The HfP chat thread – Saturday 30th January

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• James says:

  30 Jan30 January 03:35

  I know this will have been covered a million times before so I apologise in advance! I have a reward booking on a 241 with BA in March which most likely will be cancelled. How does taking a FTV work when a 241 has been used? How much will my voucher be for? Can FTVs be used on Cathay booked through BA?

  • Doc says:

    30 Jan30 January 06:57

    Your FTV contains all of your original booking stuff like your 2-4-1, Avios and the tax component you paid on your credit card. So when you come to rebook your voucher and the amount of cash is the same as your original booking. You pay extra if the value of your new booking is higher or pay extra Avios but if your new booking value is lower, you get another voucher for the difference. FTV is now valid till early 2023. If BA cancel your flight, you are entitled to a full refund.

  • Nick says:

    30 Jan30 January 09:35

    241s can’t be used on Cathay. This doesn’t change if it’s in a FTV.

  • Yorkieflyer says:

    30 Jan30 January 12:15

    If you don’t want an FTV but want re routing BA are obliged to do so 241 or not. We got back from Cape Town in January being rebooked in Qatar in business having had a 241 in the sale. It wasn’t easy….but that’s another story

    • James says:

      30 Jan30 January 13:35

      Did you manage to get a rebooked for more than a year of the original booking? My problem is I booked in April last year.

      • Yorkieflyer says:

        30 Jan30 January 17:45

        No well within the year, we were due to return on 4 Jan in first from Cape Town and as we all know direct flights were pulled. We booked in the 50% sale with 241 last year, cancelling our earlier booking booked at 355 days before

    • kitten says:

      30 Jan30 January 15:27

      yorkieflyer: tell us more about your journey back?

      • Yorkieflyer says:

        30 Jan30 January 18:24

        Without You First and persistence and me being borderline rude we’d still be there or in reality have booked economy home.
        Rebooked in QR in business after explaining my rights and pointing out they’d be paying for a hotel for the next week as they insisted that Avios booking meant no re routing but direct BA a week later.
        Booking then auto cancelled after 48 hours, BA system not permitted reroute on Avios was the explanation.
        They tried to rebook us for 10 days later on BA direct….
        Again insisted on my rights and rerouted on QR in J and ticketed in 10mins
        QR back was nearly usual service but with ding ding main course. Al Mourjan lounge excellent, waiter chatty asking where we were from and then offering the view that UK wasn’t doing very well with Covid😀
        BA club world was a dogs dinner or school dinner on a tray if I’m being charitable

        • Yorkieflyer says:

          30 Jan30 January 18:28

          I suppose we could claim for what was (technically) a downgrade from BA first to Qatar business?

        • kitten says:

          30 Jan30 January 18:52

          H*** Yes Yorkieflyer after that, make sure you claim the downgrade. 3 requests, 8 weeks without success or “final refusal” and you are good to go MCOL. I will be disappointed with you if you don’t.

          I know you’ve been around for a while so I don’t need to tell you you claim the full 75% compo for each seat for being transported in J when you bought F based on price paid for first seat even if a 2-4-1 was used. BA’s hardly going to object by saying QR J is at least the same quality as BA F, are they? :-). Plus your time ay your professional rate since this is a particularly aggravating case, any other extra expenses caused plus 8% statutory interest pa pro rata on all monies until payment reaches your account.

          It’s particularly heartening to hear that BA finally seemed to realise their game was up after you threatened them with the entire hotel costs for all the intervening days until the only flight they were offering.

          However I can’t help wondering how much more compensation would be due to you for a double downgrade from F if BA had forced you to return in Y doubtless thinking you would not be aware of your right to compensation.

          Borderline rude? I think you were amazingly tolerant and enjoyed your account. Now please go and get your money off BA. Thanks heavens for Europe and EU261.

        • yorkieflyer says:

          30 Jan30 January 19:30

          Hi Kitten and thanks for your kind words, my hesitation around claiming downgrade is that I specifically and repeatedly requested what I knew was the only other OW routing home and I knew First wasn’t available. You First asked whether I knew that QR didn’t offer First and I agreed, so I did then voluntarily accept the downgrade.
          The alternative was to agree to ask for Emirates First and while I’m dogged and persistent, sometimes you have to realise what is achievable in negotiation and I didn’t fancy paying for two first one way tickets and attempting to gain recompense…OR BA First direct which was their offer at some rolling date in the future and a paid hotel stay when we both needed to be back at work. We were already in a booze ban in SA and had exhausted our meagre supplies of wine and the prospect of further phone calls to BA with no refreshment afterwards wasn’t hugely appealing.

