BACKSTORY: I've got a balance on my USAA Platinum Card of about $1500.00. That's a composite of the charges I've made on it in the last week and a half (I had to buy new tires and pay for tuition). I've never carried a balance and have paid my charges off within the grace period so I don't incur any interest fees. It's too much of a stretch to pay off the full amount in the next 25 days and at the same time I've been getting bi-weekly offers from Chase to open up a card with 0% interest for new charges and 0% interest/$0 fees until March 2008. I decided to go for that and applied online, put in the full $1500 amount for the BT and got the "we'll let ya know within a month via USPS" response. I thought I'd get an immediate response and since I didn't, I paid about $500.00 on my USAA card for now. QUESTION: How does the BT work? Will it just send a check to my USAA account for the initially requested $1500.00 and I'll have a credit for the $500.00 I paid to USAA or will they just pay $1000.00?
Chase doesn't know how much you paid USAA, or how much your daily balance there is. If you provided information on where to send the BT when you opened the new account, they will generally either send a check, or transfer electronically, either the $1500 your requested, or possibly a smaller amount if they approved and opened your account with a lower limit. Since you don't know whether, or how long, this will take, you make sure you have paid at least the minimum payments on time to USAA. When you get a USAA statement showing the Chase payment, you may have a net credit, but your normal usage will probably use that up within the next one or two billing cycles, and you can be back on paying that account off in full each month. You want to verify the account is opened, the money is transferred and shows up as a payment on the USAA account, and that your Chase statement confirms the payment and terms.
