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The HfP chat thread – Monday 13th September

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General

Comments (557)

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

  • Andrew says:
    13 Sep13 September 09:00

    Nectar Connect. Currently has 20pts/£1 when staying at Apex Hotels, this should stack nicely with the current Amex and LBG Apex offers.

  • Benilyn says:
    13 Sep13 September 09:02

    Amex MR to Hilton Honors – how long does the transfer take? First time doing it to a new account.

  • Patrycja says:
    13 Sep13 September 09:18

    Wayne, I followed the tips from this forum and messaged the hotel couple of days in advance via Bonvoy chat advising of our arrival time and politely asking what room type we got allocated. Worked a treat. We are off to Valencia in two days staying at another Marriott property. Fingers crossed for another decent outcome.

  • Anuj says:
    13 Sep13 September 09:22

    Need to dispute a payment that I charged through curve to my creation IHG. Who do I go to deal with it? Neither have amazing customer service lets be honest.

  • Duncan says:
    13 Sep13 September 09:34

    I need to settle up with a friend some shared expenses and noticed some comment recently that you can do that with PayPal using a credit card (inc. Amex) fee-free. Is this likely to cause any red flags for either PayPal or Amex? I mean, it’s basically a cash advance, right?

    Anyone have any experience of doing this? Anything to worry about with limits or frequency? (Not that I intend to need to do this more than once, but good to know.)

    • Will says:
      13 Sep13 September 09:39

      Be very careful if you value both your Amex and PayPal accounts.

      One off fine.

      Regular and it’ll flag for cash advance.

      Had my Amex cancelled twice for doing it over a number of years.

    • Ian_H says:
      13 Sep13 September 09:41

      I’ve done it to do a genuine settle up with a friend to split a bill and it charged with no underlying fees, however if some smart a$$$ starts trying to game this useful feature it, like Creation will probably removed for us genuine users.

      Just dont abuse it and you will be fine, I would expect frequency and amounts are subject to some form of internal monitoring at PayPal

    • Kai says:
      13 Sep13 September 09:44

      I recently got into trouble with PayPal for doing too many Family & Friends payments. My account is still blocked even after submitting the necessary documents last month. Getting in touch with someone at PayPal is almost impossible.

      I wouldn’t advise you to do it. But if you decide to go ahead, just be careful.

      • s says:
        13 Sep13 September 10:29

        PayPal will hold any and all funds for minimum of 180 days, and they are surprisingly good at making sure you cannot open a new account

    • Duncan says:
      13 Sep13 September 09:48

      Thank you all for the information. Definitely only thought about this for a one-off, but I value my Amex account too much to screw about with this, even as a one-off (which is all I want to do).

      Not interested in the ‘MS’ stuff that caused the Creation / Curve kerfuffle, that’s for sure. I’ll stick to a faster payment this time, and try to be the one that incurs these expenses in future (I hate missing out on my Avios!)

      • Ian_H says:
        13 Sep13 September 10:02

        Honestly you will be absolutely fine as a genuine one off payment and no need to miss out on the Avios, it is their for this purpose and you are doing nothing wrong.

      • Tom says:
        13 Sep13 September 10:11

        You will be fine as long as your expenses aren’t thousands. If you started sending considerable amounts regularly then you will be asked to explain it most likely by PayPal first.

      • Super Secret Stuff says:
        13 Sep13 September 10:11

        I do charity donations, occasional online purchases and transferring small amounts to friends or into a pool for someone’s retirement present. Never taken the proverbial, mised spending probably helps but keep PayPal loopholes low as a percentage of overall spend on both accounts

    • Richie says:
      13 Sep13 September 10:04

      If you both have Starling accounts, they have a settle up facility.

    • John says:
      13 Sep13 September 10:46

      Under £100 3-4 times a year and regular use of PayPal for genuine purchases is fine

      The recipient should also be worried if they receive a lot of such payments

  • Benilyn says:
    13 Sep13 September 09:43

    OT: Now it has been a few months of Google Photo’s unlimited storage rolling off, I keep having my storage full. What do people use? I am tempted to pay the Google fees for data, 100GB for £15.99
    My use case is mainly for my iPhone, and photos I take on it & 100s of pics & videos I get in family groups on WhatsApp. The Google Photo’s app syncs photos from my iPhone quite seamlessly.
    Curious what other options people use?
    I’ve never paid for cloud storage…

    • Rhys says:
      13 Sep13 September 09:45

      £15.99 for 100GB? You can get 200GB for £2.49 or 2TB for £6.99 with Apple iCloud…and it probably syncs better than Google Photos

      • Reney says:
        13 Sep13 September 09:53

        is that 15.99 per month 😱. I pay 79p per month to icloud for 50Gb?

