My credit card situation - help required!

creditcardnewbie

Hello to you all.

I have hit a dead end in relation to my credit card situation (probably due to the credit crunch) and not sure what my next step should be?

My current credit card situation is as follows:

HSBC – owe £4,800 (Credit limit £5,000) APR 15.9%
Barclaycard – owe £2,500 (Credit limit £2,600) APR 14.9%
Bank of Ireland Rugby Mastercard – owe £2,780 (Credit Limit £3,000) APR 16.9%
Citibank – owe £1,500 (Credit limit £2,000) APR 5.8% Life of Balance Transfer

I have never once missed a payment on any account I have held and I currently pay as much as I can off each of these cards every month but, as you can probably imagine, I am paying more interest than I would like to.

I would like to switch my balances to either a life of balance card or 0% deal or, failing that, a loan but I am really unsure who to apply to because I have already been turned down for Egg, Lloyds TSB and Goldfish for credit cards in the past few months and I am wary of performing many more searches.

I feel like I may have to bite the bullet on this but I thought I would try the forum to see if anyone could offer advice on ideal products, tips or services for someone in my situation?

Any help would be extremely appreciated.

Many thanks,

creditcardnewbie :beer:

carolt2

Have you tried applying for virgin mastercard. they are offering 0% on balance tranfers. not sure how long it will last for but you could move at least some of the money to 0%

CLAPTON

You have almost 12k in CC debts
do you have any other debt
whats your income
whats your credit record like

speedbird1973

My CC debt is £13100 :eek:

last month:

MBNA 1 £8500 APR increasing to 34.9% from end Jan Limit 17000
MBNA 2 £0 ... Limit 4400 APR 29.9%
Barclaycard £5200 apr 27.9% (with some 6.9 in there) limit 6500

Here's what I did.

Got a Citi card (my current account with them) £4500 LOB at 5.8%.. BTd from MBNA obviously! lol

Barclaycard (and this you need to ask for!) regraded all my balance with them to 6.9%. Get yourself put through to the loyalty dept though.. not the indian guys who tried to be friendly but kept bangin on about 27.90pence APR!!! lol they did this AND reduced the APR to 12.9%

This left me with a decreasing balance on the bad MBNA. They offered me 2.9% for 9months on the not so bad card and reduced the purchase APR to 14.9%, they also transfered some of the big limit from the other card and let me transfer the £3500 into my current account at 2.9% and both FEE FREE.

I BT'd the Barclaycard balance onto the card and put the money from my current account onto the Bad MBNA paying it off.

So now I'm left with

1) Citi life of balance £4500 at 5.8
2) MBNA 2.9 £8600 until October.
3) Emtpy Barclaycard and MBNA bad card!

the bonus is the MBNA min repayment is £25 a month which leaves me with a lot of cash to throw at the big 5.8 debt. If i can pay the 4500 off by the time my MBNA promotion finishes I'm hopefully in a position to BT onto the Barclaycard and with some luck get a repeat offer from Citi.. Also I can hope to get a repeat deal on one of the MBNA cards. If I can halve my CC debt by the time I come to remortgage next March I'll be happy as a pig in sh1te!

anyway i'm waffling to summerise.

1) Try and get a BT card from MBNA, they traditionally give bigger limits
2) Tell one of the 2nd line people at Barclaycard you have a good offer from MBNA but if they crystalise the Barclaycard debt at 6.9% it won't make financial sense to go take up MBNA with their 3% fee.

If you can get an MBNA card then pay the min each month and throw everything at your biggest debt.

RavingMad

speedbird1973 - I like the sound of what you did there but have one question - do the actions you've taken ie asking for a better deal affect your credit rating? If not, was it difficult to get them to give you your lower apr's?

I have a Barclaycard Gold CC which I was going to try to switch to one of their other cards which offers permanently low apr

creditcardnewbie

Hello again and many thanks for your helpful responses. I appreciate any advice I can get at this stage because I feel I am up against it with this one.

Carolt - I will definitely check out Virgin - thank you for that.

CLAPTON - I have an outstanding loan with the Nationwide on which I owe £1,500 but, as well as my credit cards I am paying back as much as I can each month. My Income is £1,200 net each month. My recent credit report showed all my accounts are up to date with no missed payments but admittedly there has been 20+ searches still on there over the past year.

speedbird - Thank you for this advice. I will definitely ring Barclaycard to enquire on the 6.9% balance transfer. I think I will ring MBNA to enquire also - unfortunately I have never been accepted for their cards in the past for some strange reason but I guess they are worth giving a call.

