The HfP chat thread – Thursday 19th November

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• AviosNewbie says:

  19 Nov19 November 08:07

  I am just about to sign up to the Revolutionaries – what type of account do people recommend & use? Personal/Business? Standard/Premium? It’s a bit confusing. I would like to maximise the possibilities (Bendy style).

  • Lev441 says:

    19 Nov19 November 08:09

    Don’t bother if that’s the case, you’ll get hit with fees

  • TGLoyalty says:

    19 Nov19 November 08:27

    Curve passes through the mcc so there’s no advantage of going through it rather than direct.

  • The Urbanite says:

    19 Nov19 November 08:44

    I’d pay as little as possible for it. I paid for Premium back when the cash rebate was uncapped and covered the year’s fees in a few days but now I don’t see the point.

    As stated no point in getting bendy with it, or topping it up with a credit card at all unless you really know what you’re doing! Many have been caught out by cash advance fees and interest charged on their credit cards for doing this.

    • memesweeper says:

      19 Nov19 November 08:51

      Are there any rewards card that tops up the Яevolut without fees? Interest is no bother to me I clear down balances pretty quickly usually.

      • Aston100 says:

        19 Nov19 November 10:37

        The one that gives inter conty pointies.
        Though it seems to charge interest immediately.
        Recently I thought I had it all covered but still got hit with six pence of interest. Yes it was only six pence, but could have been worse had the topup been for a larger amount, and if I’d delayed paying it off by a few hours.

        • 747_Brat says:

          19 Nov19 November 13:56

          So after you top-up Revolutionaries, do you need to pay back Creation the topped-up amount to avoid interest, or do you need to pay back remaining outstanding balance on the card as well?

        • TGLoyalty says:

          19 Nov19 November 16:28

          Must pay your whole balance to avoid interest.

      • Pangolin says:

        19 Nov19 November 19:32

        Button shaped chocolates = no fees, no interest on Storonsky topups

        • Gormlesstraveller says:

          19 Nov19 November 20:55

          Not the chocolates that you would get when dining out though

• Insider says:

  19 Nov19 November 08:18

  No story on Norwegian going into administration??

  • Bs says:

    19 Nov19 November 08:29

    Is this the first time it has gone in to administration? It seems to have been teetering for so long I feel this isn’t much news!
    I also see it has gone in to administration in Ireland. Is this a subsidiary?

  • Craig says:

    19 Nov19 November 08:33

    Not in administration unless I’ve missed something this morning. The are in examinership which as far as I can tell is similar to Chapter 11?

    • Toppcat says:

      19 Nov19 November 09:01

      This is correct.

      Norwegian Air starts Irish proceedings to reduce debt, cut fleet and raise new capital, the co. said in a statement on Thursday.
      Examinership process similar to U.S. Chapter 11 proceedings will shield Norwegian for up to 100 days

      Units under Examinership are Norwegian Air International Ltd., Arctic Aviation Assets, some AAA subsidiaries; NAS also gets protection as related party

      Co. had failed to obtain new funding from Norwegian government. Co. has NOK66.8b of liabilities, including NOK51.9b of borrowings

      Airlines will continue to burn cash in 2021, according to Moody’s. Revenue passenger per kilometers expected at about 40% of 2019 levels. Airlines with larger international networks will suffer the most. Low-cost carriers to fare better

    • lgflyer says:

      19 Nov19 November 10:48

      I have a balance of 2000+ Norwegian cashpoints (equivalent to £200). I have been looking for ways to spend them but it looks like the only way is booking flights. Any tips?

• Dave says:

  19 Nov19 November 08:40

  I’ve gor the spend £500 get £250 back Etihad deal on my main plat card and my wife’s supp. I’m actually planning a trip next autumn with a friend and Etihad are pricing up around the £500 mark so could be useful!
  Could I use my wife’s card to book a flight for my friend or would she have to be the one to use it? I guess that isn’t a problem as long as I have the card with me but I haven’t done anything like this before..

  • Rob says:

    19 Nov19 November 09:35

    Totally fine.

    For a start, Amex doesn’t do name recognition so even in the (unlikely) event that the Etihad website insists that the name on the card used matches the first passenger, you can still type in your wife’s name as cardholder. It will go through.

    • Callum says:

      19 Nov19 November 10:55

      I think they were talking about problems at check in, not at purchase.

      There are stories of airlines demanding the original card at check in and then cancelling the tickets if you can’t, though it’s obviously a very rare occurrence. I’ve had it happen once a long time ago (and it might have been Etihad actually – it was either them or Royal Brunei).

      • Dave says:

        19 Nov19 November 11:22

        Yes that was my concern. I’d be travelling with my friend on a different PNR. I’d have my amex plat card to show them and could just bring my wife’s card along for my friend to show but just wasn’t sure if it was that simple?

        • Nick says:

          19 Nov19 November 12:13

          Yes, if it’s a case of ‘please show the card’ then as long as the card matches, you’re fine. In fact I’d suggest being honest with the card member’s name in the booking field, as at check-in they can match on name, number and expiry date (usually just number though). But it’s not a check that the card is in the traveller’s name, it’s just a check that the card exists. Never quite sure why they bother, but they do occasionally (I’ve had to show it for some airlines before).

