High interest rates charged on credit card vs 0%

Picimaci

Hi everyone,
I just had a call with my bank, very frustrating.
I made a £1000 balance transfer onto my credit card in November, and then transferred out £2000 about 10 days later. (My bad, I got my dates mixed up. But still...) I just found out they applied that payment to a previous 0% interest rate balance on the card which wasn't running out until May this year, instead of the 19.90% interest rate balance they charged on the November transfer-in. Can they do that ?! I thought they were obligated to clear high interest rate balances first. So it appears that they will still be charging me (probably forever) on £1000 which is not on the account since mid December and only spent about 10 days on my card altogether. Any clues would be appreciated, because I have to say I don't understand their argument. Many thanks

MorningcoffeeIV

You probably didn't wait for the transaction to be statemented.

Going forward, payments will always go to the higher rate balance.

Picimaci

Thank you. Both transactions appear in the same statement period, on the December statement, as 1 new transaction, and 1 payment.  So I thought they cleared each other. They didn't charge any interest in December. But they did in January, and now in Feb, saying that it's for that November transfer (took a good while for them to figure out the answer though.) I am OK to be charged some interest, but now finding a sudden £1000 balance at 19.90% is an unpleasant surprise, when I (thought) paid off all interest charging balances. So basically, I should've transferred it out a couple weeks later, and wouldn't have any interest by now

CliveOfIndia

Picimaci said:

I made a £1000 balance transfer onto my credit card in November

Am I correct in thinking that this card offered a 0% balance transfer, and you transferred £1000 to it from another interest-bearing card?

Picimaci said:

then transferred out £2000 about 10 days later.

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "transferred out" - please could you clarify?

Picimaci said:

now finding a sudden £1000 balance at 19.90% is an unpleasant surprise, when I (thought) paid off all interest charging balances.

Does this imply you've made purchases on a 0% balance transfer card?  If so, this may be the cause - in this scenario, you'll be charged interest on the interest-bearing portion of the debt unless you clear the full statement balance.  This is why it's always advised not to spend on a 0% BT card.

As far as I know, BarclayCard is one of the few (possibly only?) cards which will separate out spending and BT's, meaning you can just pay off the spending portion.  With most cards you have to do the traditional thing of paying off the full balance in order for interest to be waived.

DullGreyGuy

My guess... 

Card in question had an outstanding balance on 0%
OP thought the 0% offer was still available to used it to repay £1,000 to another card 
OP realised they'd made an error so then attempted to repay £2,000 by using another BT card. 

That £2k has been credited to the original outstanding balance rather than the £1k recently BT'ed onto the card. 

The critical item we are missing is the date of statements as I believe @MorningCoffeeIV is correct and they did the second BT to the benefit of this card before the statement with the £1k balance on it was produced as such it would have been correct for the BT to be applied to the older balance.