Fuming at halifax!

boo81

Hubby has a halifax mastercard, we took advantage of a 0% balance transfer back in January and we had a code we used online and it said it was accepted so we transferred £3000 as we were having some problems with house sale.

Fast forward to now and a chance to pay off our debts and we found we have actually been charged interest, but were never notified that the offer we applied for didn't work.

On querying this my hubby was left on hold for over 5 minutes which says to me this isn't a clear cut case. They are saying that because we had a late fee before the transfer on the same month it would invalidate the offer. Apparently in the toc but we don't have a copy of them and I can't seem to find it online either.

Frankly we didn't have a choice but to leave the money there as we had already incurred the fee for transferring. Shouldn't they have told us that the offer rate we applied for wouldn't work, regardless of whether we invalidated it by having the late charge (I understand this is plausible but was a complete accident, and we only had a balance of £36 on there at the time).

Would making an official complaint be worth it? We have all our accounts with them and wondered if threatening to take away all our trade would help them decide in our favour.

Btw to add salt in the wound hubby was amazed at the cheek of the girl he spoke to saying that he should have checked it before.

Tia, any help much appreciated x

MK55

In my experiance, a balance transfer offer has always ended if you miss a payment and get charged a fee.

I have never known this to invalidate a future offer. i.e. if your late payment was month of April but you do the transfer in May then the offer you've been should stand. The Terms and Conditions are on their website, I found this;

'4.5 You will lose the preferential terms that apply to Promotional Transactions if you do not comply with important obligations to us under this agreement. We will start charging the relevant standard rate or fees (see conditions 4.1 and 7) if you miss a minimum payment or exceed your credit limit. We will not restore the preferential terms once we have withdrawn them, even if you do later comply with your obligations to us.'

You need to make sure your missed payment was before (!!!) your promotional deal was made, if it was I would make a complaint as they shouldn't have let you have a promo deal. If it's after afraid it's a hard learned lesson.

thebritishbloke

Standard clause on most cards, I'm afraid. Your best bet is to try and get another 0% BT card to avoid paying any more interest.

Always have a direct debit set up for the minimum repayment every month on any cards you have, this way you'll never miss a payment. You can always log on and pay more by debit card etc.

YorkshireBoy

boo81 wrote: »

...hubby was amazed at the cheek of the girl he spoke to saying that he should have checked it before.

Are you saying she was wrong to suggest this?


There seems to be a plethora of posts at the moment reporting problems that simply wouldn't have occurred (or, as in your case, at least their impact would be much reduced) if cardholders had simply bothered to read the monthly statement, let alone the T&Cs.


Here are the generic Halifax card T&Cs...


http://www.halifax.co.uk/creditcards/balance-transfer-purchase/longest-balance-transfer-card/terms/


You'll note condition 15.6, which states...

We will issue you with a monthly statement, and it will include information about Transactions, payments towards your account, charges and currency conversions on your account. It is your responsibility to ensure that you read your statements and any other information provided with them, whether you receive them as paper or electronically. You must pay us even if you do not get your statement. You should tell us as soon as possible if your statement seems wrong or if you do not receive your monthly statement.

thebritishbloke

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

There seems to be a plethora of posts at the moment reporting problems that simply wouldn't have occurred (or, as in your case, at least their impact would be much reduced) if cardholders had simply bothered to read the monthly statement, let alone the T&Cs.

And if they had all just set up a minimum payment direct debit. There's too many people who complain they missed a payment by "3 hours" etc, and didn't realise that a direct debit would make their lives easier. Even more confusing when they pay in full each month, why not just have a direct debit do that for you? If you need to move money around, do it the day before.

chattychappy

Hang on a tick. Assuming I've understood:

The OP says that the late fee was applied BEFORE the BT was carried out. To access the BT, they used a code which had been issued to them.

In my view, the BT was accepted on the offer terms originally offered. If the CC wanted to withdraw the offer, then they should not have accepted the code. I realise the T+Cs might say that the offer is no longer valid if the account is no longer in good standing, but again, if the code was accepted I do not think the CC can now rely on that.

YEP, they hubby should have checked the statements. But in this case, I don't see how this changes anything as I do not think the delay has prejudiced the CC's position.

thebritishbloke

chattychappy wrote: »

Hang on a tick. Assuming I've understood:

The OP says that the late fee was applied BEFORE the BT was carried out. To access the BT, they used a code which had been issued to them.

In my view, the BT was accepted on the offer terms originally offered. If the CC wanted to withdraw the offer, then they should not have accepted the code. I realise the T+Cs might say that the offer is no longer valid if the account is no longer in good standing, but again, if the code was accepted I do not think the CC can now rely on that.

YEP, they hubby should have checked the statements. But in this case, I don't see how this changes anything as I do not think the delay has prejudiced the CC's position.

The way I understand it is that they put in the code, then had a late fee before they transferred the money across. Hopefully OP can shine some light in to this.

If they did actually put the code in after the late fee was incurred then yes, I don't think it should have accepted the offer and Halifax are in the wrong.

Thrugelmir

chattychappy wrote: »

then they should not have accepted the code.

Sounds so simple until you put into a context of millions of accounts that would have to be monitored. Hence why the T&C's ultimately rule.

thebritishbloke

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Sounds so simple until you put into a context of millions of accounts that would have to be monitored. Hence why the T&C's ultimately rule.

From a programming perspective, it would be extremely easy to implement checking whether an offer is valid. There would be X criteria to meet, Halifax would have this data in their databases and it would just have to check that each criteria is met. I'm very surprised if they don't have something like this already implemented.

grumbler

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Sounds so simple until you put into a context of millions of accounts that would have to be monitored. Hence why the T&C's ultimately rule.

What T&C? Where do they say that the late payment before the transfer can invalidate 0%?

PeacefulWaters

Would making an official complaint be worth it?

Probably.

Polite, non-threatening, stating what you think a fair outcome would be.