I woke up this morning to the above email. WTF! At first I was confused if I was moving money FROM my Discover or moving money INTO my Discover card. Either way, I DID NOT make the balance transfer. I called up Discover and got routed to their security team who then credited me back the $18,500 and closed my Discover card. They asked if I had done any balance transfers or anything like that. They asked if my identity had been stolen. I was just thinking – how could someone have done this? Did they call in? Or more likely, did they use one of those stupid balance transfer checks that I had been shredding? I didn’t bother asking Discover HOW it happened, but it apparently did.
Lesson learned today – shred those balance transfer checks. Also, how were there no fees on the balance transfer? Heck, I may do a real one now. I always thought it was usually 3% of the transfer… Thanks scammer for the idea!
Wow that’s scary. I’ve been throwing my unneeded BT checks in with the recycling. I’ll probably start shredding them now.
I think many Discover accounts – mine included – always have an offer of 4.99% with zero transfer fee. I’ve been doing $10K every month for roughly https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/084ffd52f13fed97d436ca5cb1e2b4335fcb21640dd5d5bac6f8bb5b93cc8cb1.jpg two years now, the beauty of it is it can be paid off via BP at WM.
Help me connect the dots. What’s the value in doing this repeatedly? MS? Are you swallowing the 4.99% fee?
Yes MS. BP is an easy way to get rid of 10K worth of VGC’s/month (that’s the max allowed per rolling 30 days per CC) without going the MO route. Since I’m paying the 4.99% APR interest on the 10K for only a few days before I totally pay it off the interest is less than $10.
If there is no transfer fee, then there usually is no grace period before the “low” balance transfer APR kicks in – in other words, you are charged the 4.9% APR from day one, not from next statement close period as with charges.
They are going to get some money one way or another!
Usually 1, 2, or 3% fee and then 0% APR for 12-18 months or ~5% APR and no transfer fee