        • kitten says:

          30 Jan30 January 20:41

          Yorkieflyer BA made sure you voluntarily accepted the downgrade based on your clarification and I’m sure that’s what opened the way for them to book you on Qatar. It was done correctly to cover BA and as you’ve described the conversation you haven’t got a leg to stand on to claim the downgrade compo now.

          I agree with you that you could have hit the ball back and said in that case I need First on some other airline (which puts Emirates definitely as a possible) but you correctly recognised QR was a good compromise and they were prepared to book you. Because by then they realised they would end up paying out cash for 7-10 days of hotel plus meals that would exceed their interline or OneWorld or BA-specific cost to put you on Qatar. They just did not want to save that only to have to cough up the 75% so once you agreed they were probably relieved too. All in all you did well.

    • Polly says:

      30 Jan30 January 23:56

      Absolutely refused to put us QR foll canc our kul flights, insisted we had to be on BA.

      • kitten says:

        31 Jan31 January 04:34

        Then hit them for every extra cost you can. Though I think you were a bit stuck on this one.

        TBH though, you could have insisted on MAS, (which I personally wouldn’t fly) as it would have been direct whereas QR wasn’t. So in a way QR wasnt any better than BA’s own alternative.

        It helped Yorkieflyer that BA couldn’t offer their own alternative flight for a number of days. So QR could transport them ‘with reasonable despatch’ whereas BA couldn’t.

• Ati says:

  30 Jan30 January 04:57

  Anyone can give me a Trading 212 link?

  • Danny says:

    30 Jan30 January 05:42

    Mine is HY7SO3Gb
    Thanks.

  • mr_jetlag says:

    30 Jan30 January 07:52

    if you’re thinking of buying American meme stocks note that they’ve restricted these purchases. otherwise carry on…

    • IanM says:

      30 Jan30 January 08:25

      You can’t buy many of the shorted stocks like GameStop on Trading212 anyway, and Robinhood platform isn’t available for the UK

    • Pablo says:

      30 Jan30 January 09:22

      They are open for trading again.

• ee says:

  30 Jan30 January 06:15

  Following some comments yesterday, I ordered some footwear from Spain on 21st December for 129 euro plus 27 euro local vat (at 21%).

  The order was only shipped in the new year, and on the customs declaration the supplier has put the value as the gross amount of 156 euros. This has tipped the consignment over the £135 limit for goods resulting in a £47 customs/uk vat/service charge.

  The shipper was FedEx.

  I think the customs declaration should have quoted the pre Spanish vat order total? Is that correct? If so does anyone have experience of challenging the customs declaration?

  • RichS says:

    30 Jan30 January 07:04

    According to the Gov dot UK site:
    Goods sold before 1 January 2021

    If a seller receives payment for an order before 11pm on 31 December 2020 and dispatches the item after that time, these rules will not apply.

    • ee says:

      30 Jan30 January 09:19

      Thanks – I had not seen this guidance before (a lot of the .gov pages say they are out of date!)

      Googling the phrase I found a link if useful to anyone else:

      https://www.gov.uk/guidance/vat-and-overseas-goods-sold-directly-to-customers-in-the-uk

    • Lady London says:

      30 Jan30 January 10:58

      This would be correct.

      VAT for goods as a rule of thumb is based on your local VAT not the seller’s. (Services is more complicated.)

      You should not pay both.
      If you have to pay it at this end, the charges from UPS, DHL and Fedex as a % on small values, break the economics.

      It looks like the Spanish seller has processed it as an export purchase and not charged their own VAT. My understanding is they could have done it this way as you are a consumer if deal done before 1st Jan and you wouldnt have had to pay VAT and courier extra processing fee (which must be right moneymaker for courier co).

      However Spanish supplier may have been being cautious knowing it would be delivered this year therefore rightly or wrongly subjected to VAT here, so processed it as an ex-VAT export. That way you are not paying the VAT twice.

