The HfP chat thread – Tuesday 25th August

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• Rhys says:

  25 Aug25 August 10:24

  That offer ended in 2019!

  • Pablo says:

    25 Aug25 August 10:44

    This offer is permanent for transactions in EUR, SEK and RON. It’s mentioned on the last page of every statement under ‘Foreign Usage’

    • JM says:

      25 Aug25 August 10:53

      Thanks, thought so. Looks good, calculator on vir website shows some transactions cheaper than free curve card

• JP_MCO says:

  25 Aug25 August 10:30

  Anybody else ever had an issue with Curve and using their ‘Go Back in Time’ function? I ended up with a large credit balance on one of my credit cards due to large flight refunds and so decided to use the feature to ‘move’ the transactions from one credit card to another to save me having to request a credit balance refund. The long and short of it is that the transaction was debited on the card with the credit balance but didn’t refund the original payment card. I got in touch with Curve about this and they’ve been buggering about looking into it for 2 weeks with no resolution. I have a Curve Metal so I’m a bit narked that the service isn’t good.

  • JM says:

    25 Aug25 August 10:50

    Service is a joke with Curve at the moment, I’ve had similar issue recently with customer services so looking at other cards to use in future.

    To answer though, when I have used back in time about 6 months ago worked perfectly

    • JP_MCO says:

      25 Aug25 August 11:55

      Thanks for the reply. I’ve sent them a bit of a whinge email asking why it’s taking so long so hopefully this might spur them into action. I’m not sure how “looking into” is required for a transaction that they’ve already acknowledged didn’t go through properly. Just fix it!

  • Doug M says:

    25 Aug25 August 11:29

    It’ll be a dark day in points world when Curve sort their IT.

    • The Urbanite says:

      25 Aug25 August 12:39

      We had one of those a couple of weeks ago when MCC passthrough made a comeback!

• Michael C says:

  25 Aug25 August 10:52

  In SEAsian news…Bali has said it will not admit foreign tourists before 2021.
  From October onwards, Phuket will admit them, as long as they are staying 30 days or more.

• Aston100 says:

  25 Aug25 August 11:02

  So thanks to info from some of you in regards to finding a points generating method of paying a decorator £1k (does not accept paypal or cards), I went ahead and setup a Revolut account and topped it up from my free white IHG. I’ve immediately added funds from my bank to pay it off in order to avoid interest charges.
  So that looks to be fine thanks again.
  If you recall, the other thing I wanted to do was buy some bonds, and I’ve done that now, but my new question is, does this type of purchase get charged interest by IHG too? i.e. do I need to immediately pay it off in the same way as I did with the topups to Revolut in order avoid interest?
  To try and emulate the local parlance, there was a bendy intermediary between IHG and the bond provider.

  Actually, that leads to a further question – I don’t think I’ve seen the bendy purchases of the bonds appear on my IHG dashboard as yet. Does the bendy organisation take some time before sending the charges over to IHG, and can it get rejected at some point, or does the fact that I have the bonds in my account confirm there won’t be any rejections or somesuch?

  Just trying to understand if I need to immediately pay off IHG for any bonds, despite not seeing them or any other bendy purchases on my dashboard as yet.
  Thanks in advance.

  • Peter K says:

    25 Aug25 August 11:28

    Via bendy your bondies are purchases so are treated in the usual way a purchase is treated.

    • Aston100 says:

      25 Aug25 August 12:30

      Thanks, so no need to manually pay it off immediately then.
      However, in future I guess I would need to keep Revolut topups several days away from any other purchases as the whole balance (including any other purchases made with IHG) needs to be paid off entirely in order to avoid interest on the Revolut topups. The way it looks right now, I will need to pay off the bonds and Revolut together since they were done on the same days, thus requiring an unnecessarily large payment to IHG. Does that sound right? Are you doing it different?

      Thanks.

      • Peter K says:

        25 Aug25 August 14:44

        Yes, you need the total IHG balance to be zero to avoid accruing interest after a revolving credit top-up.

    • Aston100 says:

      25 Aug25 August 12:30

      Also, ‘bendy bondies’ sounds so good.

  • Doug M says:

    25 Aug25 August 11:40

    If you look at the IHG/Creation dashboard you’ll see your your available + balance is different from your credit limit by the amount of your NS&I. It takes a couple of days to catch up it seems.

    • Aston100 says:

      25 Aug25 August 12:31

      Thanks Doug, you are right.

  • Lady London says:

    25 Aug25 August 11:41

    this time of the month your sandy destination transaction will take a week or so into next month to be processed through fully apparently

    • Aston100 says:

      25 Aug25 August 12:33

      Sandy Bendy Bondies. Just gets better and better!

    • Andrew M says:

      25 Aug25 August 18:34

      Isn’t it more of a pebbley destination?

