HSBC credit card question

I'd be interested in knowing this as well. Amex's T&Cs state "The total charge for credit is £113".

I've got a HSBC credit card and have never been charged a penny having cleared the outstanding balance in full. The 'total charge' appears to refer to something else altogether.

John.

Interesting, so it wouldn't be an issue for me then. But then I'm also curious to know what it is.

Had a google for this this morning. Most of the results relate to ordinary bank loans - if you borrow X and repay Y, the 'total charge' is Y-X.

However, this makes little sense for a credit card where you don't know what you're going to borrow in the first place.

Sainsbury's Bank's T&Cs clarify this properly:

"The total charge for credit is £123.63 consisting of £123.63 interest. This is based on credit of £1,500 being borrowed at the start of the agreement over one year at the standard interest rate for purchases set out in condition 3.2 below and repaid in equal monthly instalments beginning one month after the start of the agreement."

Guessing that this is just longhand for what HSBC and Amex are doing.

John.

Bad form and all that, but...

From

"In the case of running account credit where the total charge for credit is not known it is to be calculated on the assumptions contained in paragraph 1, Schedule 7. Where a credit limit is not known the credit to be provided is to be taken as £1500 unless it is known a lower amount will be offered. It is to be assumed the credit will be repaid over a period of one year in 12 equal monthly instalments."

That explains it...

John.

In message , snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com writes

The Consumer Credit (Advertisements) Regulations 2004 require a specimen APR calculation based on £1500 borrowed.

See :

For purchases on the internet your best bet is a Cahoot webcard, if you are worried about security; it generates a new 16-digit 'account number' for every transaction and you get to assign a transaction limit too. So if you want to buy hard core filth on the web - not that you'd need to, if you're Dutch - this prevents the supplier putting through more than one transaction and limits them to the amount you say.

If you are worried about the exchange rate on the card, Nationwide's carries no FX loading so everything works out about 2% cheaper if bought in a non-sterling currency.

If you just want a UK credit card generally then you need an Amex Platinum or a Morgan Stanley, which both pay you back around 1% of what you spend as a cash credit once a year.

I would recommend a Tesco Visa card (which incorporates the Tesco Clubcard loyalty card).

You get 1% on all expenditure, which you then "spend" in their "Deals" catalogue at 4x face value e.g. if you spend GBP1000, you get "Deals Tokens" with a face value of GBP10.00 which you can use to buy GBP40.00 worth of goods from the Deals catalogue. Some good stuff in there too, RAC membership, theme park entries, ferry tickets etc.

Go and have at look at

Nick

At 08:38:33 on 27/09/2005, snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com delighted uk.finance by announcing:

Seconded, although their online 'servicing' is virtually useless.