Bits: £15 one-way Virgin Trains tickets to Edinburgh, 40% bonus on Hyatt points

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

• Oli says:

  6 Oct6 October 05:55

  Anyone know how quickly the points (and especially the sign-up bonus) are awarded?

  As in – if I take the card out now and spend £2k by mid-November, will I get the points in time?

  • Yuff says:

    6 Oct6 October 07:10

    You’ll get the points on the statement when you’ve spent £2k.

  • Tom C says:

    6 Oct6 October 07:19

    HSBC post the points at the end of your monthly statement, so if you took the card out now and spent the amount required to get the bonus, you would receive them sometime around this time next month. However if you do not do it in the statement month then you will have to wait up to 31 days for the next one.

    • Oli says:

      6 Oct6 October 07:45

      Crap – not back in the UK until November so that’s probably a no for me. Suppose they won’t post the card to a random overseas hotel…

      • Zander says:

        6 Oct6 October 08:57

        You could get someone to send it to your hotel via FedEx? I’ve done that before although HSBC have in the past sent replacement cards to a foreign branch, you could see if they’d do that for you?

• James67 says:

  6 Oct6 October 06:31

  Thanks for the train code Rob, I had missed this one. The question now is it eorth booking given the risk if further strikes. First class usually gets crammed as a result of these promotions and standards of servuce decline as a result but is still ok. Now to see if I can fid a decent hikton sale price to combine with my £50 amex and my hhonors card free night.

• Mike says:

  6 Oct6 October 07:20

  Thanks for the train code. I need 5tp for gold so I was thinking of train to MAN for a day out then fly back but might change to EDI and get to use the tram!

  • Genghis says:

    6 Oct6 October 07:47

    I like the idea of the tram but it seems to take an age from the airport to Haymarket and seems to go a rather indirect route. Much easier in a taxi

    • Alan says:

      6 Oct6 October 07:50

      The good old airport bus is also ironically a bit quicker than the tram too!

      • Richard says:

        6 Oct6 October 09:14

        “The good old airport bus is also ironically a bit quicker than the tram too!”

        …usually.

        The thing about the tram is that it can’t get stuck in traffic once it’s past Haymarket – and even on Princes Street, the priority measures mean it usually goes straight through as well. Personally, I prefer a journey that’s always 35 minutes to one that’s normally 25 but sometimes 45, especially on my way TO the airport.

        I find the tram much more comfortable as well, but that’s a matter of taste of course. It’s smooth enough to use a laptop on, which I always find a bit of a trial on the jiggly bus.

        (For anyone who’s wondering, the tram takes longer because it goes a longer way round, so that it can visit the RBS headquarters and an enormous business park.)

        • Russell says:

          6 Oct6 October 10:57

          > > The good old airport bus is also ironically a bit quicker than the tram too!”

          >…usually.

          The bus is also a little cheaper, and the airport stop is right outside the terminal, while it is a bit of a walk from the tram stop.

          On the other hand, the tram stop at Haymarket is before the bus stop.

          But the tram is just so pleasant, compared with the bus.

          One final point perhaps – with an airport busstop immediately opposite the Holiday Inn at Edinburgh Zoo, this becomes a perfectly practicable airport hotel too if the price is right. And the hotel restaurants are in the Tastecard scheme too, so you get 50% off your food, which is perfectly acceptable.

        • Mike says:

          6 Oct6 October 21:57

          Like half on this site I’m a transport geek
          A bus… Meh…. But a tram 🙂

        • Alan says:

          10 Oct10 October 12:22

          It’s not a bad option, just when it became clear they weren’t going to build a full network (and instead just mirrored the existing airport bus) they should have instead spent a fraction of the cash putting a small train station at the end of the runway where all the Fife trains go past anyway! 🙂

    • Andrew says:

      6 Oct6 October 09:32

      And quickest of all will soon be Scotrail to Edinburgh Gateway then tram to EDB – depending on connection time of course.

      It’ll bring a potential journey time down to around 16-17 minutes!

      A lot of Edinburgh people have a great deal of affection for being thrown around a shoogly bus, whose driver has a very heavy foot on the accelerator and brake and aims to hit every single pothole between Princes Street and Turnhouse.

      A lot of non-Edinburgh people are delighted that they no longer have to trek all the way into Edinburgh just to take the train out of Edinburgh to pass the airport they landed at 90 minutes earlier.

      • Owen Rudge says:

        6 Oct6 October 10:16

        I always found it somewhat odd that folk heading north (this was when I was a student in St Andrews) would usually get the airport bus into Haymarket to then get a train north to Leuchars, rather than just getting the 747 bus to Inverkeithing and picking up the train there!

        • Andrew says:

          6 Oct6 October 21:43

          The 747 was fine if you wanted to head to Fife.

          Heading to Glasgow or Stirling meant walking from the airport under the dual carriageway and up the sliproad until you reached the bus-stop next to the petrol station. Unpleasant enough in the daytime, awful at night and in typical Edinburgh weather.

• Mike says:

  6 Oct6 October 07:23

  Anyone know if it’s possible to get a contactless HSBC Premier credit card? Kinda sucks that they released the cards without that feature, I find myself not using it for every day spend because of that.

  • TGLoyalty says:

    6 Oct6 October 07:39

    Link it to a Curve?

  • Dee M says:

    6 Oct6 October 07:49

    I’ve linked mine to Apple Pay which covers most of my contactless spend.

• Danksy says:

  6 Oct6 October 07:24

  nice….I’ve got a fee on my world elite to transfer

• Dips says:

  6 Oct6 October 07:43

  I had my points earmarked for Singapore Airlines, but a 50% bonus is tempting…. has the bonus ever been higher for BA? And ever a bonus for Singapore Airlines?

• Brian says:

  6 Oct6 October 07:48

  The Park Hyatt Mallorca is available on Secret Escapes right now for as little as £165 per night including breakfast. Obviously, this is not for the summer, but it’s still a decent rate.

• Alan says:

  6 Oct6 October 07:51

  From T&Cs (and indeed the banner on the promo page) looks like it works going to as well as from London 🙂

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.