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The HfP chat thread – Tuesday 20th April

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Comments (270)

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

  • David Lawton says:
    20 Apr20 April 10:42

    Has anybody had any Sainsbury’s bonus point offers in the last 2 weeks? Its usually 10am Tuesday they populate for me on the app, and usually around 20 offers. Last Tuesday nothing, this Tuesday nothing, and seems a few are complaining on Nectar’s Facebook page.

    • RichS says:
      20 Apr20 April 10:53

      I had mine this morning at 10am (20 offers, all low value, though, mostly 10 and 20 nectar points). Their response to people on Twitter is very vague and seems incorrect, for example one person was told “we’re currently doing some updates and changes to the offers, while this is ongoing we’ve temporarily stopped those. It’s not forever though so keep an eye on the account and you’ll be able to see there return. ” Which can’t be correct as I got mine as normal this morning…

      • Sandra says:
        20 Apr20 April 11:02

        I got mine as usual yesterday mostly on about 15 things I buy regularly like cheese, milk, bread and all low, 10 or 20 bonus points per item. This is more than last week, I think was around 10 extra points offers last Monday.

    • Andrew says:
      20 Apr20 April 11:47

      10pts – Crisps
      180pts – Coffee
      10pts – Bread
      40pts – R&R Pears
      20pts – Crackers
      20pts – Easy Peelers
      10pts – Soup
      10pts – Bananas
      10pts – Biscuits
      20pts – Steak Pie
      10pts – Chocolate
      10pts – Torilla Chips
      120pts – Sliced Ham
      120pts – Blueberries
      20pts – Yoghurt
      10pts – Sausage Rolls
      20pts – Marmalade
      10pts – Fig Rolls
      10pts – Orange Juice
      10pts – Grapefruit Juice

      • Michael says:
        20 Apr20 April 11:56

        My favourite weekly post – Andrew’s itemised breakdown of his Nectar offers.

      • Joe says:
        20 Apr20 April 12:07

        You are doing well! Mine are:

        10 – Green Pepper
        10 – Ground Cumin
        10 – Steak
        20 – Whipping Cream
        30 – Chorizo
        20 – Apples
        20 – Chopped Tomatoes
        20 – Spinach
        10 – Beef Mince
        10 – Potatoes
        70 – Wine
        10 – Spinach
        10 – Bread

      • Gavin says:
        20 Apr20 April 13:06

        80 pts – sandwich
        20 pts – soup
        70 pts – sag aloo
        70 pts – another sandwich
        60 pts – peanut butter
        80 pts – veg selection

        380 points for 6 items.

        plus another 5x points for £50 spend

        • Crafty says:
          20 Apr20 April 14:34

          It cost you more to type that out than you’ll get back by buying the items.

          • Gavin says:
            20 Apr20 April 19:37

            Doing it during work time costs me nothing! However Sainsbury’s keep giving me offers for items they don’t stock in my town

      • Super Secret Stuff says:
        20 Apr20 April 14:48

        No titty buns? lol

      • Chris Heyes says:
        20 Apr20 April 15:43

        Andrew, Joe, Gavin, You must really start buying some real food lol

        • Andrew says:
          20 Apr20 April 16:01

          I don’t really need to.

          There’s an amazing staff restaurant on site here (Egg noodles, veggies, cripsy beef, pad Thai sauce and asian ‘slaw today). So when it comes to the evening, I’m soup, sandwich, toasie or something light.

          At the weekend, I usually do something from Phil McKenzie’s (@leansquad) recipes. Although I understand that you’re supposed to follow his exercise routines as well as his scoff his recipes to achieve those abs…

          • Lady London says:
            20 Apr20 April 18:09

            You are just making it worse @Andrew by posting your work cafeteria menu as well.

            Roast tomorrow? Wednesday is usually roast…?

    • Youllnever says:
      20 Apr20 April 11:48

      I’ve had nada like you for the past two weeks.

      • David Lawton says:
        20 Apr20 April 12:30

        Don’t suppose you have a large Nectar point balance? I’m on 81,636/£408.18 and wondering if I’m not getting offers because I have big stash of points already.

        • Anuj says:
          20 Apr20 April 13:45

          I have £300ish on my Nectar and I still get about 5/6 offers a week but I only ever buy one or two items at Sainsbury’s

    • Anttelli says:
      20 Apr20 April 12:32

      No points offers but £6 off a £40+ spend last week and this week!

    • r* says:
      20 Apr20 April 14:22

      90 points worth in total. Ive given up with sainsburies.

