Bits: Amex Gold / Plat £15 Amazon discount extended, new £50 Hilton / Amex discount

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• Johnny_c-l says:

  8 Feb8 February 06:16

  OT – The Heathrow Rewards promo didn’t work for me with fx, standard points only. IIRC last time bonus points and standard all posted at the same time.

  • Mark E says:

    8 Feb8 February 07:05

    Thanks for the update. I’ve been thinking about whether or not to make a trip down to Heathrow to do this today. I will probably give it a miss as I have other stuff that needs getting on with

  • Simon says:

    8 Feb8 February 07:53

    I hit this problem. Emailed my Travelex email receipt to HR customer service and they added the points the same day

    • Rhys says:

      8 Feb8 February 15:15

      So you did receive the bonus points for an fx spend then? Just want to clarify before I take the plunge myself.

      • Simon says:

        9 Feb9 February 07:35

        yep. $200 purchased at travelex T3. this was last November

• James67 says:

  8 Feb8 February 06:47

  Another OT sorry: Tesco current account 8 cc points per £4 spent in Tesco and 3% interest on £3000 (2 accounts pp possible), both fixed for 2yr from 1st April. Unfortunately no switch incentives are available.

  • Genghis says:

    8 Feb8 February 07:05

    Do I read that correctly? An almost 5% return using a Tesco debit card in Tesco? (Assuming avios at 1p). Wowsers. Might have to open an account…

    • Genghis says:

      8 Feb8 February 07:12

      It makes the Tesco premium credit card seriously uncompetitive. Changes in store?

      • Genghis says:

        8 Feb8 February 07:16

        Actually I believe the 8 includes the 4 earned from shopping at Tesco anyway so 4 per £4 for the debit card spend. Still v good at 2.4% if you don’t have another sign up bonus to hit.

        • James67 says:

          8 Feb8 February 07:58

          Yes, that’s the way I understood it. However, when considering you have to spend £4-5k (or even £8-10k with added stay incentives) in Tesco to get a return equivalent to free switching bonuses on offer at other banks it is not so great. All depends on how much extra value you can squeeze out of clubcard points and as I commented recently my cc-avios were poor value at only 1.28p/cc point tops on a rtn CW redemption to zone 7.

        • Genghis says:

          8 Feb8 February 08:45

          But given you don’t have to switch, you could view the Tesco product more like an ongoing spend credit card for Tesco use only (with added savings benefit) and then switch your main account for another bonus.

        • James67 says:

          8 Feb8 February 09:54

          @Genghis, yes, exactly what I’m comtemplating because 3% is the best return we can get on ready cash at the moment as far as I know. My only question is potential impact of all grocery spend through this card on ability to hit target spends on churns. Also, Sainsburys has been giving me offer after offer whilst tesco gives me zilch.

  • Liz says:

    8 Feb8 February 07:38

    I took one out the other day as we have a big purchase of over £10k at the end of the month and the credit card fee is too high to justify – you don’t need to pay in a monthly standing order or pay out dirct debits either as far as I could see.

    • Rob says:

      8 Feb8 February 09:04

      Covering this tomorrow. It is 1 point per £1 via the debit card in Tesco, on top of the usual. This rate is guaranteed for 2 years.

      Wipes out the only reason to get the Tesco Premium credit card (ie 5000 points bonus for spending £5k in Tesco).

      • James67 says:

        8 Feb8 February 09:59

        It seems that the £4 issue still exists but hardly worth worrying about except for those who do loads of small transactions.

        • John says:

          8 Feb8 February 10:38

          How much is a Tesco meal deal these days?

        • Aeronaut says:

          8 Feb8 February 11:02

          @John

          Less than £4. Think it might be £3.

        • Chris says:

          8 Feb8 February 11:32

          Well, not completely in agreement – it isn’t massive but it still adds up to a chunk off the advertised rate

        • Alex W says:

          8 Feb8 February 21:12

          The meal deal is not a brilliant deal – you can buy the sandwich, some crisps and a 2L bottle of water for less than £3 anyway.

          Change that to £4 on a sandwich, a large bag or multipack of crisps, some fruit and a 2L water bottle and there’s half your lunch for the rest of the week.

