Do no-balance-transfer-fee credit cards make exceptions in their special offers?
I have a wide array of credit cards that I use to maximize rewards. Every now and then I get an offer in the mail from one of the cards I haven't used in a while, offering 0% APR on balance transfers for an x amount of months. The catch is that they always come with a balance transfer fee between 2% and 5%.
I just found out that there are credit cards out there that do not charge a balance transfer fee:
PenFed Promise
BarclayCard Ring
CapitalOne VentureOne
And a few others
Now, ignoring the offers they usually come with at account opening, do these cards still not charge a balance transfer fee when they run a 0% APR offer on balance transfers to current customers later on? Or because they don't charge balance transfer fees do they not run these special offers at all?
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It depends. I've had a Penfed Promise before and even though there are no balance transfer fees (or maybe even because of it), I was never offered a 0% APR. However, I have seen two true "zero/zero" balance transfer offers, and neither of them was with banks known as "no-fee" cards:
My wife received a no-fee 0% APR from Amex (an image can be found here)
I was offered zero/zero from BofA on a new card, which I ultimately accepted to take advantage of the 0% for 15 months.
Ultimately each bank independently makes it's own decision about who they want to market zero/zero offers to, and it doesn't seem to matter what their normal rates/fees are. Using your wording, I'd call no fee 0% APR an "exception" to the rule.
Many credit card companies "offer" no transfer fee and 0% interest rate in offers that they send out via USPS or by e-mail, but when a person with reasonably good credit scores actually responds to such an "offer", the terms magically change to a transfer fee of x% of the amount transferred. It is only the people who have relatively poor credit ratings who actually get the no-transfer fee and 0% interest for y months (3 to 18, perhaps even 24) offers.
See the answers to Can I negotiate a 0% transaction fee with my credit card company? or How to interpret this paragraph from a crest card company? and Why do credit card companies keep advertising balance transfer offers to those who don't carry a balance? for some details on how these offers really work in real life as opposed to that the ads tell you.
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