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The HfP chat thread – Wednesday 10th March

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Comments (432)

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

  • Nigel W says:
    10 Mar10 March 11:40

    Has anyone else find points/avios coming from the store very slow recently? I’ve had none posted since mid-December, including from retailers who are supposed to be ‘fast’ at responding.

    • C says:
      10 Mar10 March 13:06

      I had some post within a few days of a purchase from John Lewis last week

    • Lady London says:
      10 Mar10 March 13:09

      Mine coming through from Screwfix in 48hours or so on 2 occasions in the past month.

    • Super Secret Stuff says:
      10 Mar10 March 21:19

      Halfords went funny for me a couple months ago. Chased it up, all going through OK now

  • Sandra says:
    10 Mar10 March 12:02

    If anyone has the Donald Russell £10 back on £50 spend on their Amex (on my gold card) an offer from Donald Russell popped up on my F/B last night FACEBOOK10 gets £10 off a £50 spend with them for Mothers Day – obviously to use both and get the full £20 reduction you need to spend at least £60!. It’s just worked for me with an email from Amex instantly following my order confirmation to say I’d just used the offer.

  • Super Secret Stuff says:
    10 Mar10 March 12:20

    Bir of an odd one for you…

    I need to pay a company £390, best quote out there for what I need. When I met them they said they accept Amex but now someone in the back office is insisting they don’t.

    I dont think they’ll budge, Billhop is an option. Do they do refer a friend? Seen PayPal do a service called Xoom, anyone know if and how this gets charged to an Amex?

    • Benilyn says:
      10 Mar10 March 12:26

      Ask if they do PayPal?

      • Super Secret Stuff says:
        10 Mar10 March 12:27

        Already asked, they said they’re not set up for it

        • kitten says:
          10 Mar10 March 12:57

          tell the Front Office person you’re going elsewhere then. Or ask them to deduct the 3% it will now cost you to use your Amex indirectly

          • Super Secret Stuff says:
            10 Mar10 March 13:07

            Good idea but not sure how well that will go down

          • The Savage Squirrel says:
            10 Mar10 March 13:47

            Sales reps won’t actually have a clue how the invoice/payment system works but of course will always say yes to whatever you ask about it in order to secure business.
            If it is the best price available I’d just shrug, pay some other way, and move on.

          • Super Secret Stuff says:
            10 Mar10 March 14:42

            @TSS see that is what I thought so I even asked if he was definitely sure, and he said yes. So pretty bad on there part

          • mr_jetlag says:
            10 Mar10 March 16:30

            I would pay up but mention the sales rep’s name to the back office and obviously have them make out an invoice with the payment method & sales contact etc… will hopefully ding him internally to prevent messing about in future

    • Andrew says:
      10 Mar10 March 13:49

      Stick your card in the slot and see if it works. Otherwise, just write a cheque.

      • Super Secret Stuff says:
        10 Mar10 March 14:43

        Covid and that, trying to pay remotely. Plus cant easily get to the shop. Anyone know about the PayPal Xoom service?

        • kitten says:
          10 Mar10 March 18:16

          used it, it worked

          not a fan of Paypal though so would not use again unless no other way

        • Jay says:
          10 Mar10 March 19:24

          Not used personally but colleague used and was charged a cash handling fee by his CC company.

          • Super Secret Stuff says:
            10 Mar10 March 21:12

            Interesting, will avoid it then

            Thinking billhop, I have a cunning plan will update you tomorrow if it works

  • stevenhp1987 says:
    10 Mar10 March 12:27

    Bendy & Ernie:

    Spoke to Ernie, they stated “Cancelled before processed” as the reason for the failure.

    They attempted a payment over the phone which also declined (charged and refunded by Bendy).

    So it’s NOT a 3DS issue. Either Bendy are stopping it, or Ernie are. That decline reason would suggest the later.

    Ernie’s new payment processor is Barclaycard and they’re not fans of Bendy (cannot use it to pay a Barclaycard off).

    • Lev441 says:
      10 Mar10 March 12:37

      Interesting… Except it doesn’t explain why HMRC has suddenly stopped working too…

      • stevenhp1987 says:
        10 Mar10 March 12:38

        Do HMRC & Ernie use the same payment system? Both government services after all.