  • Amy says:
    20 Apr20 April 10:49

    Almost a month after Barclays blocked me from accessing my Premier account, I still can’t access it, and no one is able to help – the branch, customer care, fraud team. They are all saying as per the terms and conditions of the account, Barclays reserves the right to block accounts if they suspect fraud.

    I am now sick of going around in circles. I have a 5 figure sum in my Premier account, which I need desperately at the moment. What is the best way to go about resolving the deadlock with Barclays. I was thinking going to the small claims court. Would my claim against Barclays be admissible there?

    Any other suggests are welcome too. Please help me! 🙁

    • Babyg says:
      20 Apr20 April 10:55

      What type of activity triggered the lockout? What is your premier account manager saying?

      • Amy says:
        20 Apr20 April 11:02

        I did some transfers to meet the Premier income criteria, which I reckon triggered some alarms at Barclays!

        Premier account Manager is a nice chap but has expressed his inability to help because it is apparently “above his pay grade”. That’s what he told me.

        • rob says:
          20 Apr20 April 11:56

          Hi Amy just wondering if you were a new account or a long term customer of Barclays and if so how long it was from opening the account to getting it locked down?

    • CH says:
      20 Apr20 April 10:58

      Silly comment alert:
      Daily Mail?

      • Pete M says:
        20 Apr20 April 11:13

        I’d try emailing, Matt Hammerstein, the CEO of Barclays UK Retail & Business Banking (matt.hammerstein [at] barclays.com) – your note should get passed onto their executive complaints team. These teams normally have a lot more clout and power than your usual complaints people. You want to send a polite, short and sweet summary of the problem and impact on you and requested resolution.

    • Lula says:
      20 Apr20 April 11:36

      So are you saying you didn’t actually meet the income requirements to open the account, and made transfers to make it look as if you did? They have no justification for withholding your money from you, but if you don’t meet the criteria for having the account, then they’re justified in closing it, I would think.

      • Amy says:
        20 Apr20 April 11:47

        I meet the income criteria but my income is credited to my Santander Select account, which I don’t want to close. So I was trying to do a roundabout way of getting the salary credited to Barclays Premier, but I guess they have their ways of tracking down the source of “income”.

        • Red Flyer says:
          20 Apr20 April 16:59

          Pay into Barclays then move to Santander – that way Barclays happy and you get to keep Santander too? I did this with HSBC Premier and no issues to date with either bank.

      • ChrisC says:
        20 Apr20 April 12:33

        If they believe the source of funds is illigitimate they can prevent any withdrawals

  • Mco says:
    20 Apr20 April 10:54

    Lady London and others(There were a few of you). Thank you for all your advice in the past few weeks.

    BA has not responded in 5 weeks to my EC261 letter before claim. I am going to book new tickets and do MCOL. Couple of questions

    1. Does the MCOL claim need to have legal stuff? I will put in the reason of the claim under EC261 but do I need to do anything else.
    2. Trailfinders are saying they don’t have any fares that I can book with only a deposit unless I also get hotel accommodation through them.
    3. Thinking of doing CEDR to avoid paying for the tickets now? Any disadvantages to this?
    4. How long does a MCOL take now days?

    • meta says:
      20 Apr20 April 11:13

      1. Juste cite all the necessary articles from EC261 and cite full paragraphs underlining relevant bits. The online form is pretty self-explanatory.
      2. Try finding another travel agent. There’s bound to be someone who can do it.
      3. Disadvantage is that I believe it takes longer than MCOL. The advantage is that you can still go to MCOL if CEDR doesn’t work as you hoped. You could also try S75 claim on your credit card.
      4. 28 days more or less, but BA will probably settle around 25th day.

      • Lady London says:
        20 Apr20 April 18:13

        +1
        Though I think EU261 as incorporated into UK law technically has a different name now?

      • Mco says:
        20 Apr20 April 20:38

        Thank you. Since the flight is 8 months down the line what happens if I can’t travel and cancel\refund the ticket.

    • Toppcat says:
      20 Apr20 April 12:19

      I have been pretty astonished at how long the CEDR process has taken. c.90 days for the airline to respond to the initial complaint (which then got extended as they are apparently too busy to meet even that deadline), then >3 weeks to appoint an adjudicator, now a further 3+ weeks for the adjudicator to reach a decision and publish their reasoning… Then God know how long until any cash is actually received.

      I’m not in desperate need of the cash, but I think I would be tempted to go straight to MCOL next time.

      • meta says:
        20 Apr20 April 12:30

        MCOL is a very easy process. The new online system is easy to understand and there are accompanying notes if you get stuck. You don’t even have to upload any documents until asked by the court, just list them. MCOL also has strict deadlines. They allowed a maximum deadline extension of 14 days to BA last year, but
        my friend did it a month ago and no extension was given to BA. BA, as is often the case, settled before it was supposed to go to hearing. All done and dusted within 35 days.

