Beware Aqua credit card

A question about : Beware Aqua credit card

Hi All

Not sure this is in the right place, but it might help someone, or at least put them off!!

I've just been bitten in the bum by Aqua. I had a genius idea - 2013 is the year I get a grip. I applied for an Aqua card (knowing it had a horrendous APR, but beggars can only be a little bit choosy). I figured I'd use it for food, petrol, and random spending (school shoes etc, the things that crop up when you have ZERO money), clear it each month and start again.

1st month, so far, so good.

2nd month, still ok.

This month, over-limit charges!! WHAT?! The whole point of this was to ringfence 'spending' money so that the 'bank' money was kept for bills and debts, and now I was over limit?

Anyhow, I figured out what went wrong. When I paid the balance after the first month, I thought the balance would be cleared, and I'd be starting from scratch again - following the age old advice to pay your card straight away to avoid interest.

But what the sneaky Aqua people have done is this (example!!):

Month 1 spend Ј200
Start of month 2, paid Ј200 (should be cleared, right?)
Month 2 spend Ј195 - paid this month Ј5!!!! Balance is now 195, plus interest = overlimit.

I'm digging my way through the paperwork to check whether this is what I signed up to, and paying it off so that I can happily cut it into little bits!

Any advice in the meantime (other than check the fine print )?

Sorry for the long post, but this one needed a rant!

Best answers:

• Its not clear from your post what the issue is/what happened
  Is your limit Ј200?
  And in month 1 you spent the whole limit?
  In month 2 when did you make your payment? and is this issue that you did you not wait until that payment had cleared before spending more on the card? So does your statement show that for a few days you were over the limit of Ј200?
  With any card its high risk to spend that close to the limit, unless you know exactly what your balance is each day and when your payments will be credited to your account.
• and how the interest is applied i guess...
• The important thing you need to remember is that until you make your payment, everytime you make a purchase it'll add to your balance.
  (assuming a Ј250 limit):
  e.g.
  spend Ј200 in month 1, balance = Ј200
  spend another Ј100 in month 2 = Ј300 balance
  payment from month 1 comes into account = Ј100 balance
  BUT: you went over the limit before you made the payment so you've been charged over-limit-fees and interest also.
  My suspicion is this is what's happened. You need to keep you eye on the balance like a hawk if you have a very low limit.
• Thanks for the replies. The problem isn't that I went over limit - veeeery careful on that one, been there done that (!).
  It's that I assumed that the account was wiped after a payment (like a bank) so that i could start again, when what they did was balance what I'd paid against what I spent, and applied that as the 'reduction' in the balance.
  By month two, there was interest to be added, whereas I had assumed that there was no balance, therefore no interest.
  My fault, I'm sure. Just thought I'd share to give peeps an idea of how they work.
• I think you are saying you have been spending in beetween the statement and payment dates and they then applied the payment towards the recent spending first which meant the old spending was not paid off and they could apply interest.
  This would apply if you took cash out ever, but cash afaik earns interest from day 1 anyway. For normal spending this should not be the case.
  OH has had one of these for a few month and we have had no interest. How are you paying? DD in fulll? be aware also the payment needs to clear before you can spend again, so a few days after it goes out of your bank.
• It is still not clear what has happened.
  If you pay the full statement every month (pay after the statement is generated and make sure your payments reaches them before the due date) then there would be no interest to pay - assuming you don't go over the limit.
  If you don't pay in full then you get charged interest.
  The other option is that you have used the card for something that is treated as a cash advance - such as taking cash out at an ATM, using it for something they class as gambling - e.g. in a bookmakers or on a gambling website, or using it to buy another currency.
• I got one of these purely for the cash back - the balance of my first statement was Ј329.08 so I paid that by the due date and then the balance of my next statement was Ј312.00 which I paid recently. I know when you look at your statement online what you spend in that month comes off you balance for the 'running month' so to speak.
  It doesn't change the fact that if you pay your statement in full before the due date then you won't get charged anything.
  As I said though, I only use it for the cash back so anything I spend on it gets put to one side immediately in a separate online account. This means I've always got the money to pay for it there and then if ever that was needed.