Are shorter term balance transfers paid off in priority to longer term ones?

Chomeur

I believe the answer is yes, but I can't find anything specifically to state it. Looking at Barclaycard in particular.

surreysaver

With Barclaycard, debt attracting a higher rate of interest is paid off first. If more than one debt has the same interest rate, the one which the promotional rate expires first gets paid off first.

Brie

I'd double check.  With MBNA (& I thought all the others I had including Barclaycard) while they're on 0% they are paid off in order of which deal was taken out first.  Once they are being charged interest then that trumps anything on 0%.  

So the problem is that if you use an 18 month offer on 1 Jan 2024 that will run until 1 July 2025.  But if you then use another offer for 12 months that might run from 1 April 2024 until 1 April 2025.  All the payments will go to the first offer even though the second one is shorter and will run out first. 

So the tricky thing then is how to pay off that second one and not have any interest charged.  Well frankly it's impossible really.  So you tick along making payments and then on 2 April 2025 you have the entire offer balance to pay off for the second offer.  But just to ensure I've got it right I always would talk to someone via secure messaging of some sort and ask them to confirm how much I have to pay on what date to ensure no or minimal interest.  And I keep a copy of that chat just in case they get it wrong - and they frequently do.  So when I then get charged an excessive amount of interest because they've given me the wrong info I go back to them and say "when I talked to Bob at 11:42 on 27 March he said...." and then they refund me the interest charged.  

Hope that makes sense.

surreysaver

Brie said:

I'd double check.  With MBNA (& I thought all the others I had including Barclaycard) while they're on 0% they are paid off in order of which deal was taken out first.  Once they are being charged interest then that trumps anything on 0%.  

So the problem is that if you use an 18 month offer on 1 Jan 2024 that will run until 1 July 2025.  But if you then use another offer for 12 months that might run from 1 April 2024 until 1 April 2025.  All the payments will go to the first offer even though the second one is shorter and will run out first. 

So the tricky thing then is how to pay off that second one and not have any interest charged.  Well frankly it's impossible really.  So you tick along making payments and then on 2 April 2025 you have the entire offer balance to pay off for the second offer.  But just to ensure I've got it right I always would talk to someone via secure messaging of some sort and ask them to confirm how much I have to pay on what date to ensure no or minimal interest.  And I keep a copy of that chat just in case they get it wrong - and they frequently do.  So when I then get charged an excessive amount of interest because they've given me the wrong info I go back to them and say "when I talked to Bob at 11:42 on 27 March he said...." and then they refund me the interest charged.  

Hope that makes sense.

My Barclaycard pays off the expiring one first, as stated in my post