The HfP chat thread – Thursday 12th August

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• LessCleverAndrew says:

  12 Aug12 August 13:21

  Has anyone recently bought a car via Curve? Where the purchase was, say split between multiple credit cards? I presume this doesn’t, in principle, count toward the 1.5% fee?

  • John says:

    12 Aug12 August 13:41

    I tried but my underlying cards declined it

    • LessCleverAndrew says:

      12 Aug12 August 13:42

      Thanks, out of interest – which issuers were those? I have seen previous reports on HFP of success – but this was some time ago.

      • John says:

        12 Aug12 August 18:40

        HSBC but it was because I had never spent so much in one transaction

  • Louise K says:

    12 Aug12 August 14:06

    I paid for our Volvo in daily £2k chunks.

  • Nigel W says:

    12 Aug12 August 14:16

    Nope, but if you have a Tesco Debit Card, you can rack up some clubcard points paying for it via that method.

    • John says:

      12 Aug12 August 18:40

      Only for the next 4 months

  • stevenhp1987 says:

    12 Aug12 August 14:36

    We bought our car using Curve as they only accepted Debit Cards.

    2 Curve cards in fact (1 in my name, 1 in my wife’s, up to the max £4.5k daily limit).

    Had to pay the rest on Tesco Debit Card as they wanted payment in person on the day.

    Not sure where you’re getting a 1.5% fee from? Buying from a dealer is not a cash advance or similar. It might be different if you pay a finance company for the car!

  • Pid says:

    12 Aug12 August 16:28

    I just used my IHG black card without using curve and it went through without a problem at my local dealer.

    • Chas says:

      12 Aug12 August 17:05

      Some dealers are happy to take credit card (very few will take Amex, although some will), but most dealers refuse and will only take bank transfer or debit card. Sounds like you got lucky.

  • Chas says:

    12 Aug12 August 17:03

    I did this 2-3 weeks ago. Bought a (used) Volvo from a main dealer, and was able to put £18k through 2 cards (£4.5k max on two separate days). Unfortunately the dealer would only take debit card if I was physically there, and couldn’t make the trip mid week, so had to pay the balance by bank transfer. No issue with the underlying cards (and no idea what you mean by 1.5% fee)

    • LessCleverAndrew says:

      12 Aug12 August 17:31

      By fee, I meant: since you would usually need to split the payment into chunks – perhaps Curve doesnt treat this as a normal purchase.

      • Chas says:

        12 Aug12 August 18:18

        Well curve has it’s usual daily limits, hence my £18k was split into 4 transactions of £4.5k ( 2 cards, 2 days). It’s treated as a normal purchase, and no fees of any kind.

• AnotherUser says:

  12 Aug12 August 13:21

  What are people using for cheap preflight antigen tests (returning to Scotland) at the moment?

  • Beardless Hipster says:

    12 Aug12 August 13:29

    Chronomics via BA web £22.40

    • Allan says:

      12 Aug12 August 13:39

      Allowed for Scotland?

      • Phil says:

        12 Aug12 August 13:59

        For pre-departure there shouldn’t be any difference. It’s only Day 2 where Scot Gov insist you use the CTM £88 ea tests.

        • AnotherUser says:

          12 Aug12 August 16:42

          Thanks! Now just to decide between that and paying for a test when abroad…

    • Peter says:

      12 Aug12 August 14:12

      I’m now issuing my own test certificate for my partner, and my partner for me using the free NHS tests. All you are paying chronomics is for them to give you a nice looking pdf with your self reported result – I can do that myself.

      • MQ says:

        12 Aug12 August 14:37

        I mean why not…..are we legally allowed to do that?

      • Char Char says:

        12 Aug12 August 15:05

        Well seeing as the companies doing it aren’t exactly qualified more than anyone else, I don’t see why not!

        • Pete M says:

          12 Aug12 August 15:17

          To be clear, this is not kosher. No judgement, but I would recommend it only for the more experienced / thick skinned / informed players.

        • AnotherUser says:

          12 Aug12 August 16:40

          To be fair, I guess the company also supply you with a lateral flow test. But yeah, it’s unclear what the certificates add compared to you showing up at the airport and just affirming that you had a negative test.

          I think requiring a negative antigen test before flying to the UK is generally reasonable enough. The system to organise and approve them is a mess, though!

      • Tracey says:

        12 Aug12 August 18:20

        Seriously? Why not just do your own for yourself, I mean what is the difference if you do your own or do for each other? Are you actually taking the tests?

        • Peter says:

          12 Aug12 August 22:55

          Yeah, could probably just issue your own Covid certificate. The only requirements from the UK government are about how specific and sensitive the test is – you can get it from any “provider” in any country. With the Chronomics test, there is no way to tell if someone actually took the test, you just select negative or positive on the website. So why should I pay £30 per person for a PDF?

      • DAYLE says:

        12 Aug12 August 19:14

        Does anyone have any experience of this working for travel?! Would love to know what you use as a template… logo, phone number etc
        Thought you had to be CQC licenced?