        That or Bendy are messing up. I cannot even use Google Pay auto card fill-in for Bendy today – just tells me it cannot verify the card.

        • Lev441 says:
          10 Mar10 March 12:59

          Who knows… Hoping that they’ll be a fix in the future for these issues or makes curve card useless. I don’t use it for MS, just helps earning points when paying ridiculously high VAT bills…

          • mark2 says:
            10 Mar10 March 13:51

            Surely high VAT bills mean high sales?

          • Rob says:
            10 Mar10 March 14:55

            And it’s a pass-through anyway!

          • Lev441 says:
            10 Mar10 March 17:58

            @mark2 – in the hospitality industry, so have my delayed bill from March 2020 to pay at the end of the month. Since then, we’ve been getting rebates back from the taxman in all other quarters which has been a welcomed change. With the VAT reduced until next year, my HMRC spend will be greatly reduced until 2022!

        • Simon says:
          10 Mar10 March 13:46

          +1

        • The Savage Squirrel says:
          10 Mar10 March 13:49

          I did notice that google pay couldn’t verify for a few days now … it strongly suggests an issue beyond or outside simply HMRC; more to do with banking licences or some sort of card accreditation with Mastercard?

        • Tyler Durden says:
          10 Mar10 March 17:23

          My CURVE / GOOGLE PAY auto fill-in wasnt working, but i just made an online web purchase and it worked approx 10mins ago, first time the auto fill-in has worked in days.

      • Andy says:
        10 Mar10 March 13:05

        Or other online payments I’ve tried to make!

      • Simon says:
        10 Mar10 March 13:46

        HMRC use barclaycard as their merchant

    • Justin says:
      10 Mar10 March 13:22

      Bristol is still working for deposits

  • Venturelog says:
    10 Mar10 March 12:30

    Has anyone had recent experience of delays with Amex Gold MR appearing after issuing supp card.
    The card (supp) arrived last week. It normally appears within 24-48 hours

  • 747_Brat says:
    10 Mar10 March 12:33

    @BJ
    I am planning to apply for the Virgin Money Current Account for the 15K miles. I don’t want the wine offer. There are way too many reports on MSE of people who received the wine code instead of 15k miles, so I am not sure whether to apply or not.

    I know you applied for the miles offer and received the wine code instead. Did you manage to resolve that issue with Virgin Money?
    Thanks in advance for your help.

    • BJ says:
      10 Mar10 March 13:06

      There are comments on yesterday’s chat, page 7 I think. Nothing changed since then but I’ll update when I get a response to my complaint. You will need to decide though as I think I saw closing date is 15th. Impression I got is that switching team genuinely believe only applications via the app count. I couldn’t persuade them even to look at T&C, he just insisted he believed me and wanted to escalate it. If you apply I recommend you do so only via app and screenshot everything to reduce potential for drama.

      • 747_Brat says:
        10 Mar10 March 14:09

        Thanks BJ. I read through the comments on yesterday’s chat. It was very helpful.

        Reading through the T&C of the offer, I reckon I can still qualify for the offer. The switch needs to take place within 31 days of account opening. I just need to apply before the last day which you rightly mentioned is 15th March.

        Thanks for your help.
        Cheers.

        • TJ says:
          10 Mar10 March 14:30

          If you dig into the offer there’s a statement saying that the current offer will be back after they have relaunched the account with a new name. Maybe they re-launch with an improved offer? Then again, maybe they won’t offer anything at all!

          • 747_Brat says:
            10 Mar10 March 14:44

            Yes, I saw that @TJ.

            It looks like Virgin Money is soon going to undergo rebranding. They might try to lure customers with generous incentive. So it might be worth waiting then, or like you said it could turn out to be nowt!

            Decisions, Decisions!

    • Joe says:
      10 Mar10 March 13:37

      I am still waiting for my code…. no sign of wine (thank goodness), but likewise no sign of the points either!

    • Patrick Cold says:
      10 Mar10 March 17:42

      Please think really, really carefully before switching to VM. I did and it has been an absolute disaster – I have raised a complaint and have been told it will take 4 weeks for a decision.