      VAT rates being close enough to the same, the courier charge being added is just annoying.

      But the Spanish supplier may still find they get stung for the Spanish VAT later by an eagle eyed Spanish VAT man.

      From now on generally I believe an EU supplier delivering goods to you as a consumer in the UK should not be applying his local VAT.

      You, on the other hand, are now subject to the Farage taxes of customs duty, courier handling fees which start at a minimum flat rate, then VAT on the lot.

      For USA purchases a rule of thumb for these used to be about 33%.

      Any complaints to Mr. Farage c/o his kids who have German citizenship, I think someone on here said. They’re probably illegally mixing with Boris’s Dad in France now, I think someone else said.

      • Lady London says:

        30 Jan30 January 11:00

        *couldN’T have done it this way before 1st January

      • Mouse says:

        30 Jan30 January 12:03

        I’m only now realising that our “zero tariff zero quota” deal does not mean no customs duties as I had naively assumed. An already bad deal looks even worse to me now.

        • kitten says:

          30 Jan30 January 12:27

          It’s beginning to look like Boris’s “I secured zero tariff” was similar to Neville Chamberlain landing back from Europe and saying “I have secured peace in our time”

        • AJA says:

          30 Jan30 January 14:54

          @ Mouse Where you’ve gone wrong is to assume duties and tariffs are the same thing. They are different forms of taxes. Tariffs are the taxes that the government imposes on the goods imported from another country. In contrast, duties are taxes imposed on the consumer for imported goods.

        • Mouse says:

          30 Jan30 January 19:06

          @AJA a rather subtle distinction which was perhaps not entirely communicated to voters! (And I spend quite a bit of my work time dealing with international taxation.)

  • ChrisBCN says:

    30 Jan30 January 07:47

    What price sovereignty eh

    • Navara says:

      30 Jan30 January 08:35

      Buy British and Holiday in the UK

      • Andrew says:

        30 Jan30 January 08:37

        +1 We should support U.K. businesses at a time like this and avoid spending our disposable income anywhere else.

        • ee says:

          30 Jan30 January 09:28

          You’re right, I feel so bad for spending my money with a small Spanish company who will be supporting jobs and a local economy there!

        • TGLoyalty says:

          30 Jan30 January 09:33

          So no shopping in Harrods then

        • Rob says:

          30 Jan30 January 10:58

          Or, er, flying BA!

        • Andrew says:

          30 Jan30 January 09:55

          Harrods employs several thousand staff in the U.K. – so just because the profit from the business goes to Qatar, doesn’t mean you’re not supporting a U.K. based business. So yes I will continue to do shop at Harrods.

        • Rob says:

          30 Jan30 January 10:54

          If you’ve seen how much they are spending on the refurbishment I reckon it is cash negative even if there is an accounting profit!

          That said, the Qataris have improved profits massively by being a bit more ‘logical’ than Al Fayed in how it runs. For the first time in my life, for eg, menswear is on the same floor instead of spread across 3 floors.

        • Ken says:

          30 Jan30 January 09:55

          I prefer a world where we sell them pharmaceuticals, financial services , football & music and we get to have good wine, skiing and sunshine

        • TGLoyalty says:

          30 Jan30 January 10:31

          Ah I see

          Well then imports of french, Spanish and Italian produce support millions of UK jobs too.

        • Callum says:

          30 Jan30 January 11:17

          You can do whatever you want, but is there a rational, non-nationalist reason why I “should” do so too?

        • Yorkieflyer says:

          30 Jan30 January 12:17

          Most of which have private equity or foreign ownership…..

      • Aston100 says:

        30 Jan30 January 11:02

        How is Skegness these days?

        • the_real_a says:

          30 Jan30 January 14:00

          I paid 50p for 4 doughnuts in summer at skegness plus there is a brand new Premier Inn right on the main strip 🙂 Work takes me to interesting places these days.

          Seriously though forgotten places like harrogate, knarebourgh et al are seriously underrated if you like nature and decent food. 15 minutes drive from some stunning places of natural beauty.

      • Rob says:

        30 Jan30 January 11:06

        You won’t be able to afford a UK holiday if overseas travel is banned, because prices will be triple the normal. UK ‘supply’ of beds is not huge and the West London banker community has no problems paying £1k per night if necessary.

