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My wife signed up for a 0% balance transfer offer with BarclayCard (UK), and transferred around £1000. The 0% interest is always listed as a line item on the monthly statement.

Each month she pays off £200, but may also make some purchases that month. Some of these purchases are refunded - sometimes not within the period covered by the statement, but always within the payment period (3-4 weeks after the statement date). Non-refunded purchases are always paid off within the payment period.

However, she is often charged an amount of standard balance interest that seems to correlate with the value of the refunded items. Is this correct?

As an example, the statement period runs from the 1st Jan to 31st, in which £450.00 of purchases were made. £400 of this is refunded after the 31st, but within the payment period. The other £50 is paid off within the payment period along with the £200, making a total payment of £250. In the next month's statement there is an interest line for £5.52 at 1.38%, which matches the £400 refund.

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    Want to explain why you've downvoted?
    – pixelbadger
    Commented Jul 19, 2014 at 11:36
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    I'm curious, why on earth does she routinely have refunds? In twenty years of credit card usage, I can count the number of refunds on a single hand.
    – ChrisInEdmonton
    Commented Jul 19, 2014 at 15:03
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    It's a girl thing. About half of them are chronic returners. My wife will buy 2 sizes of an item to have my daughter try on, and return the one that doesn't fit.
    – JTP - Apologise to Monica ♦
    Commented Jul 19, 2014 at 20:21
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    Call up Barclays and rattle their cage. Ask and go through in details on the charges.
    – DumbCoder
    Commented Jul 21, 2014 at 15:56

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Have you asked the bank for a disclosure of how they do the math? Each country (please add yours) has laws regarding the way banks charge interest, but the bank itself must offer a disclosure of how exactly they adhere to the rules.

I suspect the downvoter was thinking either "yes" (you really asked a yes/no question) or "call the bank." Welcome to Money.SE, check out the site, there are a lot of question here that can help you.

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