      • BJ says:
        10 Mar10 March 17:59

        They told me 3-5 days but I believe your version.

        @747 see latest comments page 6 today.

      • Jay says:
        10 Mar10 March 19:29

        I raised complaint and had resolution in 14 days with letter and ‘Goodwill Gesture’ in my account.

    • r* says:
      10 Mar10 March 23:58

      I just got my 15,000 pts. I created a red acct via the app and then immidiately went to the red website to use that link to open the bank acct

  • BlueHorizonUK says:
    10 Mar10 March 12:48

    Something is up and no-one seems to have a clue.

    Tried to pay Amex using Starling (no intermediary) and kept getting declined. They use the system of entering a authorisation code from the app and then Amex throws a strip and says error.

    Very odd happenings.

    • BlueHorizonUK says:
      10 Mar10 March 12:51

      Had to do a direct bank transfer in the end.

    • memesweeper says:
      10 Mar10 March 13:02

      Try using the app … I’ve had fewer problems with that than the website with all debit cards.

    • BuildBackBetter says:
      10 Mar10 March 16:47

      Paid with NatWest debit and worked fine on the app.

    • Toby says:
      10 Mar10 March 18:05

      I had this paying amex with nationwide. Eventually had to pay by card over the phone (using amex automated service) which worked fine when online and app was failing in a very weird way.

  • aDifferentSimon says:
    10 Mar10 March 13:25

    Check your easyjet bookings for early May people!

    • Anna says:
      10 Mar10 March 13:50

      Thanks! Moved to Malaga for Feb half term next year, which should have been £250pp; I have a free bonus week to use in my timeshare so the trip has cost the princely sum of £85 for 2 of us.

      • Anna says:
        10 Mar10 March 13:52

        And thanks again to Jody for the initial nudge.

        • Jody says:
          10 Mar10 March 14:12

          No problem. Glad it worked out in your favour and you got a great deal from your £85 investment!!

          My Greece flights haven’t been cancelled yet – first flight is supposed to be 13th May. Picked to get in before the 17th May which is the date being suggested for potentially resuming travel. Hopefully it will be cancelled soon if they’re starting to look at early May now and if not, I’ll just move it to some other time.

        • Shub says:
          10 Mar10 March 14:14

          And thanks to you @Anna, I booked my Manchester to Bilbao flight today morning reading your comment here yesterday. Outbound leg is cancelled now. Happy Days 🙂

    • YC says:
      10 Mar10 March 14:46

      Thanks! Any risk of holding the cancelled tickets till more clarity? Or will they get refunded/changed into voucher if past certain point?

      • Anna says:
        10 Mar10 March 14:53

        You’d need to check the Ts and Cs but if you want to move to a peak date flight I’d get it changed sooner rather than later before all that pent up demand properly kicks in!

        • YC says:
          10 Mar10 March 14:56

          Thanks – thinking about August to Bodrum. But still so much uncertainty on how things will play out/borders/quarantine, etc

      • Jody says:
        10 Mar10 March 16:02

        If the flight is actually cancelled, there shouldn’t be any problem with leaving it until you’re sure of what you want to book. I know there a people on here who said they’ve got cancelled flights sitting in their accounts from 6+ months ago.

        However, if they have cancelled your flight but put you onto a different one without asking you (as happened to me with my Alicante flights I booked, they moved me to one 12 hours earlier), then if you want to re-book for free or ask for it to be refunded, you must do it before the flight they’ve put you on departs, otherwise you’ll be down as a no show.

        • kitten says:
          10 Mar10 March 18:40

          I phoned them when they tried to present those flights as a reschedule and formally advised them I would not be able to take their different flight and would contact them when I had identified later date for rerouting that would work for me. They claimed I would be a no-show and I told them I’ve officially advised you and kept a note of date and time of the call.

          Since then they’ve done nothing but cancel flights on days I would have been happy to travel. I hope they are being reasonable by the time I have dates to rebook to but holding off they stop cancelling things.

          It’s been very annoying having wanted to fly on several occasions and having to pay other airlines because they hadn’t put back flights or kept deleting them.

    • Travel Strong says:
      10 Mar10 March 18:14

      Woop! Thanks for that!

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