        • meta says:

          30 Jan30 January 11:12

          Absolutely! There are already reports that they started putting prices up.

        • Mr(s) Entitled says:

          30 Jan30 January 11:19

          Going to be a very different clientele at Butlins this year then.

        • Harry T says:

          30 Jan30 January 11:52

          I plan to use my fairly large stash of Bonvoy and Hilton points to good effect in the UK.

          @Rob can you recommend any good Hiltons for UK holidays?

        • Rob says:

          30 Jan30 January 12:21

          Bournemouth is good. St George’s Park is a decent leisure hotel. Waldorf Edinburgh is OK. Hampton Torquay opening soon! Hampton Blackpool is meant to be decent.

        • Yorkieflyer says:

          30 Jan30 January 12:20

          I’d rather stay at home than go to the fringes of the kingdom and principality where as Simon Calder discovered, we certainly aren’t welcome

        • kitten says:

          30 Jan30 January 12:33

          Harry T good idea to move quickly before points rates revise up

        • Tony says:

          30 Jan30 January 12:48

          Many small B and B owners in Bridlington would love to receive the £1k pp pn …. not that I recommend Bridlington.

        • Rob says:

          30 Jan30 January 13:48

          We paid £400 per night for a 3-star in Filey last August bank holiday, to put this in context.

        • Anna says:

          30 Jan30 January 13:12

          I did post yesterday but The Langley is currently 36k points on some week nights over the summer!

        • Navara says:

          30 Jan30 January 15:54

          @Rob
          Downcliffe House?

        • Rob says:

          30 Jan30 January 18:08

          No, Downcliff was full and is 5-rosettes. This was the White Lodge.

        • Tony says:

          30 Jan30 January 22:10

          Filey is much nicer than Bridlington, the further away from Hull the better !

      • Mike says:

        30 Jan30 January 11:17

        ee is this not something you could have purchased in the uk – without the need to import it ?

        • Lady London says:

          30 Jan30 January 11:24

          We are talking about Spanish shoes so no 🙂

      • Alan says:

        30 Jan30 January 11:42

        I recall we were promised global UK, not little England.

        • Bojotheclown says:

          30 Jan30 January 12:32

          +1

  • meta says:

    30 Jan30 January 10:44

    And paying UK vat, customs charges and shipping costs supports spending on public services, British customs workers and British shipping companies…

    • bafan says:

      30 Jan30 January 17:26

      Agreed. I’ll be making zero effort to “buy British”. Not exactly known for…well high quality anything, except financial services maybe.

      • Rob says:

        30 Jan30 January 18:05

        Take your local Holiday Inn. US brand, but franchised – hotel owner is likely to be British. But then, whilst a US brand, IHG is a British company with its Head Office here. Except its only a nominal Head Office and the bulk of the staff are in the US. Should we look at its shareholder list then? Most of those are US funds even though its main listing in the UK.

        So what is your local Holiday Inn? British or American?

  • ankomonkey says:

    30 Jan30 January 16:40

    Were they Double Monk shoes? 😉

    • kitten says:

      30 Jan30 January 19:03

      speaking of which…. who ended up with those?

      • Mike says:

        30 Jan30 January 19:58

        If you want to know won them – check out eBay !!

      • Rob says:

        30 Jan30 January 22:52

        Hopefully get the list up next week. One winner didn’t respond to any of our emails so, after 3 weeks, we redrew and the 2nd winner is now sorted.

• Erico1875 says:

  30 Jan30 January 06:20

  you must have a confirmation email /reciept when you bought these with the costs on it

  • ee says:

    30 Jan30 January 09:33

    Yes, I have a PDF invoice dated 21st December which says BASE IMPONIBLE 129EUR and IMPUESTOS 27EUR.

    My translation is that the impuestos is the Spanish VAT (it calculates at the correct 21%), which has then had VAT charged on again on import!

    • kitten says:

      30 Jan30 January 11:26

      tell Fedex you’re not having it if you did pay the Spanish VAT as purchased in December.

      • kitten says:

        30 Jan30 January 11:31

        Based om government link I would feel strongly enough to MCOL Fedex. They’d have to return all the extra cost plus your MCOL fee plus the 8% statutory interest on the lot you’d normally claim.

