Bits: mystery Supercard charges, LAN Madrid to Frankfurt deal back, Luxury Travel Diary deals

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

• Jason Cousins says:

  13 Jul13 July 09:57

  Quite frankly this is a disastrous launch of a product which has had the benefit of a pilot scheme for 2 years. Apart from the exchange rate issues above, for which the handling is appalling, the new main issue for me, for which I have now contacted the FCA, is ringfenced amounts.
  On a hotel stay last week, the hotel took from my Supercard, a ringfenced amount of $200.00. Normally, on a credit card, they simply hold it (as pending not showing on a statement) until the hotel put through the actual charge (in this case, and importantly lower) at $35.00. Supercard instantly charge the original amount as actual onto the credit card. When the final amount comes through, Supercard does not change the Sterling Charge. On the App It updates to read: $35.05 @ £1.00=$0.2337 =£149.95!!! That’s pretty much a rate of £4 to $1. Customer Services are fairly uninterested until you mention the Financial Conduct Authority. Basically they have stolen around £125.00

  • Mr Dee says:

    13 Jul13 July 10:19

    That charge seems like a bug in their app, I would assume that you’ll get a seperate charge for the $35.05 and a refund for the original amount after about 7-10 days from the original charge.

    They are charging preauthorisations and then charging the final amount seperately, I think I will be avoiding supercard as well by the sounds of it unless I am desperate.

    This whole situation is the same as the Curve card, it is without a doubt to do with Wirecard and how their technology works, this wasn’t a problem when the product was in beta. Curve and supercard may have little way of changing the way Wirecard works but it is severely limiting their business, doesn’t excuse their customer support though….

    • Jason Cousins says:

      13 Jul13 July 10:27

      What you say about the separate charges for preauthorisation and final seem perfectly logical, and would have expected Supercard to state this, but so far, customer services have not. In fact they are only interested in seeing an actual bill before looking further into it, despite the obvious error contained wholly within Supercard.

      • Mr Dee says:

        13 Jul13 July 15:28

        Well it doesn’t seem right if you are preauthorised and charged to your card £500 on a hotel stay and then the next day charged another £300 for the actual final total, meaning your card is charged £800 and 10 days later the £500 refunded.

        The point is it’s an actual charge not a simple preauthorisation, the pre south charges are going through as a charge which will mess up your cards available balance. This is not acceptable a pre auth should be pre authorised not charged, it worked in Supercard beta but not now by the looks of it due to this wirecard technology.

        • Genghis says:

          13 Jul13 July 15:40

          As well – presumably if the underlying card’s statement date is between payment and refund 10 days later, that is cash out of your actual pocket as opposed to a balance just sitting on an account.

  • Cheshire Pete says:

    13 Jul13 July 10:19

    I thought FCA wasn’t responsible as its issued in Gibraltar ? Or is that the Ombudsman that isn’t.

  • AO says:

    13 Jul13 July 11:36

    I also encountered this issue yesterday for a hotel stay last week, but it seems to have gone a step further as they have charged the difference between the amount held at the start of the stay and the amount on checkout as an “IC Cash” rate adjustment of £385!

    Currently for a 603 EUR hotel stay I have been charged in total £898 across three transactions. After a long and confused conversation with Customer Services, they ‘think’ the extra charge will be refunded when the original hold updates from pending to complete.

    Has anyone had any experience to confirm?

    • Jason Cousins says:

      13 Jul13 July 12:07

      Yes, the exact problem. I’m still awaiting to hear back from them.. It’s clearly a major problem, but one they seem inexperienced or incapable to deal with. A ‘completed’ transaction for me has resulted in a final charge of $35.05 being settled at the original amount of £149.95. I’d report this to the Financial Conduct Authority as I have.

      • John says:

        13 Jul13 July 12:36

        Yes, this is a very worrying bug, but you can easily avoid it next time (if you haven’t melted your supercard in frustration) by not using the supercard for authorisations.

        For hotel and car hire I always check-in with my Amex to make use of the lack of credit limit. At checkout I pay with a different card (or sometimes cash – when I got it at a better rate with the old supercard :p ). Also Amex has better dispute resolution so if there is a spurious charge from hotels later, Amex helps out. I wouldn’t want a hotel to randomly charge supercard later when the maid steals from the minibar

        • Mr Dee says:

          13 Jul13 July 15:32

          Good point but a pain in the ass for Supercard users

    • Mr Dee says:

      13 Jul13 July 15:31

      Yes there card should not be used for anything that may involve a preauthorisation as their system is charging twice and you will need to wait up to 10 days for the original charge to be refunded same rubbish as Curve.

