Earning free Avios points with pay.com virtual Visa gift cards (Part 2)

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• bob says:

  15 Jul15 July 06:26

  Most water utilities are OK – Southwestwater a definite yes.

  • Mark says:

    16 Jul16 July 21:36

    Evening

    I have just paid E On bill used 8 x £25 to do so and had e mails confirming payment

    Also used 3 to pay talk talk

    and 3 to pay sky

    all in the last 2 days

    3000 miles for paying my bills thanks for the tip

  • BD701 says:

    18 Jul18 July 10:39

    Can also pay United Utilities bills too.

• sandgrounder says:

  15 Jul15 July 06:27

  Online travel agents who allow you to pay a deposit and then settle the balance later are a good option. Travelrepublic is one such option.

  • Grimz says:

    15 Jul15 July 09:07

    I managed to do 3.5k on several Thomsons Gift cards to pay my mothers holiday over a 6 Month period – you buy the Thomson gift card and then load it up £50 at a time (don’t try and load more than 2 every 48hrs)

    • TheFrequentTraveller says:

      15 Jul15 July 09:22

      I think agents have got wise to this.

      I tried paying with 3V last week and the guy on the phone asked me what type of card it was after giving him the card number. When I told him it was a gift card, he told me that they would no longer accept them, because customers were “wasting staff time” by making multiple small payments on lots of different cards.

      He also said that they had had a small amount of fraud going through on gift cards, so would no longer be accepting them.

      • xcalx says:

        18 Jul18 July 10:47

        ” tried paying with 3V last week and the guy on the phone asked me what type of card it was after giving him the card number. When I told him it was a gift card, ”

        Just say its a visa debit card.

        • TheTraveller says:

          18 Jul18 July 22:01

          Doesn’t work.
          The card numbers are coded for different purposes, e.g. gift cards, prepaid cards, debit cards, credit cards, etc.
          Thats how certain companies know to charge more for credit card transactions than debit card transactions and block prepaid cards, etc.

    • Rob says:

      15 Jul15 July 10:26

      I think you can use them to pay off the balance on BA Holidays too, £25 at a time, but don’t take that as 100% certain.

      • Waffles1 says:

        15 Jul15 July 19:56

        I used it to pay off a BA holiday last year, but I could only do £24 at a time, the other £1 was reserved and released back in a week, which used to buy Amazon vouchers.

        • Rosemary says:

          19 Jul19 July 14:52

          Anyone tried to gradually pay their balance off (on-line) on Virgin Holidays?

  • Scallder says:

    15 Jul15 July 09:22

    This works for both Intrepid Travel and Contiki. Have managed to put through over £4k across past couple of years with those 2 for fiancée and I. As an aside, you can convert £10 of clubcard vouchers into £30 of Intrepid Travel vouchers, however until mid September it’s raised to £10 for a £40 voucher (for trips through to end of 2016) so definitely getting great value out of the clubcard vouchers. Limit of £800 per person (although deposit needs to be paid on a card).

• Felix Flyer says:

  15 Jul15 July 06:59

  Has any one successfully used a card for a Happy Monday stay at an Ibis hotel at the exact £25 cost?

  • Kai says:

    15 Jul15 July 09:20

    Just done it yesterday.

  • Brian says:

    15 Jul15 July 13:08

    Amex Gold give triple points on Accor stays, so probably worth using that, if you have one, and saving the 3V for something else.

• Waribai says:

  15 Jul15 July 07:10

  I think they still work for TFL no?

  • Craig says:

    15 Jul15 July 07:38

    Every time I try with TFL they are declined.

  • dee jay says:

    21 Jul21 July 00:27

    Worked for me the other week

• Frankdjs says:

  15 Jul15 July 07:11

  Vodafone also works to pay your bill online before the DD is collected. I do this every month. (High bill, so worth it!).

  • Kipto says:

    15 Jul15 July 07:21

    As above with O2.

    • Sean says:

      15 Jul15 July 08:58

      Just got an email from O2 saying that my bill was ready (they normally charge me at the end of the month, so about 2 weeks after the bill is made available). I just settled it with a 3V card with success, thanks for the tip!

  • John says:

    15 Jul15 July 13:40

    Plus EE/Orange

    • Pid says:

      16 Jul16 July 20:26

      I thought you got charged a fee for paying EE by credit card if you are on monthly direct debit?

      • John says:

        16 Jul16 July 21:12

        If you use a card online to “make an extra payment” before a monthly billing date, the amount you’ve paid is knocked off the next DD.

