Paying of balance transfers - problem with Halifax - please help

Ben8282

Kate9253 wrote: »

The £128 must be interest for the whole of the term of the balance transfer which will have either been 18 months or 24 months. .

NO

molerat wrote: »

Highly unlikely it is backdated interest, there must be something else at play here..

Agreed. As stated at the very begining of my original response this is NOT a BNPL and does not work like one. You have NOT been charged interest on the whole amount of the balance transfer for the entire period of the 0% period.

I don't know why or how you have been charged this very large amount of interest but it is not for the reason that you believe. As previously stated to have been charged this amount of interest on a normal APR Halifax card.in a single month you must be paying interest on an interest bearing balance of around £7600.

You haven't missed a payment or made your minimum payment late or exceeded your credit limit or something similar and lost your promotional rate on your entire balance have you? This is actually the only plausible explanation that I can think of.

You are clearly heavily in debt as you say you are using your overdraft, and have only £300 and £600 'capacity' on your other credit cards.

Sharon87

Halifax show all my balance transfers and their expiry on page 3 of the pdf statement online. I have about 5 of them with halifax.

I've had this happen to me before, but way before it expired, I phoned up to complain and they transferred the balances around so the one that expired first had the payments going towards it. I always check my statements now because of that. I think it's because I had a money transfer and balance transfers, so they paid the money transfers off first, as they'll have a higher interest rate when the rate expires.

Have you looked at applying for a new balance transfer card? Try an eligibility check to see you're likely to get one.

jonesMUFCforever

Just a follow on Halifax state on the front page of their statements tell you a few months in advance when a balance transfer deal runs out.
Left hand side under the name and address.

Terry_Towelling

Can you please tell us the original amount of the balance transfer deal that has just expired because, if that is not the oldest transfer on your account (and it has now started to attract interest) it will have had no payments applied to it at all and will still be sitting there for its full amount.

As Ben8282 says, for interest to amount to £128 at 20%APR (approx.) the amount of the balance transfer involved would indeed have to be at least £7600 (approx.); yet you say your Halifax card balance is only £4K (and that includes several other transfers too).

It's not adding up and (if I am generous with my assessment of what you write) could point to an error by Halifax.

Kate9253

I just want to post a quick message to say thank you for all these replies. Tonight, once my daughter is in bed and I have a good chunk of time, I am going to download PDF statements going back to day 1 of this credit card and answer your questions.

One thing I know for definite is that the limit on the card is £4750 so I definitely do not have a balance of £7000+ on it.

Back later - I just wanted to post so that you know I appreciate this help and I’m not ignoring responses!

Kate9253

I have been through every statement since I opened the card in January 2018 and made a table recording all these details but I can't work out how to present the table, so here's the info in a less easy to read format: (the red balance is the one I'm concerned about being able to pay off before its January expiry. The problem being that a) is getting in the way and absorbing any payments I make because I made that transfer earlier even though the expiry is later)

a) Date of balance transfer: January 18
Amount: £2450
Expiry 17.06.20
Remaining to pay: £2020

b) Date of balance transfer February 2018
Amount £1330
This seems to have been bundled in with transfer a) . Halifax straight away totalled the two together making one balance of £3780 with an expiry of 17.06.20

c) Date of balance transfer: Jan 2019
Amount £1300
Expiry: Jan 2020

d) Date of Money transfer May 2019
Amount £178.00
Expiry November 2019

I think this d) is what now has £128 against it. It doesn't say it's interest so I was completely wrong there thankfully. I now understand that the £180 I had transferred to the account to clear the balance was applied to transfer a) and then my direct debit of £50 went against d) because in that window d) became the most expensive balance as it had started incurring interest.

e) Date of money transfer: September 2019
Amount £300
Expiry March 2020

f) Date of balance transfer: October 2019
Amount £400
Expiry October 2021

f) Date of money transfer November 2019
Amount £250
Expiry May 2021

It is all making sense to my now and I'm 100% that Halifax haven't made an error.

Do you think I stand any chance of persuading Halifax to switch the order around so that I can pay off c) first?

Ben8282

Kate9253 wrote: »

Do you think I stand any chance of persuading Halifax to switch the order around so that I can pay off c) first?

You can always ask but to be honest no. Good luck anyway.

eskbanker

Kate9253 wrote: »

Do you think I stand any chance of persuading Halifax to switch the order around so that I can pay off c) first?

As pointed out in post #6, as soon as c) starts attracting interest next month, any payments you make will go towards it, so you can control this yourself.

Terry_Towelling

Well worked out.

The interest on the MT offer that has now expired will be a couple of quid and will decrease slightly next month as your next payment will come off it. From January, you will start paying about £22 per month interest when the £1300 offer expires. This will reduce slightly as the balance itself reduces.

This will affect your minimum payment amount. I believe Halifax asks for 1% of the total balance plus any interest billed. In other words, your minimum payments will initially go up by £22 or so.

A slightly greater worry is the number of money transfers you've had to take to prop up your finances. Have you been using these to live on or to afford the credit card payments? This might indicate a systemic failure in your finances and you may need to cut your costs quite drastically (if you can) before things get properly out of hand.

Kate9253

Thanks, particularly for the reassurance that the interest isn't going to be catastrophic on the January expiry transfer. It has been really useful to have others' input on this thread as I eventually have got my head around it.

This might indicate a systemic failure in your finances

Yes, it does. I know that I'm only just making ends meet which doesn't leave anything for emergencies or for chipping away at this debt. It leaves no room for unexpected expenses.

Everything was going well and I was managing to make ends meet on maternity leave and then in the summer of 2017 I had to get a new boiler which went on my (non-Halifax) credit card. The balance transfers I did at the start of 2018 were basically covering that. I then had a notable loss of earnings in Autumn/Winter of 2018/19 as my daughter started nursery and literally had ten different illnesses between October and February and gave the nastiest ones to me so I lost a lot of work hours. Obviously I should have had a contingency fund for these relatively predictable events but I didn't and am in recovery financially.

I have cut costs a lot in the past 2–3 months but obviously need to do more to get on top of this. It has taken a long time for The Fear to kick in but now that it has I will be much more frugal.