Advice on virgin cc

rae25_2

I have a virgin credit card with an outstanding balance of £6000 and a halifax cc with limit of £3350 with nothing on it. I am coming to the end of my interest free period and it will cripple me to go up to 15.9% interest. The halifax have offered me a lifetime balance of 6.9% if I transfer to them but only 3350 of the balance. Do you think I should apply for a lifetime balance card like barclaycard for the whole amount or am i likely to be refused as I have so much credit available? Or is it worth placing a call to virgin asking for a reduced interest rate? Has anyone known this to work with virgin? Please help! I have a good credit rating and don't want to ruin it by getting refused. Or my other option is to transfer the 3350 and just try and pay off the remainder at the higher rate of interest asap.

GeorgeUK

Personally, i would try applying for a new card doing a 0% BT promotion.
Use this table http://www.stoozing.com/cards.htm
to ensure that you are not applying to the same card provider as virgin.

Your credit rating only starts to suffer if you've made more than 3 applications in a 6 month period - and even then will depend on your income etc.

clio

I would transfer the 3350 now to halifax and work on getting a new 0% card if you can and then put the rest of the virgin card balance on that.

CannyJock

rae25 wrote: »

I have a virgin credit card with an outstanding balance of £6000 and a halifax cc with limit of £3350 with nothing on it. I am coming to the end of my interest free period and it will cripple me to go up to 15.9% interest. The halifax have offered me a lifetime balance of 6.9% if I transfer to them but only 3350 of the balance. Do you think I should apply for a lifetime balance card like barclaycard for the whole amount or am i likely to be refused as I have so much credit available? Or is it worth placing a call to virgin asking for a reduced interest rate? Has anyone known this to work with virgin? Please help! I have a good credit rating and don't want to ruin it by getting refused. Or my other option is to transfer the 3350 and just try and pay off the remainder at the higher rate of interest asap.

Couple of ways of looking on this:

The simple way: Take the £ 3350 (£ 3182.50 if 95% of your limit is the maximum Halifax will let you BT) at 6.9% for sure and set up a direct debit to repay the minimum. That'll leave you £ 2,817.50 that you should maximise your payments on. See the snowballing calculator on www.whatsthecost.com and feed in these balances and it'll confirm how much you save in interest by paying the minimum from the lowest APR and maximising your payments on the highest.

Then there's the more involved way, bit more work on your part but with the aim of paying less interest.

Concensus is that Virgin won't talk reduced rates while you have a balance with them, no harm in trying, but unless you can be pretty convincing that you're going to switch your full balance away from them then you've not much chance.

Asking Halifax for an increase in your credit limit or applying for another card will add a search to your credit report, but being refused for either won't ruin your credit rating. Asking Virgin to reduce the APR won't affect your credit rating at all - they'll assess you on your payment performance and how badly they want your business.

Personally, I'd look at another 0% card for 12 months and BT the whole amount there, but that depends on your own circumstances.

If the Halifax card is your preferred route and time is an issue, I'd phone Halifax CS people during normal working hours, tell them that you'd like to do a life of balance transfer to your card, but regretably you don't have a large enough credit limit, you would need them to increase your credit limit from £ 3,350 to £ 7,000 to allow you to transfer the balance and cancel your "existing" card. Point out that you have an excellent credit rating, you've never missed a payment with them or any other card company etc etc etc - bit of sales patter

Transfer as much as possible to the Halifax card if that's the easy option, but then apply for another card to take care of the rest - only 1 other search on your file. Maybe look at a short term 0% deal with 0% fee - like an Ulster card. It's only for 6 months, but that gives you time to have a nil balance with Virgin for a while so that you can then phone them up for an offer when your Ulster card is nearly up. Bit of juggling but you get some of it at 0% for 6 months with no fee - be sure to set up a minimum payment DD on any deal incase you miss a payment and lose the deal.

Remember that once it's on the 6.9% LOB deal, there's still nothing stopping you from getting a 0% deal with Virgin again and transferring it back to them, although there is the BT fee to consider.

If Halifax won't play ball with a larger credit limit, I'd definitely get another card to dodge the 15.9% charge.

Good article on negotiating "new deals" on existing cards at: http://www.makesenseofmoney.co.uk/a_extend.html