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The HfP chat thread – Monday 29th March

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Comments (321)

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

  • jek says:
    29 Mar29 March 13:21

    NS&I have sent a request to fill out a questionnaire and send statements for a KYC check. Any advice on how to best answer it and explain the creative bendy route?

    • Garry says:
      29 Mar29 March 13:24

      Put down that you were MS points, no biggie

    • Anna says:
      29 Mar29 March 13:25

      How much have you been sending them? I would keep creative bendy out of it, you shouldn’t be investing more than your income anyway if you want to continue your professional relationship with them!

    • Genghis says:
      29 Mar29 March 13:27

      Truthfully.

      • Babyg says:
        29 Mar29 March 13:44

        How much were you putting in out/ I use NS&I as a way to save for school fees and have never had a problem putting in out that amount, guess its peanuts compared with some peoples use of NS&I.

    • BP says:
      29 Mar29 March 13:55

      I just sent them the statements from the underlying cards, nothing from bendy. Plus current account statements, a tax return and investments withdrawals to prove source of funds.

      I draw a diagram to depict the flow of funds and examined it as “a short term savings method”.

    • Jonathan says:
      29 Mar29 March 14:10

      If you’re using liquid funds then you’ll be fine. If it’s clearly cycling with no underlying assets then it’ll be game over. Don’t lie as that opens bigger cans of worms.

      Good rule of thumb is only play with sums you could survive without if the music stopped & an account was frozen for 6 weeks. Not just due to the liquidity risk but also as that will be an amount you could justify shuffling round.

      • Heathrow Flyer says:
        30 Mar30 March 22:25

        ‘ If it’s clearly cycling with no underlying assets then it’ll be game over.’ – what nonsense.

    • BuildBackBetter says:
      29 Mar29 March 14:27

      Tell them to change the MCC and this wont happen again

  • 747_Brat says:
    29 Mar29 March 13:31

    Just curious if anyone here is participating in the Deliveroo IPO? If yes, what amounts are you thinking of investing.

    • Lady London says:
      29 Mar29 March 13:33

      If it’s that good why isn’t it being restricted to institutions as everything else good seems to be?

      • 747_Brat says:
        29 Mar29 March 13:39

        That is because lots of institutional investors wanted to skip it over the workers’ rights.

        https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/25/deliveroo-ipo-dogged-by-workers-rights-complaints-.html

      • ken says:
        29 Mar29 March 14:28

        Ha, ha.

        A sure sign of mug punters being drawn in.

        Deliveroo in the main provides useful casual, part time work for students (and furloughed) etc, etc. You will earn on weekend nights – not so much on a Tuesday evening. Not sure why there should be such a fuss – it should not be a full time job.

        Biggest issue will be that it gouges an unsustainable amount from restaurants. Can’t rely on lock down for ever.

        • Rob says:
          29 Mar29 March 15:02

          ‘Unsustainable’ is an interesting concept online. Look at Rightmove. It has constantly increased its fees to estate agents by 10%+ per year. It is virtually pure profit now, it will be making 90%+ net (not gross) profit soon – it was already above 80% pre-covid. Despite agents trying to set up their own portal in onthemarket, Rightmove has not been touched.

          Deliveroo is taking 35% from the restaurant plus your £2.99 delivery fee plus your service fee. I’m not sure if it pockets tips or not – one of the US restaurant apps lets you tip but doesn’t tell you that the tip goes to them and not the restaurant. Is this enough to stop restaurants setting up their own platform? Probably.

          Whilst the end of lockdown will cut Deliveroo sales, oddly enough it makes Deliveroo more attractive to a restaurant. After all, they need to open their kichens anyway so any Deliveroo business is arguably marginal revenue. At the moment, Deliveroo is the only game in town and high fees are likely to have made some places decide it wasn’t worth opening just for delivery.

          • ken says:
            29 Mar29 March 15:25

            All tips go to driver or rider with Deliveroo.

            Deliveroo (and Uber) should continue to work with takeways but in the last 12 months have signed up restaurants who had no choice with lockdown.

            As soon as lockdown ends the orders for restaurants will be vastly reduced (why pay the same as in the restaurant ? – ok you aren’t rinsed for wine) and restaurants will be disinclined to accept home deliveries (they won’t have kitchen capacity for busy times, and can’t rinse on the drinks).
            Its a bit of truism but restaurants don’t make money on the food and its hard enough working in a busy kitchen on a friday without trying to knock low margin online orders out.
            For an £80 food order, £25 to Deliveroo, £25 ingredients – to make it work at weekends you need a bigger kitchen & more staff.
            Could work on tuesday night – but where’s the market ?

