How can I avoid balance transfer fees?

markey164

I've just got a Tesco Credit card, with 0% interest and 0% on balance transfers. I transferred my HSBC credit card to it for no fee, great . but when i went to transfer my HSBC flexiloan, they said that counted as a money transfer and has a 3.9% fee.

Now I could transfer the balance to my HSBC Credit Card first (for a lesser 2.9% fee), and then onto my Tesco Card for free, but i was wondering if there are any other tricks/things I can do to avoid the ~£140 fee, or whether there's no real way of avoiding this.

TIA for any advice

YorkshireBoy

It's highly unlikely HSBC will allow you to transfer one of their loans to one of their credit cards.

You need a card offering 0% on money transfers. In the main, these are run by MBNA and Virgin. However, as far as I know, neither offer fee-free money transfers. Seem to recall the smallest is 1.69% for around 2-3 years...but do check their respective websites to confirm.

[Deleted User]

You can avoid balance transfer fees, by not transferring a balance.

markey164

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

It's highly unlikely HSBC will allow you to transfer one of their loans to one of their credit cards

You're right. It was HSBC who actually suggested it when i phoned them last week, about moving money around, but annoyingly phoning just now, they said no, it wasn't possible.

Thanks for the tip on the Money Transfer cards. I'll look into that

Ben8282

Another suggestion. if time permits, would be to spend on the HSBC card, then do another no-fee balance transfer from the Tesco card to the HSBC card and use the money saved to repay all or part of the loan. Continue this for as long as the no-fee 0% bt offer continues until such time as the loan is fully repaid.

markey164

So I applied for the Virgin Money Transfer card, and my application was approved. Great.

Unfortunately approved it with a limit of 2.5k, when I applied for 4.5k, without asking if i wished to proceed with the lower amount, which was a bit annoying, as I'd have liked to have had the opportunity to at least decide whether to go ahead or not, with a different amount.

Not sure why they offered less, as I was offered 12k on on the Tesco card, when I applied for much less.

I guess my only option now is to transfer the remainder of my loan onto my Tesco card, and stump up the 3.9% money transfer fee. I'm not sure if i'll be charged ongoing interest on it or not, as its a money transfer, not a balance transfer, i'll have to try and find out.

redux

Perhaps that could be made to work for you. Use the Virgin for maybe £2k money transfer. In a month or two transfer some of that to the Tesco, then do another money transfer with the Virgin.

It might seem a waste to pay the transfer fee and not use up the time it allows, so that is something to think about.

markey164

Good idea, it didn't occur to me to transfer it in two chunks. Obvious really . That should sort things nicely. Thanks for that