The HfP chat thread – Friday 13th November

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• Youngtraveller says:

  13 Nov13 November 13:51

  Last week got an offer from amex “spend £5 receive 1000 amex points” used it quickly no brainer. Today got another offer “spend £2100, get 1100 bonus membership rewards points” silly joke.

  • Andrew says:

    13 Nov13 November 13:59

    Yes everyone has a different MR spend target offer which are either very easy to achieve like your first one or quite difficult (considering the circumstances). I’ve got spend £3200 get 3200 – I mean even if I was likely to spend near that amount, would 3200 really push me to hit the target. Very strange offer – they’re either giving the points away or making it so unappealing you can’t even be bothered.

    • Youngtraveller says:

      13 Nov13 November 14:03

      I should say the first offer came on a card that is in the drawer and I never use unless there is an offer like that. The second is my daily card. They know Christmas is around the corner.

      • Charlieface says:

        13 Nov13 November 14:27

        Well, that’s the point. If you use the card anyway why should they incentivise you?

  • 747_Brat says:

    13 Nov13 November 14:20

    I got the Spend £1600, get 800 MR points offer earlier, but nothing the second time!

• Alex says:

  13 Nov13 November 13:51

  Hi, anyone has any advice on why Bendy-Ernie-IHG or Virgin payments get rejected? I decided to commit to the metal card and having received it attempted to transfer money to Ernie several times, and these always get rejected. Tried other financial/business services and payments do get accepted with no trouble at all. Had no problems previously with the blue card but this was ages ago before the fronted introduced. Is it worth contacting the bendy customer services? I trust they are aware of Ernie payments so this won’t be surprising to them if a customer asks for advice on what may count as manufactured spending?

  • Travel Strong says:

    13 Nov13 November 14:35

    Nothing good can come of contacting a financial institution to discuss your manufactured spend!!

    When have you tried?
    How much have you tried to pay?
    Have you left a few days and tried a normal in person transaction in a shop, then tried again?
    At what point is it rejected? Are you authorising in the app then rejection?

    • Alex says:

      13 Nov13 November 14:54

      Tried several times, switching between different cards as you can see, 50 quid each attempt, and tried again several days later with no luck. As written above all other payments do get accepted including other financial institutions which I am not going to name here. The app never asked me to authorise anything so no idea at what point it gets rejected. Of course the Bendy team are aware of such payments, they even explicitly name HMRC and Ernie in their help saying that we don’t need to pay the 1.5% fee for these providers if we have metal card. Any other constructive ideas?

      • Anna says:

        13 Nov13 November 15:28

        You don’t need a metal card for Ernie …

        • Alex says:

          13 Nov13 November 15:37

          A month or two ago I tried with my previous blue card and got rejected, so I thought I needed it. Moreover it is not only for Ernie.

        • Doug M says:

          13 Nov13 November 20:28

          @Alex. As I understand it Metal is more economical if you do a lot of fronted transactions. There should be no difference between Metal and Blue+Fronted in terms of working or not. NS&I definitely doesn’t need Metal.

      • Alex says:

        13 Nov13 November 17:58

        All solved guys, I contacted bendy and they did have a mistake with my address. They appear to store two addresses, one is customer home and another is billing address so the latter had not been updated when I moved house. This has been corrected now and I my first payment to Ernie has successfully gone through!

  • BuildTheWall says:

    13 Nov13 November 14:54

    Same problem for me. Works everywhere except ernie. Tried different amounts, big and small, on different browsers, nothing works. Disappointing after the bristol platform changed their code as well.

    • Leigh says:

      13 Nov13 November 16:50

      Do you know what code the Bristol platform has changed to? I thought it stopped working because Virgin blocked it.

      • BuildTheWall says:

        13 Nov13 November 18:04

        Apparently they changed it to cash subscription.