• DZOO says:

  25 Aug25 August 11:16

  Apologies for the repost (posted towards the tail-end of yesterday’s thread) – just activated Curve Metal w/ underlying VS+ MC. The app notifications are working fine and able to make payments online, but just not to the Seagulls (Fronted is on). Once the payment is verified in app I just get kicked back to the log-in page. Anyone had a similar issue? TIA

• Darren says:

  25 Aug25 August 11:32

  Any recent knowledge of Conrad Algarve? I’m looking to add a one nighter onto the back of a weeks stay and wondered if all facilities are available, pool, breakfast etc.

  Thanks

  • Neil says:

    25 Aug25 August 11:53

    Yes! They were all open even when Portugal was on the FCO list

  • Harry T says:

    25 Aug25 August 19:14

    If you check in the Hilton app, it should say what’s open.

    I just checked and it says “ Some hotel services may not be available or may be limited during your visit. The following services and amenities are available, but with reduced service: Concierge, Fitness Center, Breakfast, On-site Restaurant(s), Pool, Room Service, Spa, Valet Parking. ”

    Always best to email or call the hotel to check I find.

    • Darren says:

      25 Aug25 August 20:44

      Thanks Harry, I saw the comments in the app but also noted a couple of TA reviews which mentioned the valet parking so I don’t think the notes are up to date, you’re right about an email. You’re European tour is pretty impressive at the moment 🙂

• JP_MCO says:

  25 Aug25 August 11:53

  I just rang up VS to book some seats using my two companion vouchers. I rang the Flying Club line and it took around 1h10m to get through. When through I was told I could book Upper seats for 4 people using only Economy mileage – just pay the difference in taxes. Seemed like a pretty good deal to me. It’s only one way to MIA at the moment and we’ll have to use full miles or our Avios to get back but Economy mileage for Upper seats seemed like a pretty good use of 2 vouchers for us.

  • Tom says:

    25 Aug25 August 12:12

    I thought you could only upgrade to Upper from Premium Economy?

    • JP_MCO says:

      25 Aug25 August 12:20

      That’s what I thought. But the lady was adamant this could be done and she’s gone ahead and made the booking.

      • Tom says:

        25 Aug25 August 12:23

        Just for reference can you tell me how many points you used and the taxes charged? Thanks!

        • JP_MCO says:

          25 Aug25 August 12:25

          90000 miles + 2 vouchers + £1854 carrier fees for 4 seats in Upper from LHR > MIA.

    • JP_MCO says:

      25 Aug25 August 12:22

      What I ended up paying was 90000 miles + taxes for 4 seats in Upper using two vouchers. I wonder if it was something to do with the fact it was only one way.

      • John says:

        25 Aug25 August 13:33

        Hi
        Just be careful as the last time they made a mistake with me similar to this, we got to the airport to be told the tickets were not valid and had to pay the additional miles and some charges before we could fly. There was a note on our record but no one had bothered to contact us when the back office picked up the error.
        It took 3 hours to sort including have to go from Upper Wing to ordinary check in too pay. Never even made clubhouse !
        What was worse was everything was fine on app including our chosen seats!

        • JP_MCO says:

          25 Aug25 August 15:52

          Thanks for the heads-up. When the new e-ticket comes through I’ll send a message to ask the specific question. What exactly would they be looking for? I’m surprised they made you pay the additional miles and taxes when it was their mistake. Was it exactly the same scenario? You surely would have had a case for claiming IDB if they had stopped you getting onboard.

        • Doug M says:

          25 Aug25 August 16:36

          That’s right. PE is 22500 one way, so each voucher can upgrade 2 people one class one way. 4 x 22500 (PE) = 90000 miles + fees. She may have told you economy to UC, but it’s not, that’s PE to UC.

        • JP_MCO says:

          25 Aug25 August 18:59

          Maybe I’m not understanding your post but it isn’t 22500 miles each way from LHR to MIA at peak time it is 32500. So it was an upgrade from Economy to Upper.

        • Doug M says:

          25 Aug25 August 19:16

          I couldn’t see you mention the date so assumed it wasn’t a peak date. The voucher is offered as a one class upgrade, so something is very odd here.

  • AndyGWP says:

    25 Aug25 August 18:58

    Same experience a few days ago – they used economy miles (+50% as I’m red), rather than premium economy that I expected

• Anna says:

  25 Aug25 August 12:05

  BA not too bad this morning. I called at 10 am on the 0800 number (0191 just cuts you off) on a punt to try and reclaim the avios for the return portion of my 2 4 1 bookings, got through to the Indian call centre after about 20 minutes. I’ve had some really awful experiences with them in the past but I spoke to a delightful young man and it all went smoothly after my initial panic because he misunderstood and thought I was trying to cancel the flights! Avios back in my HHA almost instantaneously.

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