Best Balance Transfers Discussion Area

goldensunset

hello can you pay off a bank loan with a 0% credit card?

thenudeone

goldensunset wrote: »

hello can you pay off a bank loan with a 0% credit card?

Not usually, but it is sometimes possible - the 0% offer will include "money transfers" or "funds transfers" if it is.

Spangal

Hi,

I recently applied for a new card with BOS for the purposes of transferring a balance as they were advertising up to 24 months at 0%. I was aware that I might not get this rate but applied online anyway, everything accepted - lovely!
I received an email a few days later stating that my BT had failed with no explanation and to try again. So I did.
I've been told that this happens sometimes and they checked and could offer me 9 months at 0% - my credit agreement says 24 months for BTs in 90 days and I'm within that period.

Where do I stand on arguing this as they have refused to transfer my balance at this rate - surely they have to stick to the agreement as much as I'm required to?

Sorry if I've posted in the wrong place, I'm new and this seemed most relevant.

Thanks

s3418983

Hello all,

I have a credit card with RBS with just over £2000 on it.

I am looking to get a balance transfer to try cut down on my monthly repayments.

I am a full time student, and my yearly income is a little over £10,000

What are my best options?

pieeater5154

Hi Everyone

I applied for a Nat West card as per suggestion regarding long 0% balance transfer time.
I was offered £400 limit and could only use 50% of that.
I've checked my credit rating and came back excellent.
I spoke to the bank who asked me for 3 months bank statements.
I wish any other member better luck than me.
Just thought I'd share this with you

Gold_bullion

On the issue of paying off purchases whilst maintaining a BT on the card, it depends on the cards Ts and Cs. There are two main methods for avoiding paying interest on purchases:

1) You pay off the purchase balance in full that month OR
2) You pay off the purchase balance in full that month AND have paid off the purchase balance in full the previous month

There are also variations, e.g. replace "purchase balance" with "full balance".

Different cards generally use one of these methods. If method (1) is in use then if you make a payment that exceeds your purchases that month then you may pay no interest on the purchases, even if you have a parallel BT residing on the same card.

This is a result of the fairly recent change whereby any repayment to the card is applied to the item that attracts the highest interest rate first, whereas it used to be that your repayment went to the lowest interest rate bit (i.e. the balance transfer) first. For this reason it used to be a hard "stoozing" rule that after a BT you don't use the card for purchases. However, with some cards it is still possible to do this and not pay interest, but make sure you understand exactly how this works before mixing the two, and in particular that if you exceed the monthly payment with your purchases that month that you will not them being paying interest on the purchases not paid off.

Mixing the two is in any case problematic as in order to maximise the use of the BT and pay the minimum, thus getting maximum borrowing for the fixed BT fee you've already paid, you would have to manually adjust the monthly repayment on top to account for your variable purchase spend, which would be tricky to keep track of. Much easier to use at least two cards, assuming you have them.

LEK

Hi all,

I'm looking to shift to a new credit card as my current Tesco has literally just finished the 0% interest deal (I took the card out back in August last year so the 12 months interest free time period is now over). I will obviously be looking to balance transfer the debt that I've accumulated on my Tesco card (just over £1600) but I've discovered that a lot of companies out there there only allow new customers to start off with just a £1200 credit limit (Barclays being one of them) so I'm a little stuck with what to do. I don't want to go for applying for the next best 0% deals with the other companies in case they cannot start me off with £1700 because of the debt that I have currently got with my Tesco card.

Could any of you possibly inform me on any of the other companies that would be willing for me to accept my just over £1600 debt with a low transfer fee? I've just discovered the Halifax card with up to 27 months but I need to read more about it first.

Many thanks! - Liam

thenudeone

LEK wrote: »

.. a lot of companies out there there only allow new customers to start off with just a £1200 credit limit

£1200 is often used for illustrating the effect of interest and charges (because it's easy to image it would cost £100 a month for a year to repay it if there were no charges) but that doesn't mean that any new card's limit will actually be £1200.
I've just opened a new Tesco CC with £5.5k limit

The actual limit will be set according to your credit rating, but even if it's less than you want, take it. even moving some of the balance to 0% will save loads of interest.:T

LEK

thenudeone wrote: »

£1200 is often used for illustrating the effect of interest and charges (because it's easy to image it would cost £100 a month for a year to repay it if there were no charges) but that doesn't mean that any new card's limit will actually be £1200.
I've just opened a new Tesco CC with £5.5k limit

The actual limit will be set according to your credit rating, but even if it's less than you want, take it. even moving some of the balance to 0% will save loads of interest.:T

Thanks for the heads up mate, I soon discovered this for myself later on last night in fact.

In the end late last night I went for Halifax's Balance Transfer credit card (I was looking to go with Barclays but they only accept customers who are on £20K+ a year) with 27 months at 0%, they gave me a set APR for around 18.9% afterwards if I remember correctly (need to double check the paperwork when it arrives) but most importantly when going through the signing up process they asked if I wanted to balance transfer there again which I did.

They asked for the exact figure that I've got on my Tesco card & wanted the card's actual details too as they will carry out the transfer ASAP and I then went through the credit check and thankfully passed with no problems, with my declared balance transfer they originally estimated my credit limit on the new card to be £2000 but on the final page on the confirmation the actual limit will be set to £1900.

Thanks again!

Liam

AJ84

Hi all,

Got a quick query in regards to credit cards -
Two credit cards:
Barclays: £8400 balance @ 15.9%
Halifax: £3000 @ 29.9%

Obviously halifax was the worst one and i've been chucking in a £1000 a month to pay the balance off (originally @ £6000)
This will be clear end of November.

Barclays is next but I currently pay £300 a month into it (just over a 100 more than the minimum currently) which once Halifax is gone will be increased by a little but not too much as I'm saving house deposit for next year.

Fast forward to today, I got a 0% balance transfer into Barclays with a 1.9% fee until April 2014.

Should/Can I balance transfer the halifax into the Barclaycard to clear Halifax once and for all...then transfer the entire Barclaycard balance to Halifax...and then back to Barclaycard so I am left with £0 on the Halifax and £11400 on the Barclaycard @ 0% interest until April or is this a risky strategy that could leave me with a £11k balance on my halifax @ 30% rate?

Hope this makes sense!
In terms of limits, both cards have enough to take each others balance.