BoS One Visa - Lowwwww APR! (Bank of Scotland)

Member Name: MichaelR

Product:	Bank of Scotland
Date:	04/02/01 (274 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Low APR, Very low transfer rate, Good range of benefits, No Annual Fee

Disadvantages: No interest free period

The One Visa card from The Bank of Scotland is the card that would suit me best if I were not a student.

The only thing that makes me use my NatWest Student MasterCard more (see separate op, under NatWest) is that I get a good APR on the NatWest one while I am a student, and I can view my account on-line with NatWest.

The One Visa does stand up very, very well though. It has a very low APR of just 13.9% variable on purchases and 15.7% variable on cash. Now unless you earn enough to be looking at Gold/Platinum cards, and a fair few of us don't, then that's about the best deal you are going to get from any High Street Bank.

The card is probably quite hard to get your hands on if you live outside of Scotland, as you really do need to go and get the form from the branch. I think this is where BoS really suffers in a lot of respects - you can't do anything on-line, not yet anyway, and you can't apply for their cards over the phone either. BoS is very old fashioned in a lot of ways, and that's why I don't hold any accounts with them other than this card account.

However, there is something of a branch network in England, just not that extensive, and if you really are having problems, you can phone BoS (The number can be found on the website at www.bankofscotland.co.uk) and they will send you the form and the brochure through the post. You can them simply fill it in and send it back in the reply paid envelope.

How can BoS afford to give such low interest? Are they crazy? Well no they're not - like any bank, they do ultimately exist to make money, and the reason you get such a good deal with the interest on this card is that there is no interest free period.

Now, this means that as soon as you use your card, you will start owing interest - this suits me fine though, as I never zero my balance. I do pay considerably more than my minimum payment each month, but being a heavy user of plastic, I n
ever clear it completely.

I don't think a lot of people realise that you ONLY benefit from an interest free period (usually 51 days max) if you zero your balance each month, and here's a statistic for you - 10 MILLION card holders in the UK do not clear their balance each month - that's something to think about. If like me, you're one of those 10 million, then this card really is probably the best you can get.

I still haven't talked yet though about what attracted me to this card in the first place - the low, low, balance transfer rate.

It is a wonderful 6.9% fixed for the first 6 months. This has allowed me to transfer sizable chunks from other accounts and saved me a lot of money in interest, at the same time freeing up more spending power on my lower-rate (for new purchases) NatWest card.

BoS offer all the usual range of insurance services to protect you against loss/theft of the card (which I didn't take out - my NatWest Card Policy already covers all my cards) and something called "Credit Care", where you pay 73p of every £100 owing to protect your repayments if you become unemployed or unable to work. Again, I don't have this policy though.

There are two other good services offered to all cardholders though. The first is the BoS travel service, which can get you a 5-10% discount on holidays when you use your card to book, and the other is the holiday money service, which can get you Travellers Cheques and Foreign Currency delivered to your door the next morning if you call them up before 3PM. It does cost £5 though, and I think this is a bit pricey. Still, it's good if you need your holiday money in a hurry.

If you're a light user of credit, then the One Visa is probably not the card for you - but if you're one of those ten million I mentioned earlier, then I really don't think you'll get a better deal.

Give it a look...

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