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

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• Alastair says:

  15 Jul15 July 07:25

  Slightly OT- just been looking at Amazon Prime Day offers.

  Buy a £50 physical Amazon gift card (P&P free) and get £10 free voucher.

  You do need to register for the offer specifically on the site before placing your order.

  Once card arrives credit it back to Amazon account – £10 off £60, nearly as easy as recent Amex offers

  • bob says:

    15 Jul15 July 08:43

    That offer is open to non Prime customers. The £10 code has to be used up by a nearish deadline but you could presumably just buy another £10 giftcard with a 10 year validity.

    • James says:

      15 Jul15 July 09:47

      Do you have a link?

      • John says:

        15 Jul15 July 13:06

        “Sorry, this promotion has ended.”

    • Gabriel says:

      15 Jul15 July 09:49

      Sadly, you can’t buy Amazon giftcards with your existing giftcard balance.

  • Jon says:

    15 Jul15 July 09:21

    Looks a good offer

• Reney says:

  15 Jul15 July 07:28

  Raffles can you please explain a bit more how to pay TV licensing, I was under the assumption that you had to pay it in one go. Do I need to create an account or go on direct debit?

  Yes TFL works, you can set it as auto top up but that is only £20 at a time and leaving you £5 left. For the last few times it didn’t work properly. The top up happened but the card didn’t get charged right so I had to resettle it (using 3v). So okay but extra step. Not done it in a while but you should be able to order to pick up at a station (the full £25).

  O2 works too but limit to 3 cards per month, not too sure how they define month, I think it is billing cycle or close to it.

  NPower works too.

  I’m trying it out on GiffGaff, it has accepted it as a recurring payment card but not due to be charged yet. obviously for this and TFL you have to change payment all the time!

  • Mr Bridge says:

    15 Jul15 July 07:31

    tv licencing you need to set up a savings card, which takes a couple of days, then pay any amount you want, up to the 3v card balance.

    • bob says:

      15 Jul15 July 07:49

      but this https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/pay-for-your-tv-licence/payment-methods/tv-licensing-savings-card-pay3

• Zoe says:

  15 Jul15 July 07:42

  Limited appeal but halls of residence at the University of Kent, worth a try at other universities if you have a child heading off in September.

• Howard says:

  15 Jul15 July 07:45

  I missed that you could pay tax via world pay. My local tesco only had two this morning but I bought them and it works. Its easier if you use Google Chrome.

  Thanks for this information. Brilliant.

• Fenny says:

  15 Jul15 July 08:06

  I use them for Now TV monthly payments. Particularly useful when I only want to pay for a few months then cancel, as it automatically rejects the renewal when the card is empty, unless you switch payment cards to continue.

  • bob says:

    15 Jul15 July 08:12

    Yep a useful feature. Sun+ are giving away £20 Tesco vouchers when you sign up for 2 months @ 50p each followed by the usual sub. Of course I don’t want to pay the usual sub & might forget to cancel, so I just spent the other £24 on the pay.com card a few days later. There’s nothing left for them to get 🙂

    BTW Sun+ are one of those who lock in £1 extra for a few days (see main article).

    • Dave G says:

      15 Jul15 July 09:41

      As far as I can see you only get the Tesco voucher if you sign up for a 3 month £9.99 deal.

    • Peter Taysum says:

      18 Jul18 July 09:39

      Codes seem to have run out now. Pity, I liked the idea of a discount from the card

  • EvilGazebo says:

    15 Jul15 July 08:14

    Now that is a useful tip, thanks. About to use the last of the stack of 2/3 month vouchers that came with the 8 NowTV boxes I bought cheap from Tesco for bonus Clubcard points and then sold to CEX….the things we do for miles etc…….

    • Fenny says:

      15 Jul15 July 12:51

      Exactly. I only bought 3 NotTV boxes – one for home, one for my bedroom at Ma’s and one “spare”, which I flogged to my boss. 3 Entertainment passes. One used for this year’s GoT season and 2 for the future. Not sure how long they are valid, but hoping it will see me through S6 next year, especially as I usually get an offer of 3 months cheap subs to entice me back after cancelling.

• Peter Taysum says:

  15 Jul15 July 08:15

  So, if I pay Sky, E-on TV it will just not take/reduce the DD?

  Hmmm, I’ve also got a big HMRC bill coming up…

  • bob says:

    15 Jul15 July 08:38

    Policy varies according to provider.

    Eg Sky DON’T take your direct debit if you are in credit
    EDF/ OVO definitely DO take your normal monthly direct debit payment if you are in credit

    • nerd. says:

      15 Jul15 July 08:58

      Energy providers usually will because (unlike telecoms/tv providers) their monthly DD amount is based on estimates rather than actual/historical usage. (Energy providers do this to help keep your monthly payments flat over the year, even though usage is much higher in the winter)

      I would expect most phone/broadband/tv companies to be the same as Sky in this regard you are paying off an invoice for services provided.