        • Callum says:

          19 Nov19 November 12:44

          Nick – They do it to try and catch people flying on tickets booked with stolen credit cards.

        • Lady London says:

          19 Nov19 November 14:04

          also a handy way of offloading passegers if a flight is overbooked, without having to pay denied boarding compo.

        • TGLoyalty says:

          19 Nov19 November 16:31

          Considering it completely plausible someone has bought you a flight as long as you have the card I’m sure it would be fine. Especially as it’s your wife’s and not some random person (as far as the airline is concerned)

          If it makes you feel better have your wife buy yours and you buy your friends.

• dezbez says:

  19 Nov19 November 08:49

  Number of new Amex beauty/cosmetic related offers these last couple of days (on Gold rewards). Interesting how they seem to arrive in themes – over the last few months I’ve had mattresses, hotels, wine and fashion…

  • Rob says:

    19 Nov19 November 09:32

    Beauty market is in a mess due to working from home. Apparently the fragrance market is particularly badly hit as people aren’t prepared to buy before they try.

    • Brian says:

      19 Nov19 November 09:47

      Deodorant sales have plummeted too. Smelling a bit “fresh” doesn’t matter as much when you’re working from home (although if you’re not on a packed train/bus etc you’re less likely to sweat as much in the first place).

      • Anna says:

        19 Nov19 November 10:29

        Also mask wearing is putting people off wearing make-up!

    • Andrew says:

      19 Nov19 November 10:37

      Conversely, home spa treatment is up – so pampering brands like Aveda or Origins which are among the group of Estée Lauder brands which appeared on Amex offers today, are probably doing ok.

• Richmond_Surrey says:

  19 Nov19 November 09:07

  I have two Amex offers for Marriott on the same card, both already saved. One is £50 off £200, other £75 off £200. Both valid until the end of 2020. What’s the order of applying these offers when I make a transaction?

  • Ian says:

    19 Nov19 November 09:09

    They both triggered on the same transaction over £200 for me.

    • Aslan says:

      19 Nov19 November 09:38

      Did for me

    • Ian says:

      19 Nov19 November 12:59

      Yes.

  • Grant says:

    19 Nov19 November 09:11

    If you spend £200 at Marriott then both offers will trigger

    • TGLoyalty says:

      19 Nov19 November 09:12

      Yep always stack.

• Brian says:

  19 Nov19 November 09:09

  Still awaiting results of phase 3 trails of course so we don’t know if it actually works, but positive news:

  The Oxford coronavirus vaccine shows a strong immune response in adults in their 60s and 70s, raising hopes that it can protect age groups most at risk from the virus.
  Researchers say the Lancet phase two findings, based on 560 healthy adult volunteers, are “encouraging”.

• Rob says:

  19 Nov19 November 10:18

  Can someone just confirm for me that if I pay Ernie with curve and a Visa card behind it, I will be charged a fee by curve? I don’t have metal, just blue.

  Thanks

  • Sandgrounder says:

    19 Nov19 November 10:40

    Worked for a friend last week

  • Matthew says:

    19 Nov19 November 11:16

    Yes happens to me, using mobile (apple) with safari. If my fingers touch ‘reply’ when scrolling it activates the reply message box.

• Rob says:

  19 Nov19 November 10:21

  IMPORTANT: We are trialling another change to see what is causing the weird scolling in the comments (which, oddly, only impacts a small number of people and which no-one on the team has ever experienced!).

  If you experience it today, please let us know – plus whether you are on desktop or mobile.

  This experiment involves removing the ‘fix’ to the oversensitivity of the ‘Reply’ button, so you may find that playing up again today. We will put the fix back in place tomorrow. Thanks.

  • fivebobbill says:

    19 Nov19 November 10:41

    Was just about to post on this. The comments pages are loading FAR quicker today Rob, very snappy. A refresh still takes you to the top of the comments section (which I find slightly annoying if you happen to be midway down the page), but that’ll be because whoever set it up has added the code to take the reader there for convenience.
    Otherwise a much improved experience than I’ve been getting of late.

    • fivebobbill says:

      19 Nov19 November 10:43

      … having said that, just refreshed the page and it took me to my last post, rather odd, but much better, no lag at all.

      • fivebobbill says:

        19 Nov19 November 10:45

        Laptop btw, google browser…

      • Rob says:

        19 Nov19 November 11:15

        Page loads will be quicker this week, though, because Amex has bought the two top ads. This means that they are delivered by us rather than waiting for Google Adsense to decide what to show. We have also removed the ad under the articles as part of the test which will also speed up page loading.

        The question is – are people still seeing random scrolling?

        What we can’t decide is whether this is being caused by elements of the page loading slowly (which pushes other elements around as images get inserted after the text) or if it is something to do with how the comments are coded.

        Also worth noting that this is a very rare issue. We had over 300 chat thread comments yesterday so it clearly isn’t impact people much. Neither Rhys or I have EVER been able to replicate this issue.

