Tried shuffling and 0% - no joy :(

debtfreeaspirant

Hi all,

So I've got some debt after going back into education, and I'm really concerned about the credit card debt in particular. One card, Vanquis, just doesn't seem to be shifting down, so I tried contacting all of my card providers to ask for reduced interest, or a reshuffle, and they all said no. I can do the minimum payments on everything, my credit rating is good, but obviously I don't want to be paying all this extra interest for years and years…

I was also turned down for a card that on a soft search from this site I had an 80% chance of getting, so no 0% interest transfer options for me either.

Are there any options, additional to just raising as much money as I can to slap onto the cards, that I haven't thought of yet? The cards are long shredded, I just want to get the balances down as soon as possible..

Thanks in advance

sourcrates

Depends if you value your credit rating or not, as long as you just pay min payments, you also pay the interest, you could default, wait till debts sold on to DCA`s, interest will be frozen, then make arrangements to pay, or you could throw every last penny you have at your debts and pay them off as quick as you can, that's about the only options I can think of !!

Tixy

Hi and welcome to the forum

Do you have any unused limit on any of your cards?
If so are you able to shuffle some of the debt from vanquis to the other cards at a lower APR?

What are the balances, limits and APRs on each card?

Are you paying just/exactly the minimum payment on your cards? There is a suggestion that in doing this, and having the minimum payment flag show on your credit file can put new potential lenders off. If you can afford to it may be better to try to increase your payments even if it is to just a few £ above the minimums. This may increase your chance of being accepted for a new card if you apply again in a few months.

debtfreeaspirant

Hi Tixy,

Not much room to manoeuvre unfortunately, I pay a little over each month where I can but I'm a mixture of self employed and on a casual contract so I can't do that every month…

Vanquis: 39.9% APR, owed: 2633.65, limit: 3000
Barclaycard: 9.9% owed: 5389.94, limit: 5600
Capital One: 34% owed: 3990.90, limit 4000

Currently trying to snowball the vanquis down as it's both the lowest balance and the highest interest.

Tixy

I guess you have probably tried asking BC for an increase to their limit?

Which card has turned you down?

debtfreeaspirant

It was an RBS one that turned me down.. checked my credit rating, no problems, but of course I don't know what the individual criteria are.

And yes, I tried BC… I even tried Capital One on the basis that even 34% is better than 39.9%!

Just going to keep slogging at it. My partner and I have done a lot of work in the last month on planning, reducing outgoings and finding ways to make some extra money, so we're just going to keep going… Gotta get there eventually…

theoretica

It might be worth going into your bank branch and asking if they can do anything for you - the worst they can do is say no.

weebit

How many cards have you applied for recently? If it's only 1 or 2 in the last few months, I'd try going for an MBNA card. In my experience, they give good sized limit and are a relatively decent interest rate of 16.9% (or there abouts).

If that doesn't work (or you don't want another search on your credit file, an obvious concern), then try writing to Vanquis and Capital One and asking them to freeze interest.

if that fails, just throw as much money as you can at Vanquis until it's all gone, then do the same with Capital One. Gradually, as your total debt decreases and your available balance increases, you'll look more attractive to lenders and then hopefully they'll offer you a 0% card at some point in the future.

Good luck!