0% Balance Transfer Offer Part 2

At last, here’s the continuation of the 0% balance transfer discussion. It’s been a while, but my schedule was near to bursting with all my deadlines. Anyway, I’ve finally had a few moments to spare so I can continue with the previous post.

In this particular post, more facts are revealed about 0% balance transfer offers. These points and the others which I have brought up in the previous post likely apply to other balance transfer offers (not only 0% balance transfer offers) made by credit card companies, but I digress.

You MAY be charged a fee for processing a balance transfer.

Credit card companies usually charge a processing fee for balance transfer transactions. The fee is usually a fixed percentage of the balance that you will transfer to your credit card account. There is also usually a minimum on this charge so the actual fee charged is usually the greater between the minimum fee and the calculated percentage amount.

However, the above usually applies to regular balance transfers or those that do not come with balance transfer promotions. Balance transfer offers that come with new credit card offers usually have no associated balance transfer fees.

To know for sure whether or not your 0% balance transfer offer comes with a balance transfer fee, ask your credit card company’s customer service personnel.

Not all debts may be transferred.

The term balance transfer, strictly speaking, refers to transferring the balances on one or more credit cards over to a new credit card. However, to entice more customers, most credit card companies have begun processing transfers to pay off mainstream loans. However, you cannot transfer just about anything to your balance transfer credit card.

As a rule of thumb, loans are transferable to a credit card account that allows balance transfers. However, transfers to investment houses, to your own bank account and other transactions that do not satisfy the generally accepted designation of “loan payment or credit card payoff” are usually not deemed to be balance transfers. In such instances, your balance transfer may not be approved. In other cases, your transfer may proceed yet it may do so at a rate that is different from what you were expecting (e.g. you may get the cash advance or cash withdrawal APR instead of the 0% balance transfer rate stated on your balance transfer offer).

Different credit cards have different rules when it comes to determining which loan balance may or may not be transferred over. Please check with your credit card company before you make a balance transfer so that your transfer will proceed as planned or that you may not be charged a cash-advance fee and levied a cash-advance rate on what was supposed to be a balance transfer transaction.

Balance transfer requests take time.

In the previous post, it has been mentioned that balance transfer offers and promotions have a deadline or that they can be taken up only for a fixed period of time. This fact becomes important when you take into account the fact that balance transfers take time to be processed or completed.

Therefore, you should act accordingly and process your balance transfer at around a month before you actually need it done. It’s true that it will probably be processed in 15 days – perhaps less – but do you really want to risk a can-be-good-deal for a technicality?

You should continue paying your other creditors until your balance transfer registers.

Even if most balance transfer requests get approved (although some do get approved at terms and rates that are different from what was expected), balance transfer requests are by no means a fait accompli. That is, you can never assume that your request will be approved by your credit card company.

Consequently, you must NOT neglect to pay at least the minimum payment dues for the credit cards or loans, the balances of which you have requested to transfer, until there’s incontrovertible or indisputable proof that your requested balance transfer or transfers have been successfully processed. If you make this mistake, you will put your credit standing in jeopardy.

What if your balance transfer request has been denied or delayed yet you – thinking that the transfer is a sure thing anyway – did not make your usual payments? In such a scenario, you’d be defaulting on your existing loans and credit card debts.

So, continue paying until the credit card account or loan that you wish to pay off shows the transfer from the credit card company that has offered you the balance transfer option.