• john says:

  13 Nov13 November 14:24

  Dealing with a bereavement, and notified Amex that the card member died. They have decided to send M&S Gift Cards covering some of the points value. There were around 29,xxx MR points and it seems they have decided to send 25,000 worth of M&S gift cards. Would have been nice if they had asked what would be best to do with them, but at least they didn’t just delete them all I guess!

  • Charlieface says:

    13 Nov13 November 14:30

    Condolences on your loss.
    For anyone else such an unfortunate situation, take note: transfer the points before you tell them.

    • john says:

      13 Nov13 November 14:32

      Yeah. If you get the opportunity. I thought logging in and doing it after the date on death certificate might raise some questions..

• Simon says:

  13 Nov13 November 14:47

  Is anyone else seeing “Confirm your income” whenever logging on to their Amex account (via desktop)? I am seeing this on three separate Amex online accounts, plus on my 82-y-o mother’s account. In the same “Confirm your income” box message my income is also different to what I have always declared (unless, by income, they are including spousal income, in which case it’s much closer to reality).

  I’m not sure what to do: ignore or confirm? I more worried about my mother’s account given that she lost her job (at 81!) one year ago and hasn’t let Amex know. In saying that, her income — via her pension — is £8K less than her declared Amex income, so I’m not sure whether I should alter this on her account and then confirm? I’m trying to avoid them shutting her account down on account of this income reduction.

  • Sandra says:

    13 Nov13 November 19:07

    Not income, but today they did ask me to confirm my name, d.o.b and postcode which I thought was strange – never been asked before!

    • Simon says:

      14 Nov14 November 18:46

      Thanks, Sandra. Not sure what’s happening at the back-end with Amex at the mo’. A few noticeable tweaks of late, seemingly.

• Nick says:

  13 Nov13 November 14:52

  Having looked at Dubai I have found that I can book a Half Board package to the Hilton Waldorf at The Palm via BA, but I cannot with Hilton themselves!

  • Anna says:

    13 Nov13 November 15:32

    Are you sure? If you go down all the different options for a particular room there is very often a HB option, it can be one of the last pricing options you get to.

    • Nick says:

      13 Nov13 November 22:37

      I even contacted Hikton customer service to be told twice ” its down to the Hotel management”

• Coucou says:

  13 Nov13 November 14:53

  To recap: Bernie = Curve, Seagulls = American Express, Beardy = Virgin, Revolutionaries = Revolut

  • Sean says:

    13 Nov13 November 14:59

    bernie?

    • Coucou says:

      13 Nov13 November 15:03

      Pardon me. Bendy = Curve, Seagulls = American Express, Beardy = Virgin, Revolutionaries = Revolut, Ernie = Premium Bonds NS&I

      • Anna says:

        13 Nov13 November 15:34

        Do you work for any or all of these institutions?

        • Sloth says:

          13 Nov13 November 22:22

          It’s Andrew Bailey…

      • Rahaney says:

        13 Nov13 November 22:06

        Seriously why post this?! If you were at all interested in the points game you’d go back and read through the last few weeks of chat… all of these have been used/spelled out individually at one point

      • Coucou says:

        13 Nov13 November 22:15

        What do you use for the Hilton honours barclay card?

    • Aston100 says:

      13 Nov13 November 16:29

      You’d think the guy would run away after making such a cockup.

      • Lady London says:

        13 Nov13 November 21:15

        Do those of us who have patiently explained why discretion is useful, have a cuckoo in the nest?

• Ronald Jeremy says:

  13 Nov13 November 15:22

  Thanks all to Hemel Hempstead suggestions yesterday, much appreciated.

  • memesweeper says:

    13 Nov13 November 17:44

    My suggestion would also be to take a packed lunch to work.

• Ali m says:

  13 Nov13 November 15:46

  data point… (been meaning to use the phrase)
  Waldorf Astoria confirmed in email that breakfast for two included with gold memberships – hurray. Any children under 6 are free…
  win win

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