Sanity check. Do the T's & C's of this Sainsburys BT / MT offer make sense?

vacheron

Hi all. 

Yesterday I received a letter offering me a fee free 12 month 0% BT/MT from my Sainsburys credit card. 

Being an long time and avid stoozer, seeing this offer which allowed me to transfer 95% of my £18K limit, I naturally thought, "Great, £17K free cash out of the blue!". 

However, the difference here is that most of my stoozing cards are used for BT's and then locked away in the safe until the promotional offer expires, however this is our joint daily spending card used for everything and the balance is usually paid in full every month.

The T's and C's mentioned how any payments will go towards the highest interest rate first (paragraph just above the red highlighting), so my expectation was that I could pay off the purchases total each month, but keep the MT / BT balance remaining on the card, however the T's and C's then went on to state the bit I have highlighted in red:


Now to me (as my daily driver card) this is a killer as it reads to me that If I take a £17K money transfer from this card, but I then spend £1 on the card, I must repay the entire £17,001 on the next payment date so as not to incur 30+% interest on my purchases.

To me this just sounds ridiculous, but having never usedd a MT/BT balance on an actively used card before, it may be normal?

Thoughts? 

Nasqueron

It's pretty common, Barclays are the only ones that I know of whose systems permit that sort of mixing. In theory if you spend on that card and then pay something back, it should go on the debt that is likely to pay interest but of course if they interpret it the way you're talking about, you'd be stuffed albeit 30% interest on £1 isn't much. Safer to just use 2 cards - before 10th March is plenty of time to get a different card with cashback benefits

vacheron

Nasqueron said:

It's pretty common, Barclays are the only ones that I know of whose systems permit that sort of mixing. In theory if you spend on that card and then pay something back, it should go on the debt that is likely to pay interest but of course if they interpret it the way you're talking about, you'd be stuffed albeit 30% interest on £1 isn't much. Safer to just use 2 cards - before 10th March is plenty of time to get a different card with cashback benefits

Thanks, that is a shame if it is indeed the case.

My £1 example was really just to emphasise that even the tiniest little purchase would be enough to mess this whole 12 month offer up, however, in reality this is our joint everyday payment card, so we usually accumulate anything from a £2K-£3.5K balance each month, which we then fully pay off, (and earn a few extra Nectar points on the way).

There are also soooo many companies with this card's details on file as we've used it as our main card for well over a decade, that the chances that a single payment sneaking through at some point, (and thereby messing the whole thing up) is almost guaranteed.    

The logic of a new cashback card works in theory, however I am stoozed up to the eyeballs with 9-10 other 0% cards, so while I could pay them all off tomorrow, my situation looks terrifying from a credit file perspective, (either that or I am ineligible for those I am accepted for because I already own that card), so the offer to max out the one card I have where I am only using a fraction of my available credit limit is very appealing!

Nasqueron

Is it possible your partner gets the card in their own name as well so you can still get both benefits?

Uplink

I always read the Terms of every CC to mean exactly what you highlighted: no interest-free period for spending unless the previous statement is paid in full - no exceptions for special plans.

It sounds like you need to move your recurring expenses to another card, then be eagle-eyed about new transactions and pay them ASAP by bank transfer or debit card, without waiting for the monthly DD.

dingling68

vacheron said:

Hi all. 

Yesterday I received a letter offering me a fee free 12 month 0% BT/MT from my Sainsburys credit card. 

Being an long time and avid stoozer, seeing this offer which allowed me to transfer 95% of my £18K limit, I naturally thought, "Great, £17K free cash out of the blue!". 

However, the difference here is that most of my stoozing cards are used for BT's and then locked away in the safe until the promotional offer expires, however this is our joint daily spending card used for everything and the balance is usually paid in full every month.

The T's and C's mentioned how any payments will go towards the highest interest rate first (paragraph just above the red highlighting), so my expectation was that I could pay off the purchases total each month, but keep the MT / BT balance remaining on the card, however the T's and C's then went on to state the bit I have highlighted in red:


Now to me (as my daily driver card) this is a killer as it reads to me that If I take a £17K money transfer from this card, but I then spend £1 on the card, I must repay the entire £17,001 on the next payment date so as not to incur 30+% interest on my purchases.

To me this just sounds ridiculous, but having never usedd a MT/BT balance on an actively used card before, it may be normal?

Thoughts? 

Thank you for highlighting this as it helped me swerve a potentially costly mistake