      With energy companies on the other hand you are paying somewhat speculatively based on a bit of guesswork about how much energy you’ll use over the year. Don’t know about EDF/others but with Ovo at least you can go in and reduce the monthly DD amount – tbh I’m in no rush to do so because the 3% interest on credit balances beats most savings accounts at the moment!

      • Peter Taysum says:

        18 Jul18 July 09:43

        Thanks

        I’ve worked out I can pay most of my bills this way!

    • Mark says:

      21 Jul21 July 00:49

      If you submit a meter reading EDF will recalculate your Direct Debit amount, possibly reducing it.

      They will not simply take the amount paid off your next bill.

  • TimS says:

    15 Jul15 July 12:33

    Sky will reduce your DD by the amount paid via card.
    E-On won’t reduce the monthly DD by the amount paid on card though.

    I believe E-On will either refund the overpayment (to your bank account) at the end of the billing year or will reduce the following year’s DD (depending on how much the total overpayment is).

    Another option with E-On is to overpay via 3V/Pay.com and then ask them to recalculate your monthly DD. This will take into consideration the large credit balance on your account and significantly reduce your future monthly DDs.

• high end hobo says:

  15 Jul15 July 09:14

  Are they only available at the larger tescos or does tesco express also stock them?
  Pay.com claims you can shop anywhere online that accepts visa, so why are the options so limited?

  • mark2 says:

    15 Jul15 July 09:26

    Availability varies from store to store and day to day at the same store.
    I have never seen any in an Express but they may well be available.
    There are two factors restricting their usability:
    1) they are simply blocked at some merchants either by the merchant or by 3V;
    2) they are fixed at £25 o can only be used for an amount of £25 or less or a merchant who allows part payments. Major purchases usually have to be paid in one amount. Gift cards from HSV can help, but some retailers do not accept their own gift cards online.

  • Blenz101 says:

    15 Jul15 July 10:28

    Never usually at an Express store.

    Most Metros do sell them.

    Almost all superstores.

    All Extras.

    Also note that you can’t use a self checkout at any or the above stores so you will always face as a minimum the scrutiny of at least the cashier.

    • Jason says:

      15 Jul15 July 17:21

      Corby extra doesn’t 🙁

      • Wade says:

        16 Jul16 July 09:54

        “This is a great article, I’ll definitely get some next time I’m out of London and back in Corby

        …

        …****”

• William Hughes says:

  15 Jul15 July 09:23

  Raffles, sorry if this is mentioned above, but is there a way to have a section on the site that lists all the places that accept these cards? It will obviously be updated by the readers as and when we find a place accepts or stops accepting…? Just a thought.

  • Blenz101 says:

    15 Jul15 July 10:24

    It would be virtually impossible to maintain this. A noted in the article the cards are accepted ‘to shop’ anywhere online that a Visa Debit card is valid.

    Whilst in theory it’s possible to get a current list of places that accept the card for ‘services’ the first problem is that it changes without notice – so if your current utilities provider doesn’t take the card and you switch by the time this has happened the new provider or pay.com may well have blocked the cards. Readers are then locked into a potentially poorer deal for 12 months. Pay.com should not be a deciding factor for a service. Just try it with all your existing payments.

    The second problem is that most people want more than deffered spend and want to take the cash back out – here the treatment is even more variable. So you overpaid that utility bill by £1000 and asked for a refund to your bank, no fun when they send it back to each individual £25 3V you painstakingly entered. Combine that with examples like Sky who allow a max amount of credit before auto refunding later in the month back to your card. Varying max cards per day/month rules and it becomes impossible to maintain.

    Finally, by having a published and updated list it encourages what should be a “top up” bonus on regular spend into something some take to extremes and sees the loopholes closed much quicker. Nothing wrong with fill your boots per say but as opportunities are ever more limited to use these cards it seems counter productive to have a target list much beyond the article and comments.

    If you weren’t around when NS&I ended take a look at some FT and PTS threads at the time when people were landed with several thousand pounds worth of cards and no disposal route.

    Then there is the question around stability of the business model and where you will be on the list of creditors if the worst happens. Interesting argument with your CC provider if you have been buying cash like instruments to create manufactured spent if you expect them to be jointly liable.

  • Rob says:

    15 Jul15 July 10:25

    This article will stay open for 2 weeks for comments and I will incorporate suggestions into another article at that point.

    • TheTraveller says:

      15 Jul15 July 12:33

      Great way to any loopholes closed.

      Way to go.

      • Nick says:

        15 Jul15 July 13:03

        One would assume that those with a loophole would be intelligent enough not to share it, although someone did post the (admittedly blindingly obvious) paypal route yesterday.

        • TheTraveller says:

          18 Jul18 July 22:07

          You’d think, wouldn’t you.

          However somebody called @takke posted on this very site back in May 2013 that NS&I accepted 3V payments….

        • Rob says:

          18 Jul18 July 22:12

          And it did. I have posted numerous times that my council, which takes NO credit cards at all, believes that BMI and Marriott credit cards are debit cards and accepts them for council tax.

          It is all about coding and mistakes always slip through.

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