            Leaves low value takeaway orders. Pizza’s, Chinese, McDonalds, Costa.
            A business for sure, but Just Eat, Uber and Deliveroo all worth billions ? I doubt it.

            Then cost pressure when we get fuller employment in a few years.

          • The Savage Squirrel says:
            29 Mar29 March 19:06

            Our local chippie (exceptionally well run and popular) just set up its own app and team (team of local teenage boys) who swarm all over the town on evenings. Owner told me that cost to run was well under half of equivalent deliveroo fees. So there is an alternative to Deliveroo for even single businesses, but this is partly because the dynamics in smaller semi rural towns will be very very different to large cities.

          • Ken says:
            29 Mar29 March 20:46

            Interesting Squirrel – and obviously Dominos do their own deliveries.
            Originally Deliveroo planned on rider costs of £7.50 an hour and average order size of £38 leading to gross margins of 75-90%

            Clearly they will pay more than £7.50, but the real killer is they will struggle to get much more than £22 for average order size once normality returns.

            Won’t get anywhere near gross margin target ever.

          • lumma says:
            29 Mar29 March 23:21

            The delivery fee goes to the person doing the delivery surely + some of the fee from the restaurant. I did some deliveries for them last summer when furloughed, average earnings would be around £4.50 a delivery, based on how far travelled. At peak times I wanted the lowest value orders as they’d be around the corner and would keep me near other restaurants for another job rather than a long bike ride into suburbia. Riders do get their tips although they’re quite low on deliveroo as the customer has to leave the tip when ordering not after delivery.

            Personally, I believe Deliveroo will be the one that starts to struggle first out of the big three. It’s the least popular amongst the riders, has the highest delivery costs for the customers and seems to offer way fewer discounts.

    • TicknBash says:
      29 Mar29 March 13:40

      Just applied an account with PrimaryBid this morning.
      The max you can do is £1k anyway, so it’s not life changing either way I suppose ?

      • Anuj says:
        29 Mar29 March 16:48

        Be very careful with primary bid. If you don’t use a more mainstream dealer like h&l then expect it to take several days after the listing for the shares to actually arrive. If you’re buying to sell on the post ipo rise this may mean you miss the profit entirely and end up with a loss.

    • Grant says:
      29 Mar29 March 15:15

      I’m in. As has been said, max is £1k assuming you get 100% fill. In my very amateur opinion it’ll do well on day one because of FOMO and then there will be a sell off as soon as those who got in on the IPO can trade and see they can take some profit.

      • TGLoyalty says:
        29 Mar29 March 16:02

        I’m in for £1k too because its not the end of the world if its 10-20% down but my feeling is it’ll gain 10-20% at some point in the next 12 months and its more than I’ll ever earn in interest eslewhere.

        Sort of my reasoning for risking £2k on M’s GC’s

    • Yorkie Aid says:
      29 Mar29 March 16:07

      If you’re interested in this business segment I would suggest that Just Eat would likely be a better proposition. It’s already listed (in London and Amsterdam) and trading quite a bit lower than just a few months ago. If its next merger closes it will likely have a US listing where this kind of business normally commands a much higher rating. There’s an interesting blog piece on Just Eat here: https://newmooncap.substack.com/p/the-misconception-just-eat-takeaway
      I am already a shareholder so I am somewhat biased of course.

    • Anuj says:
      29 Mar29 March 16:21

      Unless you’re betting on taking profit on it being listed, I wouldn’t touch it. They have made quite a big loss even during a pandemic where there was no option but to order food.
      Secondly, ethically as they don’t pay their staff properly, and with the Uber ruling it’s a matter of time before they suffer the same.

      • TGLoyalty says:
        29 Mar29 March 18:33

        If profit was the primary driver behind stock prices Tesla would be worth peanuts. (I think it is but that’s another matter)

      • 747_Brat says:
        29 Mar29 March 21:51

        @Anuj
        What you are saying is actually right in a conventional world, but markets don’t work like that, where it is all Fugazi 😉

  • Harry T says:
    29 Mar29 March 13:53

    Anyone recently appealed to Virgin Atlantic credit cards about a rejection for the Rewards Plus card? I appealed last time in writing to an address in Newcastle but unsure if that’s now the right one to use.

    @Rob any ideas about where to send a letter?

  • Simon says:
    29 Mar29 March 14:23

    As a follow up to yesterday’s article about paying electricity bills, I got an email from Octopus advising they were going to increase my monthly direct debit, with a link for me to change the amount. Various attempts to reduce the amount failed as they required approval. I topped up £400 on Amex and have now been able to reduce my monthly direct debit to £5.