        I just brought some itunes gift card from Morrison’s to further bring down my monthly icloud costs.

    • Harry T says:
      13 Sep13 September 09:53

      I use the 2tb iCloud option.

    • Benilyn says:
      13 Sep13 September 09:55

      That is 100GB/£15.99 for a year , so £1.33 per month.

    • Ian_H says:
      13 Sep13 September 10:08

      I’ve used the Teamknowhow storage for a few years now, 4TB of data for £40 per year on a 3 year plan.

      https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/knowhow-computing-accessories/data-storage/external-hard-drives/355_3235_30125_94668_xx/xx-criteria.html

      • Benilyn says:
        13 Sep13 September 11:42

        Thanks, not sure I trust my nudes being with Currys 😉 (I know it’s not Curry’s doing the actual hosting)

    • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:
      13 Sep13 September 10:31

      I ‘pay’ the £16 per year for 100GB. I have the Google Opinion Rewards app and I accrue £16 per year in Play Store credit no problem (individual surveys take significantly less than a minute to complete). One nice feature of Google One, as they brand it, is that you get support for Google products – I’ve had really good experiences despite asked a few relatively obscure questions.

    • Sam says:
      13 Sep13 September 11:48

      If you want a phone-agnostic platform…OneDrive is alright if you think paying for a family 365 plan is decent. Something like £45 for a family plan gets you 1TB storage each for up to five people and its often on offer at Amazon.

    • Biki says:
      13 Sep13 September 11:58

      If you have Amazon prime, it includes unlimited photo storage with the amazon photos app.

    • Tarmohamed says:
      13 Sep13 September 13:24

      I use Dropbox as well as iCloud.

  • davefl says:
    13 Sep13 September 09:52

    Virgin refund – Paid 647 taxes + 47400 miles in a sale last year.

    They’ve just refunded me 647+320 in cash, which equates to 0.67p/mile.

    Surely they should have just refunded the miles back to my balance right? That’s a horrible conversion rate.

    • LS says:
      13 Sep13 September 10:08

      I’d take cash. Virgin are not going to be around for long if the trans-atlantic ban stays in place for a significant amount of time

      • davefl says:
        13 Sep13 September 10:12

        Even if VS arent there’s plenty of “valuable” opportunites to cash them out on Virgin Red – I mean who wouldnt want to blow 20k points on 2 tickets to Disney on Ice!!!

      • Paul Pogba says:
        13 Sep13 September 10:37

        Any idea why they’re not making any effort to take advantage of the Canadian reopening with a few flights to YVR, YYC (for the ski season) and YYZ (for autumn in Algonquin Park)?

        • Degsy says:
          13 Sep13 September 12:08

          Have wondered the same – you’d think the last 18 months would have been a real wake-up call strategically for VS and it would be looking to continue to diversify as much as possible and not have so much reliance on the US?
          I guess though it’s not as straightforward as it sounds to start a new route (& I can only imagine the politics involved).

          • Rob says:
            13 Sep13 September 12:24

            Because Delta calls the shots.

            Given that Delta put zero money into the restructuring last year (it wasn’t allowed to under the terms of its US bailout) but Virgin did – plus the extra £200m Branson put in this Summer – it should have been diluted from 49% to as low as 0%. It wasn’t. Wondered why?

        • blenz101 says:
          13 Sep13 September 13:51

          You would have thought Dubai would be another obvious target. Assuming the UAE remains amber / traffic lights are scrapped returning even on a temporary basis to cover Expo and a winter season of holiday bookings whilst the US remains closed.

          Winter 2020 was certainly popular!

  • Anna says:
    13 Sep13 September 09:54

    The new Bond film is available for booking from today! This is almost as exciting as being able to travel again, especially as I have been saving the free cinema vouchers from my Halifax account and we are seeing it for nothing 🤣

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

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