For One-Year 0% BT, I only Got Ten Months

Posted by Sun on October 11, 2006

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I applied a Discover Mills Card back in July, which offers 12,000 bonus miles, fee-free 0% balance transfer for one year, and additional 1,000 monthly bonus miles for 12 months with any purchase charged with the card (BTW, the offer is still valid). Immediately after receiving the card, I called Discover to confirm the one-year 0% BT and was told that I can make a transfer before October. At that time, I wanted to wait a little bit in anticipation that interest rates might go even higher, which, of course, didn’t happen.

Late last month, as the 0% BT offer about to expire, I called Discover to initiate the transfer, but only got 10 months instead of 12 months. Apparently, when I contacted Discover in July, I only asked if I could get the 0% BT for a year, not the start date of that one year period. I automatically assumed it should start from the time when I make the transfer, which is the case with Citi cards. Not so with Discover. The one-year period actually started at the time when my application was approved. So instead of getting one year, I only have ten months.

Since Discover didn’t provide a convenient check as other banks did for the BT which I can make a deposit directly at the bank, I had to call Discover to actually transfer $9000 to two Citi cards. The reason to transfer the balance to Citi cards instead of other cards was that getting the transferred money from Citi was much easier than other banks as Citi cards have a direct “Credit Balance Refund” option on the website, avoiding the hassle of having to deal with CSRs. After waiting three days for the money to show up in my Citi card accounts, I submitted the refund requests. The next day Citi emailed me

Before processing your refund request, we must verify your recent payments. We will contact you through the Secure Message Center within 7-10 days

Five days later on October 3rd, I was again notified via email that a response of the request has been sent to my message box at the card website. Last night, two checks were in the mail.

Throughout the whole process, I wasn’t contacted by Citi except the two emails about the progress. Overall, it’s a quite simple and painless experience. If there is any BT in the future, Citi will definitely be my first choice.