        It’s very annoying as courier companies basically hold your goods to ransom forcing you to hand over whatever extra non-advised charges may have landed on it even if you’re prettu sure the amount has not been calculated correctly.

        So it would be nice to see someone cost them some extra money but mostly they would get away with any mistakes.

        • Doug M says:

          30 Jan30 January 12:09

          That’s unfair. FedEx are overwhelmed in Europe as a result of Brexit. They hold the goods to ransom is hardly fair. That duty/VAT will have to be paid by them if they release the goods and the recipient doesn’t pay. As for the their fee there is a lot of work involved in this.
          Don’t forget there was zero planning involved in this, the deal was incredibly last minute, and even now certain aspects are unclear. Things like repeatedly paying duty as goods cross UK/EU is debated as poor drafting of the agreement rather than intended, but who really knows.
          This is an example of why small companies will simply stop sending goods to and from the UK/EU, I say with first hand knowledge it’s a lot more expensive than is being painted, these costs are not teething problems, they’re real ongoing costs.

    • AJA says:

      30 Jan30 January 14:58

      @ ee You should try to get the Spanish supplier to refund the IVA they have charged you as they have now exported the goods from the EU so should not charge you that. Good luck trying to get them to do that though. They will probably try to say you should claim directly off the Spanish tax authorities. You do have the option of rejecting the delivery in which case Fedex will return everything to the supplier.

      • ee says:

        31 Jan31 January 10:51

        I took delivery and paid the fees just to get my hands on the goods (the merchant said on their website 24 hour dispatch and 48 hour delivery, but delivery was nearer a month in the end!)

        I found a web form on HMRCs website yesterday so I have sent them a query to try and definitively understand the position.

• Will says:

  30 Jan30 January 08:14

  Looking at buying a new iPhone through the Apple store, which is currently offering 5 avios per £. Does anyone know if you still get the points if you choose to pay in 0% instalments?

  Alternatively, are there any other ways people have found for getting a new iPhone that balances up front cost and points earning?

  • BuildBackBetter says:

    30 Jan30 January 08:22

    BA shopping?
    Get a pay monthly contract from one of the resellers? Won’t be cheaper, but you can get it on Voldemort and turn it into avios.

  • meta says:

    30 Jan30 January 08:23

    I bought mine at John Lewis with £175 gift card courtesy of Amex Platinum offer. I used voldermort site to get extra money off plus traded in my old phone. Saved close to £500.

    • The Hunter says:

      30 Jan30 January 08:29

      So it’s possible to buy £175 JL vouchers at Waitrose, with the platinum offer?

      • Dan says:

        30 Jan30 January 09:43

        That’s my understanding and what I plan to do

      • Andrew says:

        30 Jan30 January 09:56

        That’s right yes – works perfectly.

      • A says:

        30 Jan30 January 10:46

        Yes works fine in-store. I’ve done this for every one of the Waitrose offers

  • BJ says:

    30 Jan30 January 10:58

    Buy a mid-range £300 android, a much better OS and saves a load of cash. Nobody I know who has actually switched from Apple to Android would go back to using Apple. I tried an ipad in spring 19 and got rid of it about three weeks later, it was dire.

    • Doug M says:

      30 Jan30 January 12:13

      I use an Android phone, I like it and don’t want to switch to Apple, but Apple make excellent products, they’re easy to use and I find little to criticise other than the pricing. They are simple too expensive, but dire does not apply to Apple phones and tablets.

    • Yuff says:

      30 Jan30 January 14:27

      When you factor in second hand prices Apple products are not more expensive in the long term.

    • QFFlyer says:

      30 Jan30 January 17:22

      My OH made the mistake of switching to Android in place of the iPhone 4 years back (Samsung Galaxy S2 I think), while I stuck with the iPhone. When the iPhone 5 came out, she switched back, biggest tech mistake she ever made!

  • Rob says:

    30 Jan30 January 11:10

    Find a mate who works for Apple and get 15% off. That’s what I do 🙂

    • Binks says:

      30 Jan30 January 22:38

      Or 17% off. I do the same Rob!

  • Lady London says:

    30 Jan30 January 11:22

    Carphone often has what look to be quite good deals with contracts on iphones.

