Has anyone used the CB Ready Credit offer recently-confused

[burmans]

I recently received a 2.9% offer for 6 months on balance transfers in the mail, but on looking at special on QFF site found this

http://www.qantas.com.au/fflyer/dyn/partners/financialServices/loans

Summary of offer

Qantas Frequent Flyers can earn 4,000 Qantas Frequent Flyer points* and earn ongoing points with ReadyCredit.

Points credited on account activation. Plus, you'll earn one Qantas Frequent Flyer point for every dollar of your average daily account balance for the year.~

ReadyCredit is a flexible line of credit offering a wide range of features and benefits over conventional personal loans.

Save money by transferring your outstanding credit account balances over to ReadyCredit and take advantage of a remarkably low 4.9% p.a. for the life of those balances.~

However on this site which this takes you too

http://www.citibank.com.au/readycredit/qantaspp/

the following

^Extra points are earned upon first use of the account (including balance transfers). To receive extra and ongoing points you must first use your account by 1 August 2005.

Yet when you click to apply

http://www.citibank.com.au/readycredit/qantaspp/icard.htm

Ready Credit now offers bonus AND ongoing points!

Earn 4,000 Qantas Frequent Flyer points when you first use your account

Earn ongoing points of one Qantas Frequent Flyer point for every dollar outstanding of your average daily account balance for the year

SAVE with 4.9% p.a. for life on balances you transfer to Ready Credit

No mention of any dates

So my questions

Has anyone done this recently?

Is this deal still on?

Did they get the deal as per the site? Clearly I have read all the postings on the forum and it appears that sometime Citibank dealing are not great but it does appear a somewhat low risk to take the 4000 points and transfer 25K (which I can park in my Home loans since it is a Line of Credit and get 6.8% vs 4.9% cost) and get an extra 25K points as well. And then I can get my wife to do the same thing and another 29K points. Where is teh catch?

Are there any tricks that I should know of as to best way to do this to reduce problems, it would appear to me via website is best but happy to take tips!

 

[trippin_the_rift]

2% increase may not be worth the 25k points so beware!

 

[burmans]

2.9% ofer is for 6 months only I believe

I may be wrong but my understanding was that the 2.9% offer was only for 6 months, whereas 4.9% is 'life of loan' so in the end evens up!

 

[NM]

Be aware that these balance transfer rates are not all they appear to be! Its not always a cheap loan. Take note that any money paid against the account balance first comes off the balance transfer amount before any is applied to new borrowings or fees, charges etc. That means that the monthly interest fee, although a low percentage) is being added to the account and you are charged the standard interest rate on that interest amount while you are paying off the original balance transfer amount.

For example, if you open a new account and balance transfer $10,000 and don't borrow anything further from that credit facility (this is the same for Credit Cards as it is for facilities like RediCredit), you will be charged interest of around $40.83 (4.9% annual rate) each month for that $10,000 "loan". But each one of those $40.83 charges is added to the facility and accrues interest at the full rate, say 15%.

So if you did not pay off any of the principle, after 12 months you would still owe the original $10,000, plus the $490 interest, plus an additional $33.69 interest on the interest. And that interest on the interest continues to grow at at a compounding 15% annual rate until all the original $10,000 is paid off and you start to actually pay off the accrued interest.

This can work well for some people. But others do not understand the implications of the terms and conditions and find they are paying more and more than they expected to be paying. Do your homework first and fully understand how it works, especially around how any payments are applied against the amounts owing at different interest rates.

 

[arun]

Hi
ReadyCredit as a minimum amount to be paid every month. I borrowed $15K and every month minimum to be paid is around $400.00. So there is no danger of interest compounding at higher rates. My interest remained at around $40-50 always reducing every month.

But as you may have read in another thread, Citibank tried a number of tricks to get people to spend more on the card. For people like me who did not want to spend any more money (and convert part of the 4.9% to 15.9%), it imposed a "special" fee of $165.00.

You need to be aware of this special fees that may be imposed from time to time. You need to be able to pay off the balance at anytime and cancel the card, if they impose huge amount of fees that will turn any advantages to disadvantages.

As NM says, you need to look at your personal situation to decide if it is worth it

 

[NM]

Hi
ReadyCredit as a minimum amount to be paid every month. I borrowed $15K and every month minimum to be paid is around $400.00. So there is no danger of interest compounding at higher rates. My interest remained at around $40-50 always reducing every month.

Yes there is! The $400 you pay each month comes off the original balance transferred amount, while the interest is added to the end and the interest on that non-transferred amount (ie the interest charged) is accruing at the full interest rate until the whole amount of the original transfer has been paid back.

 

[burmans]

Thanks, my reading of the site also supports the 400 coming off principal. By my calcs over 1 year the average rate would go up to 5.65% but that's as lony as I would hold anyway as

a) FF points stop
b) no annual fee only applies for first year, in fact I'd probably stop after 11 months.

 

[nat000]

hi
i was just reading the fine print for this offer and it states:
^Extra points are earned upon first use of the account (including balance transfers). To receive extra and ongoing points you must first use your account by 1 August 2005
so does this mean that the offer for 4000 points is no longer available as 1 August 2005 has past??

 

[burmans]

Expiry date

This was part of my original question in fact. and the reason I was asking if anyone had recently taken advantage of it. The comment on the citibank site implies no but then the next page says it is and if it's not available why are Qantas still saying it is.

My reading of the wording is that this affects the extra points (the 4000 points only) but finding someone who has done recently (after 1 August 2005 at least) might answer this question.