Hi there

In the runup to christmas I have, as you do, overspent on my credit card and have now realised that there is little chance of me paying it off before we leave for Australia around March next year. Not one to just up and leave my responsibilities behind, I would like to continue paying it off until it is settled.

I was wondering if anyone has serviced their UK accounts from Australia and what the best way would be to do this. If anyone has any idea of costs involved and which banks provide this service, I would love to know.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Sarah

You might want to check out HSBC Australia as I think that they have accounts that you can run in both currencies. Don't have the details sorry but I am sure that there are plenty of people on this site that know more .
Nicky

It depends on who you have your credit card with. Some companies will not lett you operate (service or otherwise) you card from an overseas address. An example of this is Egg, whi will insist on you closing your account down. If you have a debt with one of these cards, then you may need to transfer the balance to a card that will allow overseas operation. There are a number of these: MBNA Europe, Barclaycard, American Express Blue to name just a few.

They will still be pound accounts, but they will simply bill you in Oz from the UK. You will still have to pay in sterling though. When I spoke with American Express, they said that it may be possible to change from a pound to a dollar account, which would give you a native AU$ account, but that it would depend on the circumstances and my customer history. Maybe try giving them a call.

Hope this helps.

S

I have a firstdirect account which is internet banking which is great. When we moved over here I moved all my credit card debt onto a firstdirect gold card. They had an interest free offer on so I was stupid not to take advantage of that. Payments I made in sterling as I left enough money behind in my first direct account.

I also have a sterling barclaycard which I use for buying birthday & xmas gifts etc... in the UK for delivery in the UK. Again I pay in sterling from my first direct account as left a little money behind to let me do this.

Both the Barclaycard and the first dirrect account are registered at my Aussie address. I was using them in the UK before I left and changed them once we had settled out here.

Hope this helps a little. :-)

I have left all my credit cards registered at my UK address and just pay them by internet banking - move money montly using www.tranzfers.com from Aus to the UK, then pay the bills through the UK account.

We changed to MBNA before we left. Can't fault the service. They will even give you a payment holiday of 3 months if you want it. they offered it to us but we didn't take it, purely because then we were paying the bill in Oz from day 1.
Marie

Apart from servicing them through internet banking, you can also set up payments to be taken by direct debit. Not a bad idea to set it up for the minimum payment just in case you forget to set it up one month. That way you don't get clobbered with ££'s for an unpaid bill.

For the remainder you can top it up using internet banking etc.

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