[John]

ukpolak wrote:

I switched from Scottish power to Octopus last year using a referral from here.

Scottish power called me a month or so after the transfer and asked me the rationale for the transfer. Whilst I mentioned price and service, I also mentioned the inability to pay using Amex to which the response was “in all my years of taking feedback, you’re the first to ever say that”.

Judging by the above comments, sadly I don’t think it made any difference.

Well why would it make any difference when only one person has ever said it

[John]

Nobody cares about the title, Mr would be fine too

[John]

All the times I have heard about people being asked for cards on QR are for revenue bookings, not redemptions.

Have you checked if the redemption is available via BA and whether the price is different? QR would not ask for a card if it was not booked with QR directly.

[John]

You don’t need to preload unless you want to pay partially with points and earn 1% back on the remainder via the debit card (instead of 0.1% + credit card reward).

If I set the funding source to direct debit, the debit card only works for one transaction and then all transactions are declined until approx 10 days after that direct debit has cleared (but changing funding source to debit card works).

[John]

In 2024 or so I was offered me 0.5% cashback on all spending on my Clarity, I accepted but since I have another card which already has permanent 0.5% and also there was Chase 1%, I only used it once on a hotels.com offer from Halifax.

Visa exchange rate sometimes beats Mastercard, and can be useful when the pound has dropped between 8pm and midnight on weekdays (because the visa rate updates at midnight GMT while the mastercard rate updates at approximately 3pm New York time).

[John]

Don’t forget that it’s very possible to get oneworld emerald i.e. BA gold equivalent by crediting £7500 or less of flights to another oneworld scheme

[John]

On the plus side when it does work, with the right tools you can use it for general albeit slow browsing

[John]

Is 1810 the last BHD flight of that day? I see sometimes there’s a 1900 but it may also be risky.

[John]

OK, after 24 hours suddenly it decided that it was able to load from my debit card after all.

Can confirm the mastercard exchange rate is used even on weekends.

For the points earning, it actually says “10 points per £10” rather than 1% – does this mean it’s like Tesco credit cards where a transaction under £10 earns nothing, or what? (If nobody replies I will find out in a few days anyway…)

[John]

So I’ve received the PP debit and linked a normal current account as well as the debit card for that account. I tried to pay with the PP debit a few times but it got declined.

I added money to PP balance via direct debit but it says it will take 10 days. I tried adding money to PP balance using the current account debit card but it just says “we’re having trouble with that”. Any ideas what’s wrong?

[John]

I am surprised Mrs Froggee was happy to eat at Panda Express. She chose the correct dish at the reasonably well reviewed Japanese place though. If it was run by Chinese or Koreans (she would know) it will certainly be more attuned to weird American tastes (hence the positive reviews) than trying to produce authentic flavours.

[John]

Soso wrote:

Just wanted to give follow up after complaint was made. I tried to be constructive in feedback and all i received was generic response with no actual explanation as to what happened as to why i was put down as staff. Overall, i think they just don’t care. It’s a bit sad but it kooks like it’s the direction BA is taking given all the replies here.

See this relevant thread on flyertalk https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-british-airways-club/2206982-ba-customer-relations-using-some-kind-ai-respond-emails.html

[John]

Since getting the lounge pass, more than half of my stays the front desk seem to require me prompting them to check for it. They don’t mention lounge access proactively and when I ask about it, they do a lot of typing and have to reprogram the keys before telling me they have added on lounge access.

[John]

I’m not sure but if it’s a simple search you want to get a price for, post it on here and I or someone else will probably be able to help

[John]

I was really pleased that on 31 Dec 2024 I managed to end up with exactly 40 nights (last chance to get 2 years out of a lounge pass) and did that by spending £901.xx on three Amexes. I also ended up with 124000 points because of the exchange rate issue mentioned in the OP.