Again, thank you so much for all your advice - I feel already there are possibilities for me to tidy up this mess I am in.

creditcardnewbie:beer:

bengal-stripe

I don’t think any credit card will touch you at present. Today, you might want to shift some debt onto another card. But, being given a new card tomorrow, you might spend the money in addition to your existing debt. So far, whenever you got a new CC, you have spent the dosh, right up to your given limits.

All the CC can see is a person struggling (minimum payments only, are an indicator for financial difficulties) to serve debts which are almost their annual income.

First rule when sitting in a hole, stop digging.

speedbird1973

Ravingmad,

Getting the APRs changed will have no impact on a score.. In fact for the purchase rate both Barclaycard and MBNA offered it. The 34.9%card I asked them to reduce and though only would reduce it to 27.9%. However when the card is empty I suspect they'll bring it down more.

Obviously applying for the Citi card will have an impact on the score. I have to say I have 2 late payments on my Barclaycard in the last 12 months (underpayments). This is why applied for a life of Balance job with my own bank rather than a 0% one.

The fact I have an added 5000 line of credit will impact too. However. I'll keep all four until October. Hopefully I'll get a some leverage with the empty cards to secure cheap credit for the last £8500 or so which will enable me to pay that off ASAP. After October I have 4 months to trim my limits and cards down for my remortgage.

RavingMad

Small update - MNBA would only give me 0% on new transfers but not on existing debt. They said they could add £2000 onto the card and then the whole lot could be at 9.9% until Oct! I had to have her explain that a couple of times as I couldn't believe what I was hearing!

In the end, they lowered the APR to 14.9%

update - I speak to Barclaycard call centre and I get nowhere with them, they say I have to write to HQ for APR changes and when I ask to change my card to their lower apr card and they say no. Where am I going wrong?

Mikek_3

speedbird1973 wrote: »

My CC debt is £13100 :eek:

last month:

MBNA 1 £8500 APR increasing to 34.9% from end Jan Limit 17000
MBNA 2 £0 ... Limit 4400 APR 29.9%
Barclaycard £5200 apr 27.9% (with some 6.9 in there) limit 6500

Here's what I did.

Got a Citi card (my current account with them) £4500 LOB at 5.8%.. BTd from MBNA obviously! lol

Barclaycard (and this you need to ask for!) regraded all my balance with them to 6.9%. Get yourself put through to the loyalty dept though.. not the indian guys who tried to be friendly but kept bangin on about 27.90pence APR!!! lol they did this AND reduced the APR to 12.9%

This left me with a decreasing balance on the bad MBNA. They offered me 2.9% for 9months on the not so bad card and reduced the purchase APR to 14.9%, they also transfered some of the big limit from the other card and let me transfer the £3500 into my current account at 2.9% and both FEE FREE.

I BT'd the Barclaycard balance onto the card and put the money from my current account onto the Bad MBNA paying it off.

So now I'm left with

1) Citi life of balance £4500 at 5.8
2) MBNA 2.9 £8600 until October.
3) Emtpy Barclaycard and MBNA bad card!

the bonus is the MBNA min repayment is £25 a month which leaves me with a lot of cash to throw at the big 5.8 debt. If i can pay the 4500 off by the time my MBNA promotion finishes I'm hopefully in a position to BT onto the Barclaycard and with some luck get a repeat offer from Citi.. Also I can hope to get a repeat deal on one of the MBNA cards. If I can halve my CC debt by the time I come to remortgage next March I'll be happy as a pig in sh1te!

anyway i'm waffling to summerise.

1) Try and get a BT card from MBNA, they traditionally give bigger limits
2) Tell one of the 2nd line people at Barclaycard you have a good offer from MBNA but if they crystalise the Barclaycard debt at 6.9% it won't make financial sense to go take up MBNA with their 3% fee.

If you can get an MBNA card then pay the min each month and throw everything at your biggest debt.

And you have the cheek to tell me in another post that I am not clever enough to have a credit card!!!!!

Looks like they really worked well for you,and you sayyou made money off them, did you ever add up all the interest you paid them,Thanks for the laugh.