        • Louie says:
          20 Apr20 April 13:13

          You want to try a Financial Ombudsman Service complaint (or rather, you don’t!). Over 18 months so far.

  • Pete M says:
    20 Apr20 April 11:15

    “Mitie lands £90m contract for quarantine-compliance checks”

    Someone mentioned this yesterday – link without a paywall here: https://www.civilserviceworld.com/news/article/mitie-lands-90m-contract-for-quarantinecompliance-checks

    Wonder how their incentives system will work? A bonus for every fine issued? 🙂

    • TGLoyalty says:
      20 Apr20 April 13:08

      10k a day wont even touch the sides if travel opens up on May 17th

      Optics …

      • Pete M says:
        20 Apr20 April 13:15

        Guess it’ll depend on how many ‘green’ countries there are, I could see travel demand continuing to be super depressed for a few more months.

        • TGLoyalty says:
          20 Apr20 April 13:21

          Green countries won’t need to self isolate

        • Anuj says:
          20 Apr20 April 13:48

          A lot of people won’t want to travel until the tests become cheaper. Especially if you’re a family the cost of tests adds up

          • Pete M says:
            20 Apr20 April 13:55

            Of course, TGLoyalty, but the number and identity of green countries will presumably drive how many people are going to orange countries and hence need to be checked on.

          • TGLoyalty says:
            20 Apr20 April 14:10

            They’re already £60. If they make them 0 rate VAT it’ll knock another £10 off which is pretty accessible.

      • Sam G says:
        20 Apr20 April 15:14

        It doesn’t need to cover everyone, just been a decent enough threat (perhaps with some leaks to the BBC & Daily Mail about fines issued!) that people will respect the quarantine more. Everyone knows currently there is virtually no chance of a visit.

        Same happened in Singapore in the early days of at home SHN – they had a contractor out doing visits, I didn’t get one but I know a couple of people who did + there were some media reports of punishments which was enough of a deterrent.

        • Sam G says:
          20 Apr20 April 15:17

          Singapore also did a couple of other pretty low tech things that could be done here – 1) sending a link randomly that you then accessed a website and shared your location with it. Of course it was totally dupe-able (at least on an Android) with a simple GPS spoofer but added another layer of theatre + 2) WhatsApp video calling me to check I was indoors. Of course I could have been at someone else’s house + you had 1hr to call back if you missed it so could have run home!

        • TGLoyalty says:
          20 Apr20 April 17:53

          Which is why I said Optics …

  • Simon says:
    20 Apr20 April 11:18

    Anyone managed to use a 4 person FTV to rebook flights for just 2 of the passengers ? Or does it have to be all of the original names?

    • Sam G says:
      20 Apr20 April 13:28

      I think you can rebook for just two – an FTV is just the original ticket number 125-xxx which would have been one per person. they may need to split the PNR first. have you tried?

      • Simon says:
        20 Apr20 April 13:49

        I havent tried yet. We have a booking that will need cancelling, and want to make a fresh one for December. Suppose I have to call them either way! Will report back

        • Pete M says:
          20 Apr20 April 13:57

          You can split the original into however many new PNRs you need – four in your case if you want. Will only work for the original passengers, though.

          • Simon says:
            20 Apr20 April 14:39

            Brilliant. thankyou very much. Incredible how many times this booking will have been re-cycled now……

  • graham says:
    20 Apr20 April 12:10

    Looking at flights to Miami and the cost of Business Class Flights for BA and AA are the same . Anyone have a view as to which is the better Seat/experience ?

    • bafan says:
      20 Apr20 April 14:54

      I prefer Business on AA on the 777 which is what they use from LHR. When I lived on the continent they’d send god awful 757/767 planes that were glorified buses, in which case I’d have picked BA.

    • Jonathan says:
      20 Apr20 April 15:09

      AA is a good seat on the 77W which it generally is to Miami. It’s a 777 though so noisy/dry. Mini cabin (2 rows) at front of business is nice. The 777-200’s are not as good IMHO as the seat seems to move whenever the person next to you does! Direct aisle access on all variants.

      BA – depends on hard product. I like the A380 which used to operate one of the daily flights. As a couple I actually prefer the yin-yang old CW setup. I’m not particularly flexible but am in my late 30’s & never had an issue extricating myself from the window seat.

      Crew- AA are generally old & disinterested on the popular routes like LHR-JFK/MIA. Can be quite abrupt/rude but mostly just sling food at you then disappear. BA I find generally better. Some lazy, some brilliant but mostly ok-good.