  • Patrycja says:

    12 Aug12 August 19:40

    We have been using Qured £33 with BA discount code

• bill says:

  12 Aug12 August 13:22

  @Tiger – i replied to your netflix question late last night. in case you dont see it – I think I added my uk credit card to netflix using live chat.

  • Tiger says:

    12 Aug12 August 17:59

    Thank you. I saw it in the morning, after which I contacted them using the live chat function.

    Apparently, my account is blocked for accepting card payments for 24 hours because I tried way too many times with different cards. They have asked me to try again tomorrow, which I will. Fingers crossed!

    • Bill says:

      12 Aug12 August 18:24

      Ok sounds like that’s still the way to sort it

• Richard Street says:

  12 Aug12 August 13:50

  Hi all, BA Prem Plus question…

  My Father has a BA Prem Plus with 2 241s and almost triggering a third. If we were to book 3 flights from EDI to LHR and convert them to a FTV could he then downgrade to the free BA Amex for a few years until these 241s have been used? I actually pay for the card as I do a trip with him but with the fee going up and my own BA Prem Plus now charging despite having a Plat card I am up at over £1k annually on Amex fees so looking to trim it back.

  Thx

  • Rob M says:

    12 Aug12 August 14:17

    If you want to keep the companion vouchers, but lose the fees, you could cancel the card after triggering the next 241 – all the companion vouchers stay on the BA website – although Amex tell you different for some reason. Rob did an article on using the FTV to extend a companion voucher recently – but advised waiting as BA might extend them again.

    • Rob M says:

      12 Aug12 August 14:18

      You could then replace the BAPP card with whatever fee free card you like. When using the companion voucher, any Amex can be used to pay the fees.

  • AJA says:

    12 Aug12 August 15:14

    Once the 3rd voucher is in your father’s BAEC account he can cancel his BAPP completely. He doesn’t even need to keep an Amex card. As long as he pays the Taxes and Fees using any Amex (even yours) when redeeming the vouchers for a flight he will be ok. But your strategy of downgrading to the free BA Amex works fine.

• trader363 says:

  12 Aug12 August 13:52

  Any way to still pay brighton off and get points? bendy doesn’t work and I can’t top up Che any more without fees on my beardy

  • Guernsey Globetrotter says:

    12 Aug12 August 20:34

    You need to be creative – between the Beardy One and Che 😉

    • trader363 says:

      12 Aug12 August 23:22

      Thanks!! That’s all I needed! Time to get a creative one!

• Oliver says:

  12 Aug12 August 13:54

  Thought I’d share the timeline from my recent experience using Expert Medicals for Day 2 tests:

  Day 1 (Friday): Ordered 2 tests before their cut-off for same-day despatch. Received email invoices and order numbers for PLF immediately.

  Day 5: Email confirming despatch

  Day 7: Both tests arrived and posted straight back (in a priority postbox before last collection)

  Day 11: Email with result of first test

  Day 13: Email with result of second test

  • Anna says:

    12 Aug12 August 14:00

    Just as your self isolation would be ending then if you were positive?!!
    Anyone managed to buy one this week? I need 3 for Mallorca later this month but may have to go elsewhere.

    • Simon says:

      12 Aug12 August 15:02

      It worked this morning

  • ankomonkey says:

    12 Aug12 August 14:14

    I’m currently waiting for my test results from them. I chose them after Biograd Diagnostics sent my Day 2 result on my Day 16 for a trip earlier this year. Can Expert Medicals beat Biograd?

• George K says:

  12 Aug12 August 14:17

  FYI: Updated Amex referral bonuses showing on my MR cards again.

  • Andrew says:

    12 Aug12 August 15:15

    Oh yes, platinum down to 65K from 70K.

    • Reney says:

      12 Aug12 August 16:47

      also need £6k spending instead of £4k but you get 3 more months to do it.

• Lady London says:

  12 Aug12 August 14:19

  Re VPN can I just check is PureVPN still good especially for iPlayer? was looking at Surfshark also but thinking only few servers may make easier for the Beeb to suddenly block all.

  NordVPN is now completely nonfunctional after a long period of decline (of course they won’t refund even though they admit the problems) so I’m looking to sign up today ideally with a free trial on a VPN that’s likely to stay working unlike ExpressVPN and NordVPN

  • Babyg says:

    12 Aug12 August 14:23

    ah does expressVPN not work for streaming iplayer from abroad?

    • Blenz101 says:

      12 Aug12 August 14:25

      Express VPN works fine for me.

      • Babyg says:

        12 Aug12 August 14:31

        thanks, im moving to portugual, so was looking at express vpn (running on a router) to cover my whole house, mostly to hide my location from a “work from home” perspective, but being able to stream UK stuff would be an added bonus…..