        So if you add £25 to your online account and your next bill is £32, the DD taken will be £7 (no fee). At least that’s how it’s always worked for me.

        • Polly says:

          18 Jul18 July 09:07

          Hi John, I can OT get EE to accept my 3v cards, ever, as it was a t mobile customer. It takes them for my OH orange ac but mine is much bigger and would love to know how you manage it. I have tried paying every way! Could you help please ? Much appreciated.

• James Ward says:

  15 Jul15 July 07:22

  If redeeming for shopping vouchers on HSV, be careful not to buy too many in one go. During the bonanza days of Christmas 2013 when it was possible to combine with a coupon for an extra 100 CC points per card, I bought literally thousands of 3V cards.

  On one occasion, I tried to use them to buy 40 x £25 Waitrose vouchers from HSV in one sitting. The transactions all appeared to go through successfully but a few hours later almost all were cancelled because of automated security measures by HSV’s payment processor. This meant I had a nerve wracking few days waiting for the money to go back on to the 3V cards (which it did).

  Since then, I never buy more then four batches of vouchers in one go and have never had any problems.

  • dee jay says:

    21 Jul21 July 00:31

    You must have hit some limit as I usually buy 20 lots at a time

• Zoe says:

  15 Jul15 July 07:22

  To pay for your Ebay seller fees, in your account choose ‘make a one off payment’ then ‘use a credit card’. The system will only allow 3 cards during a 24 hour period. It will allow you to put your account into credit.

  • Wade says:

    15 Jul15 July 09:29

    How much can you put it into credit? Can it easily be “settled”?

  • Blenz101 says:

    15 Jul15 July 09:53

    Have you tried this very recently?

    In the past couple of weeks I’ve always had some kind of ‘unable to process’ message for pay.com.

    This is despite a large eBay sellers fees bill to pay.

    • JQ says:

      15 Jul15 July 11:12

      Add the 3V to your paypal first. Maximum of 13 cards per paypal since opening of the account, unless you’re already verified and sent them your life history

      • Harry says:

        28 Jul28 July 06:54

        Can you then withdraw the cash to your registered bank account?

    • Freebsie says:

      15 Jul15 July 17:22

      I did it a few days ago without problems. Usually have my account ca £75 in credit but I pay a lot in fees so it never builds up.

    • dee jay says:

      21 Jul21 July 00:32

      Yes no need to register it with paypal (Too much hassle) it works fine

• James Ward says:

  15 Jul15 July 07:23

  Rob – when did it become possible to pay HMRC again? I thought this was one of the ones that got stopped when 3V pulled the plug on bank deposits, etc?

  • Mr Bridge says:

    15 Jul15 July 07:30

    when hmrc started to use worldpay

    • JQ says:

      15 Jul15 July 08:01

      Is there a 1.4% fee?

      • froggitt says:

        15 Jul15 July 08:26

        No.

        • JQ says:

          15 Jul15 July 09:05

          Excellent!

        • Peter K says:

          15 Jul15 July 09:27

          Wish I knew that before I paid my tax bill last week!

    • Mark says:

      15 Jul15 July 13:25

      How do you make payment to hmrc please

      • Rob says:

        15 Jul15 July 13:36

        Link in the article

  • The Urbanite says:

    15 Jul15 July 19:40

    I paid several thousand through HMRC WorldPay earlier this year. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time this particular workaround (as opposed to using Santander Billpay has been publicised so I expect it will cease to work in the very near future!

    • Rob says:

      15 Jul15 July 23:16

      HMRC is very, very niche. What % of the population actually pay a self-assessment bill? 10%?

      My guess is that the Worldpay front end disguises the end recipient of the money so pay.com has no idea who they are paying.

      • stevo says:

        16 Jul16 July 12:29

        based on a bbc article, 11 million self assessments were due or filed! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31090026

        • Fenny says:

          16 Jul16 July 12:47

          I had to complete a tax return due to renting out my house and having overseas shares, even though all the tax due had been deducted already. Completing a return doesn’t necessarily mean having to pay tax, it’s just making sure you declare everything.

      • James says:

        19 Jul19 July 18:43

        Everyone is talking about Self Assessment – but assume this is good for VAT and Corporation Tax too?

        • Rob says:

          19 Jul19 July 19:53

          Definitely VAT, not sure about corp tax but should be fine

        • Talay says:

          20 Jul20 July 07:32

          I’ll have to stock up then as we have large VAT payments due in October.

    • Tatts says:

      20 Jul20 July 11:41

      Anyone have an idea or experience of the maximum number of cards you can feed through HMRC/Worldpay on a daily basis?

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