    Rule of thumb unless your drive is having it to be fashionable if you wait 3 months, or maybe till you are in next calendar quarter that begins at some point when it’s at least 3 months since its launch by the network, you may hit a price evolution point that wil give you a much better package offer. Mobile phone price evolution is planned and managed very closely.

  • TJ says:

    30 Jan30 January 12:07

    Pay close attention to the small print. The offer doesn’t currently apply to the iPhone 12 Pro or Pro Max.

  • Doug M says:

    30 Jan30 January 12:10

    Shopping portals often exclude the latest Apple models.

• Rob says:

  30 Jan30 January 08:21

  Couple of questions…

  1. I had flights booked to Tenerife with BA in Easter holidays from LGW and they have been moved to LHR.. are they likely to go ahead? Seems strange to move them rather than juts canceling them..

  2. I have huge limits left on my Curve card.. best way to use these? I used to pay Brighton using these but they don’t seem to work anymore.. can HMRC VAT bill be paid using this without getting hit with fees?

  Thanks,
  Rob

  • Anna says:

    30 Jan30 January 08:36

    I’m guessing the travel situation will be clearer by the end of February and you’d still have plenty of time to cancel if you didn’t want to travel. The change of airport should mean you wouldn’t be hit with cancellation fees. I think BA have been moving a lot of LGW flights – not sure if they’re currently flying at all from there.

    From what I’ve gathered there’s no way to pay HMRC (or Brighton) with Curve without fees (in fact I can confirm as we had to repay some child benefit recently and had to use an ordinary bank card!!) You can set up certain savings account and fund those, and any other spending you’d use the underlying cards for. I don’t see the Curve limit as much of an issue, though (unless I’m near the limit), I only use it where I can’t use the underlying cards directly.

  • Ralph says:

    30 Jan30 January 09:23

    I paid my VAT on Curve last week without any problem or fees.

    • The cyclist says:

      30 Jan30 January 10:43

      I like your style Ralph.

• Andrew MS says:

  30 Jan30 January 09:03

  Virgin sent an unhelpful email last night to inform me that my flight to Jo’burg is cancelled next month . They quoted the wrong flight number and date of travel in their email but i only have the one booking with VS so assume it’s this one they are referring to .
  It was a reward flight booked with points but their email only talks about cash bookings and how travel can delayed until 31 December 2022. Does anyone know how reward bookings/ cancellations are treated in terms of re-booking ? Nothing on VS website that i can see.

  • Anna says:

    30 Jan30 January 09:08

    You have exactly the same rights under EU261 as anyone else – how you paid for your flights is irrelevant. So re-routing on another carrier (though that’s theoretical at the moment due to the travel restrictions), or change to a later date in the same cabin on VS, which is probably more realistic. Or a full refund, if you don’t mind giving up the award seats – I don’t know how easy they are to come by on VS.

    • kitten says:

      30 Jan30 January 11:36

      reroute to a later date if you don’t mind risking whatever cash you paid as South Africa award seats haven’t generally been easy to find on most airlines esp Capetown

• JohnT says:

  30 Jan30 January 09:30

  Another BA241 /50% sale disruption question (sorry)? With CHS route cancelled can you change both date and US airport to keep same no of Avios? Can’t see US being open in May so prefer to reschedule if possible even if within 12 month ticket validity and keeping to an airport near by (eg ATL)! Otherwise looks like best to take voucher.

  • Nick says:

    30 Jan30 January 09:41

    CHS flights can absolutely be rebooked to ATL if that’s what you want, you won’t have a problem with it. You can also ask for a rebook within 300 miles if anything else is better. You can also ask to be rerouted on AA to CHS (assuming they still serve it) under JB rules if you ultimately still want to go there.

    • kitten says:

      30 Jan30 January 11:38

      I would take Nick’s suggestion of rerouting on AA. ATL is still a fair way away and ISTR not a particularly nice airport

      • AJA says:

        30 Jan30 January 14:41

        I agree. ATL is an awful airport.

        • Jill ( Kinkell) says:

          30 Jan30 January 18:29

          We had no issues at all returning hire car at ATL ( huge operation for all the car firms, but very efficient) and then negotiating from the hire centre to the Terminal where BA were flying from. It was all very uncomplicated and smooth.

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