The reason for taking advantage of the 0% APR would be to get some balance amounts showing on your historical credit report, with no cost in interest. You should pay it off in a couple of months, but I would not pay it off immediately.
The potential issue with never showing any balances except on one card with a very small amount is that over the long run, your credit report does not show that you actually ever borrowed anything. I subscribe to a school of thought which thinks that the bank algorithms check back on your "reported balance" history to get an indication of what kind of borrowing you can handle. Some banks would look at a low historical borrowing pattern, and if you start to show balances all of a sudden, their algorithms would throw up red flags and potentially take AA.
The term that has been used, to describe showing balances just to put them on your historical report, is "softening up the banks". Getting them comfortable with seeing balances on your report.
There is no way for me to prove this, except from the anectdotes by other members who think they are working on their credit OK by paying everything off, until they start showing a couple thousand in balances and Barclays or Chase or AMEX calls them up to see what is what. Or CLD without notice at all.
(I also would only start one thread on this topic 
Congrats on the SCT )
@Anonymous wrote:If you can pay it off I say just do so. I financed something once that I had no reason to finance... some furniture that I had the cash to pay for right at the time but the salesman somehow talked me into 0% for 18 months or something. Long story short I somehow short paid the final payment by $2.93 and received a late payment on my credit report that I didn't realize. I've been fighting for about a year to get it removed, which I'm very close to BTW, but it still knocked my scores down probably 50 points on average for about 2 years now.
+1
@NRB525 wrote:The reason for taking advantage of the 0% APR would be to get some balance amounts showing on your historical credit report, with no cost in interest. You should pay it off in a couple of months, but I would not pay it off immediately.
The potential issue with never showing any balances except on one card with a very small amount is that over the long run, your credit report does not show that you actually ever borrowed anything. I subscribe to a school of thought which thinks that the bank algorithms check back on your "reported balance" history to get an indication of what kind of borrowing you can handle. Some banks would look at a low historical borrowing pattern, and if you start to show balances all of a sudden, their algorithms would throw up red flags and potentially take AA.
The term that has been used, to describe showing balances just to put them on your historical report, is "softening up the banks". Getting them comfortable with seeing balances on your report.
There is no way for me to prove this, except from the anectdotes by other members who think they are working on their credit OK by paying everything off, until they start showing a couple thousand in balances and Barclays or Chase or AMEX calls them up to see what is what. Or CLD without notice at all.
(I also would only start one thread on this topic
But the reports have a 'high balance' entry. Even if you pay your card down and report $0 every month, they will report the highest balance ever with the card, right?
I think a change in pattern (buying, paying, balance) will lead to red flags.
I will not use the 0% if I always report $0 on my cards but 1. Or at least not over 40% the limit.