  • Nick says:

    8 Feb8 February 15:58

    Does anyone know for sure if you get the full 4 points/£4 for online ‘Tesco Wine by The Case”?

    I noticed in the T&C that some items can earn less points, but can’t find if they are specified anywhere.

    Thanks!

• Ahop says:

  8 Feb8 February 07:18

  OT: Gold/plat card access not included, is there anyway to beat the £16.50 lounge access offered to Gourmet Society members?

  • Rob says:

    8 Feb8 February 09:05

    Depends which lounge! For No 1, the ‘£20 plus 750 Avios back’ deal is better.

    • ahop says:

      8 Feb8 February 14:49

      Thanks Rob,

      Heathrow Terminal 5 so this might not work. GS it is then I guess.

    • the real harry1 says:

      8 Feb8 February 19:55

      the avios.com price went up

• Genghis says:

  8 Feb8 February 07:27

  Now that’s an excellent OT. What they can do is put through two pay point transactions, one for £100 first (always smaller one first) then £200 and then charge you £300 on your Halifax card

  • Liz says:

    8 Feb8 February 07:32

    My Coop does it the other way round – always £200 first then the smaller amount – the other way round caused no end of trouble – don’t know why!

• David says:

  8 Feb8 February 07:31

  Can someone remind me how supplementary cards work with the Hilton offer?

  i.e If the main card has the offer saved to card, using the supplementary should trigger – right?

  • Johnny_c-l says:

    8 Feb8 February 07:49

    Nope, offers are totally independent between cards. You could register the supplementary card too but any spend on the main card has no effect on the offer on the supplementary, and vice versa.

• Louise says:

  8 Feb8 February 07:56

  Just annoying when you sign up for a prepaid rate and the hotel doesn’t charge it till just before your stay!

  • Genghis says:

    8 Feb8 February 08:47

    Call the hotel and ask them to charge it if it means getting a bonus. The DT in Manchester even fully refunded a prepaid rate after it was charged onto one card and then put it onto my Santander debit card after a 10% cash back popped up.

• rcarpe2 says:

  8 Feb8 February 08:17

  O/T (but in Bits thread)
  More experienced hands may know this already, but it’s caught me out.
  My current IHG Accelerate targets cover the usual range, but weren’t updating correctly – nothing unusual there. But when I checked with the service centre, it turns out that *some* of the targets require both the booking and the stay to be within the promotion dates, whereas others require only the *stay* to be within these limits. As a result a stay right at the beginning of the period has been disallowed for some targets (since I had to book it before the first date).
  The T+Cs are different for every individual target.
  Too late now, but clearly care is needed for the next promotion.

  • LB says:

    8 Feb8 February 08:35

    This happened to me aswell. Some of my targets allowed bookings made before the challenge started to count, others did not. Had my fingers burnt in this one. Never mind – live and learn.

  • Kip says:

    8 Feb8 February 08:44

    I noticed that. I qualified for my 5 nights bonus but not the first stay bonus because it was booked prior to the offer period. They also haven’t been applying the 1k January bonus either.

    I would have thought the IT for this sort of thing would be straightforward but apparently not.

    • Genghis says:

      8 Feb8 February 09:14

      My Jan bonus has been received automatically.

    • John says:

      8 Feb8 February 10:42

      All my IHG offers have always credited with no intervention from me (provided that I adhered to the T&Cs)

      • rcarpe2 says:

        8 Feb8 February 15:36

        The thing that irritated me was that the T&Cs for the individual targets were different to each other. It’s asking quite a lot of Joe Public to work out that some targets start on 1/1 and some don’t!

        • Genghis says:

          8 Feb8 February 16:35

          An important skill in this ‘hobby’ is the ability to read T&Cs.

• James says:

  8 Feb8 February 08:18

  Used the last £50 Hilton offer on BAPP and it did trigger on a pre-payment stay that was booked within the offer period (but stay was outside the offer terms) – took a week to come through though – certainly not as instant as some merchants where you get the email the second you spend.

  • John says:

    8 Feb8 February 10:45

    Erm, this is because booking with Hilton (outside the USA) simply sends your card number to the hotel and a clerk has to charge the card manually. So it may well have come through as soon as you were charged

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