    • Buxton says:
      29 Mar29 March 17:20

      Hey there,

      If it helps, chat them as i had the same and they will explain you need to pay on receipt of bill then they cancel the DD completely for you. Bear in mind that they aren’t as kind with you going into debit, like you might be able to with small DD amounts…i got a call a week after a bill asking for payment!

  • Jay says:
    29 Mar29 March 15:13

    Bulb electricity – what is the lowest anyone has managed to get the DD down to and how many months cover in credit was there in the account ?

  • WaynedP says:
    29 Mar29 March 16:18

    Fair warning: Just paid full year’s council tax and full year’s Water bill for first time using VAR+ CC (Amex not accepted). No bendy, just using each institution’s website, and previously always direct debit for both – this game still a genuine “hobby” for me.

    But I’m semi-convinced that universal karma is inclined to prevent me from ever exploiting any “free lunch”, from several actual experiences.

    Last one was world-wide Covid lockdown less than 6 months after I got my first Amex CC, for example, and put my annual railcard cost onto it – obviously mostly refunded soon after.

    So whether my actions today contribute (or not) to the imminent demise of Virgin Atlantic with zero benefit from the Virgin Flying Miles I’ve just earned, don’t say I didn’t give fair warning … 😄

    • Genghis says:
      29 Mar29 March 16:23

      You’ll be kicking yourself when the next 10% back at coop comes around and you’ve nothing to pay 🙂

      • WaynedP says:
        29 Mar29 March 16:28

        Don’t think I own any cards eligible for that offer, ha ha.

        Just waiting for the comments “Warn us if you ever apply for a bendy card”, because if I ever did then sure as eggs that house will come crashing down like a pack of cards 😄

      • Harry T says:
        29 Mar29 March 17:15

        Have we seen 10% off the coop on Amex?

        • Youllnever says:
          29 Mar29 March 18:20

          I definitely haven’t in the last year. Only one I got was a spend £15 get £5 back at coop.

    • Lady London says:
      29 Mar29 March 16:32

      Thanks @WayneP.

      In the same spirit, @Anna please keep us informed as soon as you book any UK hotel. So we’ll know which hotels will be closing when.

      And @Harry please keep us up to date whenever you visit another country, as we’ll know red list / local lockdown / other increases in Covid restrictions will follow you by about two weeks 🙂

      • WaynedP says:
        29 Mar29 March 16:37

        Too true, there’s several of us with proven track records here

        Who needs Mystic Meg when you can hear it first on HfP 🙂

      • Anna says:
        29 Mar29 March 17:51

        Oh Lawdy, LL 🤦‍♀️😂. You should maybe not count on the Kimpton Fitroy, The Langley, the Trump Turnberry, the Kimpton Charlotte Square, the Voco Glasgow, and the IC O2. I’m hoping for a year of glorious UK hedonism if nothing else! Oh, and don’t plan a girls’ weekend at the Kimpton Clocktower 🤣

        • Doommonger says:
          29 Mar29 March 18:23

          I wouldn’t stay at the Trump Turnberry under any circumstances whilst under the current ownership

          • Anna says:
            29 Mar29 March 18:37

            I’m assuming he won’t be there! But it’s 2 rooms for 5 nights all on Bonvoy points so I feel like I’ve got one over on him, actually.

          • WaynedP says:
            29 Mar29 March 20:41

            Hope you get to (belatedly) enjoy all your special celebrations previously put on hold @Anna – especially if you manage to get one over on you-know-who.

            Sticking to my guns as long as I can get away with it with Mrs dP about not setting foot in the USA until he’s sporting orange jumpsuit with DOC stencilled on the back.

            It’ll be tax evasion what’ll do it, or I’ll eat my hat.

          • Harry T says:
            29 Mar29 March 20:47

            Trump may have his faults but Turnberry is a lovely hotel staffed by wonderful local people. I have heard in the past that Trump has always refused to fire the staff, even during financial crises etc. The hotel brings a lot of money and jobs to the local community. Plus, it’s actually a very pleasant place to stay.

      • Polly says:
        29 Mar29 March 21:13

        Love it LL !

  • Gormlesstraveller says:
    29 Mar29 March 16:35

    Hi, does Hertz do DCC? Do any cards other than Amex disallow this? Are there any spend £250 get £50 type offers around at the moment for Hertz? Thank you

  • Waddle says:
    29 Mar29 March 16:38

    Does anyone have an email address for The Langley?

    Also does anyone know how much it would be to book a day at the spa/fitness centre? No treatments, just use of facilities.

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

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