I had to be certain I would go over 120k and it’s also impossible to tell in advance which hotels will give you points on the amount spent to buy the EQP packages. At some hotels I also unexpectedly earned points on the VAT. Because the final stay credited on 1 Jan 2025, my account also says D till end 2026…

The stays were not precisely mattress runs as I was going to those places anyway, but they were kind of a bar run as I bought a few overpriced meals and drinks to reach the £300 required to trigger the Amex cashbacks. I also upgraded myself from a HI to a Kimpton to get the price up 🙂

[John]

I used a VPN to make a new paypal account and apply for the card last week. I haven’t been in the UK since February but am landing back next week, so I was hoping to get this card to arrive at the same time as I do.

The app won’t let me log in any more, but I am able to log in to the website and there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong. I verified a UK bank account so it should be ok… we’ll see when I get back.

[John]

How are you paying the remaining £2399?

[John]

IHG doesn’t do well with missing points. People buy these 5000 point status packages because they are elite qualifying but if anything goes wrong it is really difficult to get EQP reinstated, they just bung you some normal points.

I had a recent stay where the hotel messed up and rebooked me and somehow only 2000 of the 5000 ended up as EQP – fortunately other later stays unexpectedly awarded points on the tax-inclusive price so I didn’t need the lost EQP anyway.

I have been walked by IHG once, many years ago when I had no status. There was a promo where my plan was to stay 5 nights in HIXs for around £70 per stay, and I would get enough points for another 5 nights. One of the prepaid HIXs was full when I turned up at 11.30pm and they walked me to a Kempinski… there wasn’t to my knowledge any event going on in that city that would have sold out every cheaper room, but that’s what was offered.

I didn’t have to pay anything extra but maybe I should have asked for a refund too, because the stay did not credit towards the promo and I got nowhere with CS. I ended up just buying an unnecessary stay for £80 which did then give me the points for 5 more nights that I valued at £350.

[John]

TS77 wrote:

I wondered if anyone has yet used the PayPal debit card for FX? How close to the Interbank is this and is there any weekend spread? Looking at the rates on the Marriott debit card, there is definitely spread added at the weekend.

Says mastercard rate here https://www.paypal.com/uk/legalhub/paypal/consumer-debitcard-agreement?locale.x=en_GB

Yes it does seem that currensea adds an additional 0.5% on the weekend so the marriott rate is 1.5% over interbank (the 0.5% advertised fee and the 0.5% unadvertised spread that applies every day). Mastercard euro rate for this weekend is 0.2% over interbank

[John]

Well you could book the BA Holiday in your own name and have your husband on his own booking (and, because adding a car is sometimes cheaper than flight only, he could even have his own car, even if you just park the second vehicle somewhere and don’t use it, or don’t collect it at all). But if only one of you is BA silver or equivalent then you won’t be able to choose seats for both on separate bookings. You may find that crediting the same flights to a programme other than BA will get you to oneworld sapphire more quickly.

[John]

I’m glad it worked out. In the future you now know not to book separate tickets with only 90 minutes between the scheduled arrival and departure times – unless you are prepared to take your chances (in the worst case) abandon the second ticket and buy a new one on the day.

Needing a longer transit time and lack of official protection is the trade off for the monetary saving

[John]

Skywalker wrote:

I honestly did not realise there was this character limit issue in some airline systems until I’d seen this thread. I suppose it might go the other way too with people who have very short names when Latinised (Chinese names for example) – maybe the systems might not recognise such a short name and refuse to register.

2-letter surnames are never a problem. One-letter surnames are not recognised by airline systems, but the universally accepted solution is to duplicate the letter.

[John]

Put it this way, if you’re going to get £18 worth of benefit every month then you won’t lose out. When Curve dies, you cancel and stop thinking about it straight away, instead of wasting time with S75 etc.

You can also cancel the monthly plan at the end of each subscription period, then do not resubscribe until the day you next need to use it. I’ve only paid for 6 months in the past 12. The T&Cs frown on this, but they haven’t enforced it on me and I doubt they will enforced it if they are about to die

[John]

Right, I found someone with the avios card and I can see where Products is on his barclaycard app, but on my app (which I have on two devices) in the same place there is just a blank space that shows nothing.

[John]

Barclaycard app. I have no other barclays products. Would I be able to load the hilton card on the barclays app?