Negotiating with MBNA

SnoopySmile

Hi there - I am new to the forums and was after any top tips!

Me and my husband do not use our credit cards for spending any more but do have a high value of debt on them - we can afford the payments and try to pay a few pounds over the minimum but we have come up against a problem.  Presumably because of covid, balance transfers are a thing of the past and that is what we have always relied on to eat into the debt.

I now have a MBNA card with £16k on it and the BT has ended leaving an unrealistic minimum payment.  It will not be manageable long term and is just bad financial sense to carry on regardless when the actual debt will be going nowhere.

I intend to call them and have a chat to see if they could maybe offer us another 0% BT short term (even though it wouldn't be a transfer so to speak) or maybe a lower rate of interest for the life of the debt or maybe put the debt on a loan.  It sounds like common sense to me but we live in an age of 'computer says no' rather than a human actually listening to what you are saying!

We took out a loan at the end of last year to pay off another cc so that we have an end date to the debt so applying for another loan online is proving impossible at the moment.

Just wondered if anyone had done something similar - is it possible or am I living in cloud cuckoo land!

Thanks

Debs

adamp87

Is there no BT offers elsewhere you could apply for?

Always worth asking MBNA, see what they say. Just discuss your situation even if it’s for a few months to help you continue to get the debt down.

you never know

Dobbibill

Hi SnoopySmile - welcome to the forum,

It's always worth asking - although they may just plug details into a computer that says no.

Do make sure you know what they offer as an alternative and if it will impact your credit file (it may not matter to you but worth knowing as it is on there for 6 yrs)

Criteria seems to be tighter since covid as the risks are higher.

Have you thought about popping over to the DFW board and posting a SOA?

MattMattMattUK

The level of your debt might make a balance transfer difficult at the moment. I would suggest you head over to the Debt Free Wannabee forum on here, post a statement of affairs and see what can be done.

sourcrates

If credit card companies offer any help at all, its usually only for a short period of time, 6 months I think is max.

Anything longer than that, and they automatically assume you are in financial trouble, and kick start the collections process.

This is because the collections team has more discretion to make payment arrangements with you.


It really depends how much debt you have, and with how many creditors, as to what path you choose to deal with the debt, you can make arrangements with individual companies, but if you have multiple creditors, its best to get advice from stepchange or other free advice charity about your options.

As above, come on over to DFW to take this further.

Jasonh2015

hi, just looking at https://www.barclaycard.co.uk/personal/customer/repayment-calculator if the interest rate is 19.9% it would take 41 years odd to clear the balance on the minimum payment. Balance transfer offers are hard to come by the moment as well.

GSDMum

We found ourselves paying over 29% interest with MBNA on about £11k, one month the interest was £397  We were hardly making inroads into our debt.)

We also owed £9k on a RBS credit card at around 17% (?) - Our NatWest Current a/c had an untouched overdraft facility of £5k (but we were scared to break into that!).

Taking the 'bull by the horns' we made a plan to use RBS to pay for food, petrol, services; paying off each month what we'd accumulated and a little bit more. MBNA was NOT to be used.

We tried to bring down MBNA debt with anything left over in our current account each month, and using around £4,500 of the overdraft facility. After about a year we managed to bring down MBNA debt to £2k. 

This triggered MBNA to offer us a loan of £10k (transaction fee £0, 3.4% over 36 months (0.28% per month), which we used to pay off RBS. This meant; although our debt with MBNA was still high - the interest rate had come down enormously - we had a 'fighting chance'.

At this point we set up an arrangement with the RBS credit card where the balance was paid off in full every month by an automatic DD from our current account.

We're now at the point where we're under £8k still owing to MBNA, but without without any interests attached; so long as we're under £4,200 by end of July 2021, and the rest of the £4,200 is paid off by September 2022.  Finger's crossed we should be debt free by Christmas 

Good luck with you 'taming' MBNA!