        • Blenz101 says:

          12 Aug12 August 14:46

          I understand that it is possible to run it on a router but to be honest it’s really easy to manage via the various apps they provide (phone/laptop/smart tv) all covered. As noted you may have to regularly try different servers to find one which isn’t blocked by streaming services. I wouldn’t want to be restarting my router each time. The VPN also impacts the speed of the internet so by having it on your router you will suffer some delays even when not using it to access geo-restricted websites.

  • The_real_a says:

    12 Aug12 August 14:35

    It’s not the VPN provider. It’s the servers that they bring online. All VPN servers will get blocked eventually, you need a provider that brings online daily servers in the UK. Nord VPN always has some servers that work on I player IME.

    • Lady London says:

      12 Aug12 August 14:49

      I was told a week ago that ExpressVPN stopped working with iPlayer. My own experience over more than a year with NordVPN is that they aren’t rotating UK servers quickly enough and over and over again there simply isn’t one that will work with iPlayer. Plus NordVPN has a bug with W10 that means I can’t load it or connect at all on W10 now which has also knocked out my Android NordVPN as the bug stops valid login working. NordVPN skunks are located in Panama jurisdiction so even when provision of their service has stopped no recourse and 2/3years of 3 year subscription wasted.

      So now in desperate need of one which *currently* works reliably and where someone’s experience could say likely they will keep ahead of iplayer.

      • SteveJ says:

        12 Aug12 August 14:51

        Try Windscribe, they have a free layer that you can use before you commit

        • Lady London says:

          12 Aug12 August 14:53

          thank you SteveJ

        • Mr. AC says:

          12 Aug12 August 15:05

          +1 For Windscribe, they have special “Windflix” servers for UK and US, works well in my experience with Netflix and iPlayer. Try referral https://windscribe.com/yo/fynegk3m , should give you some extra free traffic to play around with.

      • Blenz101 says:

        12 Aug12 August 14:57

        Express VPN is pretty reliable in my experience over the past two years. To be honest though if you are living outside of the UK then investing in an Android TV box with iView or similar installed negates the need for VPN and is far more reliable.

  • Brighton Belle says:

    12 Aug12 August 15:44

    1) If you have access to a UK router the solution we use is a Raspberry Pi running Open VPN. Our family in Barcelona use it lots. The UK websites like iPlayer or TVPlayer just see our Brighton IP address so are never going to block it. It’s been running for 3 years uninterrupted. The Pi is just plugged into a router Ethernet socket.

    2) Another method we use is a Plex server with an HDHomerun tuner set to receive Freeview. This gives you remote tele without a VPN because it’s streaming off the local Freeview transmitter but it also gives you a video recorder that you can set to record whatever you fancy and stream the recordings out of UK. Recording can be set remotely on an iPhone.

    Internet has how to do this stuff. The Raspberry Pi solution is under £100 but the Plex solution is a lot more but with more flexibility. The HD Homerun has 4 tuners so is rarely unable to record and stream live tele on demand.

    There’s several HowTo step by step setup guides on Google for the Pi and where to download the software from.

    For just simple TV raspberry Pi solution is lowcost and extremely hard to block. The BBC dont see our Pi as anything other than a domestic IPaddress and not blacklisted.

    • Rhys says:

      12 Aug12 August 15:58

      Do you find an at-home VPN is particularly fast/slow? It sounds like it works for streaming video for you?

      • Brighton Belle says:

        12 Aug12 August 16:14

        We have 65Mb down 18Mb up on our line. The Pi processor reads it’s at about 10% load and the memory card at about 25% max when the VPN is active. (more memory uber cheap) So our internet connexion is hardly whacked and the Pi4 is just jogging along. I think we can handle about 3 concurrent users. We regularly have 2 concurrent streams out to Barcelona and the missus is watching Netflix at home. So far there’s never been any buffering on the Pi solution.

        We set the Plex server solution to stream at max 8mb upload speed but it never gets near that as we only stream at 1080P for family to watch our Plex movie library of old non-Netflix films.

        At the user end both Pi and Plex need decent stable broadband.

        I have an old slingbox for those distant hotels where the wifi is still at 400K and the sling box proprietary encryption was so weird the Chinese Great VPN Firewall didn’t detect it.. BBC1 in Beijing. . . forbidden fruitiness.

  • OpaWoody says:

    12 Aug12 August 16:20

    Why not look at using Microsoft Azure and creating a PC in the UK (South or West regions). If you have an Outlook/Hotmail account you can trial it for free. That PC connects to iplayer etc from the UK and you watch your Azure device. And for those who want to be located in other parts of the world, get Microsoft to build your machine there.

    • Lady London says:

      12 Aug12 August 16:30

      Thanks to all for the extra ideas, right now am in 4 places in the UK as well as a set of other places through the year. For now will go with VPN as sadly can’t rely on one place for a Raspberry Pi will also xheck out Azure for later use Thanks All.

  • Liam says:

    12 Aug12 August 18:15

    Getting a dedicated IP address through TorGuard is my recommendation.

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