Avoiding interest Clarity card

gmar96

Hi,

I wonder can someone help. I seem to have made a mistake and I'm really annoyed because I thought I'd played it right.:mad:

I was on holiday over the winter and used my clarity card for all cash withdrawals. Month 1 was 0.29p interest charge (readjusted and credit 0.29p back? dont ask me why) month 2 was 0.15p but this month was £13.63.

As you can probably tell I was careful on month 1 and 2 but seem to have made a mistake on month 3

When I added up payments to account and withdrawals from that month I could see that I was approximately £158 short of meeting total spend purchases + advances. my interest rate is 22.5% pa on both.

N.B. I also have a 0% on purchases offer running until end of May but as we all know interest accrues from minute one on advances.

I have now redressed that balance and paid £173 to cover interest charge and advances my question is will that go straight to the higher accruing balance? I am worried that it may not be so simple. Is that £13.63 interest simply related to last months missing £160 or is it much more complicated?

Thanks for any advice

G

PeacefulWaters

I can't make head nor tail of your numbers. Sorry.

Baffled by your 22.5% rate too. Doesn't sound like a Clarity rate.

chattychappy

Remember that regardless of interest rate, payments are applied to statemented transactions before unstatemented transactions.

So if you are running a purchase balance (taking advantage of your 0% rate) and make an ATM withdrawal, you can only pay off that ATM withdrawal once it has appeared on a statement. Any money you send before then will go to the purchase balance. So you will get interest on your ATM withdrawal from date of withdrawal to the next statement and continuing until the payment arrives after that.

It is difficult to take advantage of a 0% purchase rate whilst minimising interest on cash withdrawals. The best you can do is to try and make the cash withdrawal just before a statement is generated and pay it off just afterwards.

gmar96

Hi,

@PeacefulWaters Yeah it is the rate I got. Not the best by a long way but my rate nonetheless. Thanks.

@chattychappy I actually contacted Clarity to ask about that very point whilst abroad. They assured me that any payments I make will go to the highest interest earning first. I asked explicitly if I got an advance on say 2nd January and paid to cover on the 3rd January would that automatically be applied to high earner. My worry was as you described, if it isn't showing on the online statement then it will go to items showing hence 0% purchases. I was assured that as long as my payment was made AFTER the advance it would be fine.

I think I have been somewhat naive taking their word for it.

Regardless of the numbers I'm gonna leave it well alone now and just pay down.

Cheers for the replies

G

zagfles

gmar96 wrote: »

Hi,

@PeacefulWaters Yeah it is the rate I got. Not the best by a long way but my rate nonetheless. Thanks.

@chattychappy I actually contacted Clarity to ask about that very point whilst abroad. They assured me that any payments I make will go to the highest interest earning first. I asked explicitly if I got an advance on say 2nd January and paid to cover on the 3rd January would that automatically be applied to high earner. My worry was as you described, if it isn't showing on the online statement then it will go to items showing hence 0% purchases. I was assured that as long as my payment was made AFTER the advance it would be fine.

I think I have been somewhat naive taking their word for it.

Regardless of the numbers I'm gonna leave it well alone now and just pay down.

Cheers for the replies

G

The T&Cs are clear that payments always go towards statemented items before unstatemented items, this trumps the "highest interest first" rule. If you were advised otherwise by Halifax then complain about it and they'll probably credit you the interest.

YorkshireBoy

PeacefulWaters wrote: »

Baffled by your 22.5% rate too. Doesn't sound like a Clarity rate.

Maybe they've been rate-jacked at some point? 22.5% pa compounds up to 24.9% APR (which is 3 percentage points up on their highest quoted tier of 21.9% APR).

gardner1

gmar96 wrote: »

Hi,

I wonder can someone help. I seem to have made a mistake and I'm really annoyed because I thought I'd played it right.:mad:

I was on holiday over the winter and used my clarity card for all cash withdrawals. Month 1 was 0.29p interest charge (readjusted and credit 0.29p back? dont ask me why) month 2 was 0.15p but this month was £13.63.

As you can probably tell I was careful on month 1 and 2 but seem to have made a mistake on month 3

When I added up payments to account and withdrawals from that month I could see that I was approximately £158 short of meeting total spend purchases + advances. my interest rate is 22.5% pa on both.

N.B. I also have a 0% on purchases offer running until end of May but as we all know interest accrues from minute one on advances.

I have now redressed that balance and paid £173 to cover interest charge and advances my question is will that go straight to the higher accruing balance? I am worried that it may not be so simple. Is that £13.63 interest simply related to last months missing £160 or is it much more complicated?

Thanks for any advice

G

"or is it much more complicated?":rotfl:

makes no sense to me whatsoever

PeacefulWaters

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

Maybe they've been rate-jacked at some point? 22.5% pa compounds up to 24.9% APR (which is 3 percentage points up on their highest quoted tier of 21.9% APR).

I'm intrigued because I've never seen rate jacking on Clarity although the T&Cs allow it.

I've read on here about special rates for BTs.

I still can't make any sense out of the original post though.