are part of MBNA too ?

No they're not AFAIAA. Their charge is another recent introduction apparently following MBNA's lead. My wife made a transfer with MS in the middle of August and didn't suffer a handling fee then.