      Food is much of a muchness. AA a bit blander generally. AA snack options were better pre-Covid. If you have kids or a sweet tooth then the ice cream sundae dessert might appeal. Booze a bit better on BA.

      Flying back to London you need to bare in mind that AA metal = no EU261 protections.

  • Andy says:
    20 Apr20 April 12:43

    On the spend £200 get £50 back at Harrods on my Amex plat card. If i went instore and bought a new iphone would that work? or does the Apple shop inside go through as Apple?

    • TGLoyalty says:
      20 Apr20 April 13:22

      Hopefully someone can help but if it doesn’t you can always go to customer services and buy a gift card then spend that in Apple.

    • Andrew says:
      20 Apr20 April 13:29

      Every till in Harrods goes through as ‘Harrods’ regardless of the department or concession – and Apple isn’t actually a concession, it’s an Apple Shop, rather than an Apple Store whereby Apple provide the interiors to look like an Apple Store but Harrods own and sell the stock (it’s the same as at John Lewis).

    • Amit says:
      20 Apr20 April 13:31

      Would also check the prices, the iPhone 12 mini is £75 more @ Harrods compared to amazon etc

      • Andrew says:
        20 Apr20 April 13:56

        Prices at Harrods will be set the same as Apple directly – some online retailers will undercut Apple.

        • KBuffett says:
          21 Apr21 April 21:57

          I’ve noticed on multiple occasions Harrods Apple Shop selling products and more than the Apple Store Online. Just embarrass them by checking the price on Apple’s website on their machines in their store. They are very very reluctant to match the price.

          Do not assume they sell at the same price as Apple.

    • eligold says:
      20 Apr20 April 13:46

      not sure, but in the past I’ve always received the offer on gift cards despite the t&c’s clearly saying otherwise

    • George K says:
      20 Apr20 April 17:40

      You’ll be fine at all the Harrods concessions. All go through as Harrods.

      On a semi-related question, can someone remind me if this offer would work on a cumulative spend to £200, or does it need to be one purchase? Wording indicates the latter, but in reality, I think the former also applies…

      • TGLoyalty says:
        20 Apr20 April 17:55

        So a few years ago it was cumulative but last year only a single purchase of over £200 worked for me.

        Perhaps it was just bad luck or IT but I just play it safe and buy a £200 gift card to spend at my leisure.

  • Louise K says:
    20 Apr20 April 13:05

    I’ve been reading (in the DM) about Barclaycard slashing credit limits – quite severely in some cases.

    Anyone had this HH limits cut?

    • Russ says:
      20 Apr20 April 13:18

      Nope not here although you’re right there does seem to be a bit of a cull going on at Barclaycard.

      I don’t know why this card is still live. I was expecting all sorts of new releases from Barclaycard but zilch, nada, nowt. They made enough noise about it. It’s like we’ve been abandoned 🙂

      • Jay says:
        20 Apr20 April 13:35

        If Hiltons’ global partnership is now with Amex, I reckon they are just fulfilling the contract with Hilton and will then pull out of the affinity marketplace.

        • NC says:
          20 Apr20 April 14:08

          Until the new Barclays avios Visa credit card in July…

          • David Lawton says:
            20 Apr20 April 14:38

            That just a guess or do you know something we do not? A Visa to earn Avios with would be nice, at least if it was better than Natwest Rewards Mastercard -> Avios or Nectar Mastercard -> Avios.

    • Harrier25 says:
      20 Apr20 April 14:26

      No credit limit cut for me to date….thank God!

    • Anna says:
      20 Apr20 April 14:29

      If you read the reports in full, it does look as though the customers having their limits slashed were only occasional and/or low spenders anyway. Barclays’ statement also confirmed that no one has had their limit cut below their current statement balance, in which case I’m not that worried now!
      Sounds as though they are reducing their credit liability by encouraging their least lucrative customers to leave them.

      • Genghis says:
        20 Apr20 April 15:15

        “ reducing their credit liability”. Capital requirements?

        • Anna says:
          20 Apr20 April 16:06

          Whatever the correct financial term is – not my forte!

          • Yorkie Aid says:
            20 Apr20 April 16:15

            I suspect that anything in the DM should be taken with an enormous quantity of salt. Barclaycard wrote to me in March and said they were thinking of reducing my limit but if I wanted to keep it simply make a purchase before end of April. I spent just over a quid in Screwfix and still have my £13.5k limit intact.

          • Anna says:
            20 Apr20 April 22:24

            If it was just a DM journalist then maybe but they seem to have plenty of testimonials from Barclays account holder and a statement from Barclays themselves. While they probably make some stuff up, I don’t think they’d extend that to actual quotes!

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