0% on balance? not transfer or purchases...

pezz18

Hi,
I have a Virgin credit card and have forgotten how long my 0% promotional offer is. In August, I sent Virgin a message asking them to confirm when my 0% on spending ends.


They replied back with the following:
"We can confirm that you have 0% on current balance of £XXX till 01 Dec 2015."


I took this as meaning I have until December before my 0% runs out - as have never heard of 0% on a balance unless I had done a balance transfer - which I haven't, so made a purchase!


On September's statement, I have been charged interest on the August purchase and so I sent a second query to ask why I had been charged, their response:


"I can see that you have been charged £XXX interest for the purchases made in August, you have now paid your purchase balance in full so you will no longer receive interest.

You also have an outstanding balance of £XXX(interest) this is 0% until December 2015."



I guess I am querying if this is right as like I said earlier, I've never heard of 0% on a balance before? Is anyone clued up in this sort of thing!?

Cycrow

Did you have a balance on the card at the time, or was the card empty ?
if you had a balance, then presumably, it was from a previous transfer, or from previous purchases, which would have been at 0% at the time. Any new purchases wont be at 0% unless you are still in the 0% window

pezz18

yes, my balance was what I owed from previous purchases, so I suspect my 0% on purchases has expired and so now hold the 0% on my balance upto December, but not on any new purchases.


Thanks for clearing this up, just wish virgins original response was clearer, else I would have used a different card!

JimmyTheWig

Just to clarify, a "balance" is what you owe them.
If you get a new credit card and buy something for £100, your balance is £100.
If you then do a Balance Transfer from another card that you owe money on for £200 your new balance will be £300.

It sounds like your window for making 0% purchases has ended, but the 0% rate on those purchases hasn't ended.
You can still buy stuff with the card and pay off those purchases each month and still keep your 0% balance in place.
BUT BE AWARE. When you buy things on credit card and pay the balance in full each month you don't pay any interest. But if you don't pay the balance in full each month then you pay interest from when the purchase was made.
Because part of your balance is on 0% you don't want to pay it in full, so any purchases you make will attract interest.

As you say, then, you'd be better off using a different card.
Now you've used it, even if you stop you may end up paying residual interest for a while. This should reduce significantly from month to month so while annoying shouldn't cause too many problems.

pezz18

Thinking about this still,,, I'm sure the deal was 24 months 0% on purchases and I opened the account in October 2013. I've sent a third email to clarify this, will dig out my paperwork and see if I can find the promotional deal... Do you know if you can search on line to see when virgin first started offering the 24 month deal?

YorkshireBoy

pezz18 wrote: »

Do you know if you can search on line to see when virgin first started offering the 24 month deal?

If it was a 'best buy' purchases credit card at that time (and I suspect it would have been), it'll have been included in the MSE weekly email. You can search previous emails from a link within this weeks email, although I'm not sure if it goes back 2 years?

Voyager2002

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

If it was a 'best buy' purchases credit card at that time (and I suspect it would have been), it'll have been included in the MSE weekly email. You can search previous emails from a link within this weeks email, although I'm not sure if it goes back 2 years?

Yes, but the simplest way to clear this up would be to telephone them.