• Mr Dee says:

  13 Jul13 July 10:25

  I’m starting to think its Wirecard (Behind Supercard and Curve) that is the problem rather than just supercard directly, had similiar pre authorisation issues with Curve.

• rams1981 says:

  13 Jul13 July 10:53

  Why did supercard switch from visa to MasterCard and the new technology? What was the point of the beta?

  • John says:

    13 Jul13 July 12:25

    1. Because the old provider probably lost a lot of money as we all did cash withdrawals as purchases

    2. To see how much use there would be

• MrHandBaggageOnly says:

  13 Jul13 July 10:56

  Just back from a few days away and had a look at the credit card statement last night. Had a small £1.20 IC CASH 01 transaction showing and was wondering about it, so pleased to see this update.

  I am far from impressed with Supercard so far. Mrs HBO and I both applied for cards, hers came through quite quickly, they wanted ID checks from me so I didn’t bother in the end, am now glad I didn’t. Worked fine for the first few days, but was then rejected at our final hotel, so reverted back to the Amex. The app on my wife’s card had also asked her to re-activate, then this morning on trying to log in said it didn’t recognise the last four digits and they then sent an email saying they’d temporarily locked the account.

  I’m not sure we will bother chasing it for reactivation. All seems like too much hassle, especially as we are not huge spenders when we are on trips overseas.

• DS says:

  13 Jul13 July 11:35

  For a few Euros more you can continue to Alicante, Malaga, Lisboa, Tenerife etc. via Madrid.

• John says:

  13 Jul13 July 12:29

  One positive out of all the negatives – I got 4 IHG points per £ for my (so far only) supercard transaction as it was processed in Ireland

  Has anyone tried using it in the UK yet? At this rate, it may be worthwile to pay the 1% fee for UK use if linked to the IHG card – provided that it gets recognised as a debit card by the merchant website

  • John says:

    13 Jul13 July 12:36

    and hopefully no exchange rate adjustments as GBP

  • Simon says:

    13 Jul13 July 12:56

    How do you know this? I only get the total points after the statement has been produced, and even then I have to try and work out what they have done!!

    • John says:

      13 Jul13 July 17:17

      Because my statement was produced today and that was the only “foreign” transaction that month.

      The number of points on the statement was exactly 2x the total expenditure of the statement, plus a further 2x of the supercard transaction.

      Actually I know many people have problems with the IHG barclaycard but I never have, my points are always exactly what I would expect (sometimes more, but in 2 years never less)

  • Mr Dee says:

    13 Jul13 July 16:23

    He meant that the supercard charge shows up as located in Ireland

• Alan says:

  13 Jul13 July 12:46

  Very interesting (and depressing) reading all the comments on here. Sadly Supercard seems to have got a lot worse coming out of Beta, mainly due to this switch to Wirecard (same as Curve) – with all the same issues re. pre-authorisations, etc. Mind you Wirecard also power the Number26 debit card in Germany and it seems to work fine (and still gives free ATM withdrawals).

  I agree with other posters that Revolut has a role over and above just being for those that can’t get 0% fee credit cards. No fess on ATM withdrawals up to £500 per month too is quite decent. Of course the free SEPA payments may well be going for us now thanks to Brexit…

  • Alan says:

    13 Jul13 July 12:57

    Have also just found when signing up for Revolut that they give you an electronic card in the app immediately for use online whilst waiting for the physical one to arrive, very handy!

  • Nik says:

    15 Jul15 July 04:21

    Have to agree with you. Used the Supercard through the beta period and it worked flawlessly. Been on a couple of trips now with the new card and its failed three times at authorisation. It’s also lacking previously available features so you can’t change the pin, no TouchID on the iOS app and the website access has been removed.

    Luckily I have a Revolut card and have been using this all this week out in the US with out any issues.

    It appears that the beta period must have been too successful and the launch has been scaled back to the minimum viable product.

    • Alan says:

      15 Jul15 July 08:15

      I must say I’ve been impressed with Revolut – my card is due soon but they give an instant electronic one to use, have clear live currency rates and some very good security options (eg location-based security for physical transactions, ability to switch off magnetic strip transactions, etc)

• Gavin says:

  13 Jul13 July 12:51

  Used just once an adjustment of approx. 1.5% on an online transaction in AUD.

  I only used my Supercard as I didn’t have the card I wanted to use in my wallet and I did have my supercard on me. Perhaps not to be used again given I have Clarity and Lloyds cards

  • PalCsaky says:

    13 Jul13 July 17:32

    Same here. Payment in AUD, supercard added 1.08% extra charge. Best to stick with Halifax Clarity.

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