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Sky reversing recent 3V Virtual Visa card payments

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A quick heads up that Sky appears to be reversing payments that were made on 3V Virtual Visa cards in recent days.

As I reported last week, 3V suddenly blocked their cards from being used for paying bills or into bank accounts.  Sky appeared to have slipped through, though, even though payments to Virgin Media were blocked.  Some people used up their 3V supply by pre-paying their Sky account.

If you did this, take a look at your Sky account.  You may find that your payments have been reversed.  They will take a day or so to be sent back to 3V, but in theory your online 3V account will show those cards credited back with the £25 payments at some point.

This is, obviously, incredibly frustrating for people who have 3V cards to use up.  Current advice seems to be a) try your council tax then, if that fails, b) try paying your utility provider.  If that fails, try c) buying a pile of Amazon gift certificates to cover a few months of Amazon purchases.

After that, you may find it easier to d) pay the £1.70 to merge cards together, and then pay the £3.50 fee to empty out the combined card into your bank account.

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Comments (82)

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

  • Mrtibbs1999 says:
    21 Dec21 December 07:18

    Try again and read it properly.

    • xcalx says:
      27 Dec27 December 12:52

      You must confirm you will pay full membership of £99 when trying to buy the Izettle..

      So for £159 im out . Will look for Izettle somewhere else

      • CV says:
        31 Dec31 December 08:44

        I called EE and enquired about this, was advised that it is only available to EE Business customers.

  • BP says:
    22 Dec22 December 11:34

    Got 5 £25 payments reversed. Now back on 3V!

    For a trial, I submitted a single £25 payment using one of the reversed cards and it is showing as approved on my 3V account.

  • Joe says:
    22 Dec22 December 12:46

    This is a bit off-topic, but I’m actually trying to use my 3v cards ‘legitimately’ i.e. to buy stuff off the internet. However, I’ve got a problem because the site I want to use requires payment cards to be registered for 3D secure/verified by visa. It seems 3v cards are not. Has anybody had this problem before and does anybody know how to get around it?!

    Thanks

  • Joanne says:
    23 Dec23 December 07:55

    I’ve successfully used 3v on my PayPal account to make eBay purchases £25 and under. Any residual amount I’ve sent an amazon gift to my second email address.

    I expect we could send £25 to a friend/family member or a second PayPal account if we had one? The fee to receive would be 3.4% plus 20p ? £1.05 per card? It’s an option?

  • Polly says:
    24 Dec24 December 05:49

    Sky just allowed 3 cards to be processed, reversed the fourth one, bill now in minus, just over my monthly bill, still waiting for reversed ones to be credited back to 3v though…seems like sky only allow the number of cards closest to your bill!

  • Andrew says:
    24 Dec24 December 10:28

    IMPORTANT:

    Just had a call from the Fraud team at Sky saying that Raphael’s Bank did a chargeback for 4x of my overpayments, and consequently Sky have reversed all the payments as they look suspicious.

    WHY 3V would chargeback these transactions is very worrying…

    • Paul says:
      24 Dec24 December 13:18

      I also had 4 x £25 payments reversed. When I called Sky they said the reversal was initiated by the bank, not by them which doesn’t make sense as the payments were authorised and processed correctly. The 3V cards in question are still showing a zero balance after 6 days. Will wait until after Christmas then contact 3V

      • Polly says:
        27 Dec27 December 15:28

        3v have told me that sky rejected them! Sky have said 3v didn’t authorise them! I put in 4 x £25, 3 have reversed…. Am now awaiting a call back, some hope! From a sky manager! He can’t see why they were reversed…..

        • Paul says:
          27 Dec27 December 16:01

          All 4 payments have been re-credited to the 3V cards as of last night so I’ll just spend them on something else. Whether Sky or 3V reversed the payments we’ll probably never know! Interestingly, the cards in question now just show the £25 initial balance as if they’d never been used – no mention of the previous authorisation code to Sky and a subsequent reversal ??

    • squills says:
      24 Dec24 December 15:18

      Time to wise up & grow up.

      Learn NEVER to worry in this kind of situation.

      You did nothing wrong.

      Laugh and shrug it off.

  • Paul says:
    24 Dec24 December 16:14

    squills says:
    Time to wise up & grow up.
    Learn NEVER to worry in this kind of situation.
    You did nothing wrong.
    Laugh and shrug it off.

    ??? I’m already old and wise enough thanks but unfortunately not rich enough to just shrug off losing £100. I just want the money re-credited to the 3V cards and then I’ll move on.

  • Singing Dwarf says:
    27 Dec27 December 21:17

    £20 worth of credit only works out at £727 worth of 3V cards at 2.75% per transaction – or 29x individual 3V cards.

    After that, at 2.75%, this appears to work out at 0.35p/Avios using the 150 CC points for £50 gift cards offer – or 0.15p/Avios using the additional 100 CC points per £20 gift card coupons.

    • nick morrell says:
      31 Dec31 December 21:33

      Is the going rate not 3.5%+10p as the tranaction would be classed as manual entry. So is it not cheaper to pay £1.75 to merge two cards?

      • Singing Dwarf says:
        31 Dec31 December 22:47

        Merge two cards and then do what with it?
        If converting using this IZettle account, you still have to pay a percentage transaction fee against the whole transaction – so it ends up costing you an extra £1.75 for every card that it merged…

        • nick morrell says:
          1 Jan1 January 11:40

          Yes I was talking about merging each card and then paying the fee to withdraw to the bank account with out using izettle. I see the my mistake as I haven’t allowed for £1.75 for each card merged which will make it more expensive.

          However the point I was trying to clarify is the fee for using izettle is actually 3.5%+10p per transaction (or card in our case)?

          • Singing Dwarf says:
            1 Jan1 January 14:23

            Ah yes, I see. I believe you are correct, so slightly more expensive than I calculated.

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