Has the credit crunch made it impossible to do credit card balance transfers?
I’ve recently taken advantage of Discover’s 0% until August (3% fee, uncapped) and a Citibank 3% until April (3% fee capped at $99). My REI card from US Bank has a 2.99% “for life” with 3% uncapped fee that is tempting. Note than IME with Citibank it’s possible to transfer to my daily use card to get a credit balance, request a refund of the credit balance, and just get the money that way.
Make sure you check the terms of the balance transfer. There is usually a fee (something like 5% of the transfer amount, not to exceed x dollars). So, if this fee is more than the savings you’d get from the lower interest rate, it might not be a good idea to transfer, especially if the 0% interest is only for a few months. You’ll have to crunch the numbers to make sure. Although your question seems to be asking about obtaining more credit and then transferring your balance. I’m not sure, but I would think that if your only credit card is close to maxed out, your FICO score must be pretty low. As such, any new credit you get will have a high interest rate. They might offer introductory rates, or balance transfer deals on opening a new credit card, but again, beware of the transfer fee. Maybe get a free credit report? On preview, bashos_frog can get one, so maybe you can too. But, remember to read the fine print!
I just got 0% for one year offer from Citibank (to open a new account) and a 0.99% forever offer (on a card I already have) from US Bank. Like, just yesterday got both of these offers in the mail. So they’re still out there. I have also recently accepted two “free” airline tickets to get an American Express gold card. (“Free” means I have to pay a fee of up to $75 to convert the points to miles on my preferred airline. Still cheap.) Do watch out for the 3-5% balance transfer fee. Some of them cap it at $75 or $100, which is a deal if you are transferring a balance of, say, $20,000.
