Existing Nationwide customer - 4.9% APR balance transfer for 12 months

Burnley_Lad

I am an existing Nationwide credit card customer, with a nil balance on that card.

I have been offered 4.9% APR for 12 months on balance transfers, with no balance transfer fee.

I have a balance on another credit card, which is currently at 0%, but this expires in May 2014.

Is the offer from Nationwide a decent one? If I transfer £1,200 and pay off £100 per month, how much interest in total will I be charged over the 12 month period at 4.9%?

CLAPTON

if you pay about £103 per month then you will clear the debt in 12 months and pay about £31 in interest

which is s decent offer if you can pay it off in the 12 months

chattychappy

It's a decent offer for borrowing up to a year or so. If you took a traditional offer, you'd pay a 3% fee on the whole balance transferred (and no interest). Instead you'll pay 4.9% APR over a year, but on your declining balance - that will work out at 2.6% of the initial balance. (Not quite half because the balance declines more slowly at first.) So you save 0.4%, or about £4.80.

Also, if you are able to pay it off sooner then you'll pay less interest. With a traditional offer there is no reward for doing so since the fee has been paid upfront.

Bear in mind that if you take up Nationwide's offer then you should put your spending elsewhere to avoid paying purchase interest. (Sounds like you're doing that anyway.)

Burnley_Lad

Thank you to you both for your replies.

planteria

i dont think it's a very good deal at all.
good to see no fee, but the rate wipes out that benefit.

chattychappy

planteria wrote: »

i dont think it's a very good deal at all.
good to see no fee, but the rate wipes out that benefit.

The benefit is being able to borrow the money. If you need to borrow, then can you recommend a better deal? Most charge a 3% BT fee. This one doesn't, but over a year the overall cost is similar.

adindas wrote: »

Burnley_Lad

It is highly unlikely that 0% BT fee ever exist here in the UK .
Also it has not been spotted on this forum neither mentioned on this list ....

No, the OP is correct. Nationwide do make this offer from time-to-time to existing cardholders, including me. I took it up myself about a year ago when I lost access to my current account whilst overseas. I used the BT offer to pay off a couple of cards as payment fell due. 3 weeks later I paid off Nationwide. No fee, and a tiny amount of interest.

chattychappy

I got it by letter - I can't remember if it was available online at the same time. I rang them up to do it. I also have a Select card. In fact it was all rather lucky - I'd forgotten to bring my card reader so couldn't pay anything out of my Flexaccount*. I rang them up to do a couple of BTs and they told me I had the offer running. I didn't see the letter until after the event when I was next in the UK.

I've had the offer a couple of times and I'm often spending on Select (and paying off each month) so it's not like with my other cards where I only tend to get BT offers when they've been dormant for a while. I wondered if part of the business model with Nationwide is that they offer them to people like me hoping that by not paying off in full each month they'll get some purchase interest.

I doubt whether there is any link as it's not a general offer. As I say, I don't even remember if I could see it online when I logged on. I think it was discussed here (or somewhere) before. Same deal, 4.9% APR, no fee. I think it came back as a comment when somebody said that Nationwide never make offers to existing customers.

(* recently it rarely asks me to put the card in the card reader)

EarthBoy

adindas wrote: »

chattychappy;
Thank you for your effort. But unless someone else who are very knowledgeable of stoozing confirm it is hard to believe that 0% BT fee ever exist.

They've offered it to me before; it was last year sometime. I can't remember the interest rate as I didn't take up the offer, but there was definitely no balance transfer fee involved. The offer came through the post as a personal invitation; it wasn't available unless you'd been offered it personally.

Mozette

There used to be loads of 0% BT offers, I'm talking up to 10 years ago, but the BT fee is a fairly recent thing; they all used to be fee free, I personally had lots of them.

YorkshireBoy

adindas wrote: »

But unless someone else who are very knowledgeable of stoozing confirm it is hard to believe that 0% BT fee ever exist.

At my peak in 2006/7 I had a £79K stooz pot...and every penny of it was obtained fee-free!


It's only a year or two since Tesco had a 12 month 0% BT card with a 0% fee.


And there's still one card available that (technically*) offers a 12 month 0% BT with a 0% fee.




* The 3% fee is refunded in full in the form of Nectar points.

chattychappy

adindas wrote: »

chattychappy;
Thank you for your effort. But unless someone else who are very knowledgeable of stoozing confirm it is hard to believe that 0% BT fee ever exist.

As a NW customer, I have got BT transfer offer from NW from time to time but it went to the bin straightforward as its BT fee is not very competitive. .

I do not know but it might be a case of misunderstanding of BT fee and APR. e.g. you paid a one off 4.9% BT fee and you will get 0% interest fee for 12month.

Oh how ridiculous, I don't blame you for being doubting the OP's OP, but then I confirmed and even then you doubted. So I reconfirmed. The letter made it clear. I told you I had actually done if for about 3 weeks and paid negligible interest. I would have noticed a one-off 4.9% fee as not being negligible.

Now more people have confirmed, are you satisfied (seems not)? Or do you want copies of statements...?

Or some sort of certification that they are "very knowledgeable about stoozing". Well, I'm a lawyer with an engineering degree, a linguistics degree and a degree in financial regulation. Also a chartered member of CISI. I reckon I can understand a simple BT offer and do percentages...

But then I could have made the whole thing up I suppose, and be in cahoots with the OP.