        • fivebobbill says:

          19 Nov19 November 12:03

          Rob, I have done a bit of web design and site building in my time and have read of some the issues visitors are experiencing. I firmly believe a lot of that “scrolling” is/was down to the lengthy page load issue. Your comments pages, until today, were taking forever to load, the initial cache itself refreshed quite quickly, and to the lesser initiated that would look like a complete refresh, however a quick glance upper left of screen would show that the page was indeed STILL loading. It took a further 15 seconds or more (on my 80M/s server) for the code to kick and the page fully load, which then brought you to the first comments on the page. That meant I had 15 seconds to read/type a comment at the bottom of the comments page, before your page FULLY loaded whereupon I was taken swiftly back to the top of the comments – hence I believe the “scrolling” some have described. If someone is on a lesser download speed than me that delay increases, and could potentially be 20, 30 seconds or more before the page code kicked in, which would appear the page was scrolling magically!
          I was using the site last night and it was still like that, so whatever you have down since yesterday has fixed the problem, the page is fully loading immediately now.

        • Rob says:

          19 Nov19 November 12:55

          What device are you using?

          Any change today would imply that the fix to the latency of the ‘Reply’ button was somehow slowing down load speeds, which doesn’t make much sense.

          There are also zero speed issues for me when logged in. Rhys hasn’t spotted anything either. I can honestly say that I have never, ever, seen a delay to the loading of comments. We don’t use Disqus – they sit on server so just get spewed out with the rest of the text.

        • fivebobbill says:

          19 Nov19 November 14:28

          2 different laptops Rob, Lenovo Thinkpad L14, and a Dell Latitude 7 series, both top end using I7 processors. The issue was the same using Chrome, Edge and Firefox. I’m getting a top download speed where I live of 80Mb/s, I’m guessing that if you’re based in London you are topping that by some way which could negate most if not all of the effect.
          It wasn’t just when replying to a post that the issue arose either, it has always been there just visiting the comments pages. I just think with the lag in loading, possibly a lot of visitors on a slower Mb/s had moved on to make a post before their page actually fully loaded.
          Definitely something changed overnight mate, maybe some of the Reply button code was overlapping…

        • BLT says:

          19 Nov19 November 19:25

          Definitely fixed the issue for me. Can now click the comments hyperlinks and it will take me straight to the comments and no jumping when the page finally loads. Using iPad safari, Mac Firefox and windows Firefox..

        • Rob says:

          19 Nov19 November 22:14

          Thanks. Tomorrow we are reinstating the ‘Reply’ fix but with some changes to the coding. We may then find both issues are fixed.

  • AJA says:

    19 Nov19 November 11:03

    I had a weird glitch where in the middle of typing a post and hitting the carriage return key the screen suddenly scrolled to the bottom but I can’t replicate the problem on subsequent posts.

    I also find now that once I post a comment the screen scrolls up and back down to the comment I’ve just posted.

    I am using desktop and Chrome browser on a Windows 10 OS.

    • DB2020 says:

      19 Nov19 November 12:40

      Rob,

      Whilst you had approximately 300 comments about the issue yesterday, many of us have not commented. So here goes:

      – Windows 10 laptop and Edge browser: have not experienced the problem, but I don’t use it often to visit your website;
      – Windows 10 phone (yes I still have one and prefer it to the other mobile phone platforms): no issues observed with Chrome and Edge browsers;
      – Android platform on Samsung and Sony phones: happens a lot with any browser Chrome, Edge, Firefox;
      – Apple ios on an iPad: haven’t used it recently to visit the website as I don’t like Safari and avoid using it as far as possible.

      Haven’t complained or commented about the issue because I just scroll back to where I was on the page. It doesn’t irritate me. Plus my subscription didn’t justify asking for a change.

      • Rob says:

        19 Nov19 November 12:51

        Thanks. Need to track down an Android owner!

        • ChrisBCN says:

          19 Nov19 November 14:19

          I’m android, pixel, Firefox, having zero issues today or before!

    • Chef says:

      19 Nov19 November 19:10

      I’ve hit the reply button twice so far tonight and I’m only on page 2, it’s been fine recently, iPhone 7 on safari for me.

  • Kevin C says:

    19 Nov19 November 13:49

    No auto scrolling today so far.

  • George says:

    19 Nov19 November 15:12

    Android, Chrome, no weird scrolling today so far

  • Chas says:

    19 Nov19 November 18:02

    It’s definitely improved for me today. By the way, whilst fivebobbill says that he was waiting 15 seconds on an 80Mb connection for the page to fully load, I was waiting at least 30+ seconds (I never timed it) on a 350Mb connection….

    • Rob says:

      19 Nov19 November 22:16

      Makes no sense. Rhys, Sinead and I are on here all day, every day, and we NEVER have an issue. I also see our page load times from the hosting company and they are nothing like this.

      • Chas says:

        20 Nov20 November 10:03

        The page itself always appeared to load correctly and fully quite swiftly (as in all the new comments were visible). But the progress bar never made it more than 20%. Then, 30+ seconds later, the progress bar zipped to 100%, and the page jumped to the top as if it was freshly loaded.

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