Bits: Emirates makes Manchester ‘all A380’, Priority Pass deal, HfP in the Express

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• Sussex Bantam says:

  16 Aug16 August 08:37

  OT – Tesco sent me an email offering me 50CC points for changing my contact preferences to online rather than post. No link – just had to change them via the web-site – so I guess not targetted in any way.

  • Andy says:

    16 Aug16 August 10:20

    I rec’d the same email as well, for 50 CC / 120 Avios points I changed to online clubcard statements as well.

• krys_k says:

  16 Aug16 August 09:17

  OT – when did / or do the credit interchange fee caps come into play? I ask, as just bought a car and going to pick it up but the garage wants 1.2% and says that their account department confirms that they are paying 1.2% (the car will get me my Lloyds upgrade voucher in one tasty transaction). Cheers.

  • Rob says:

    16 Aug16 August 09:34

    December

  • The_Real_A says:

    16 Aug16 August 09:40

    The interchange cap is not the processing fee the business pays. On top of this they must also pay fee for the equipment + service, which is usually bundled into the % per £ amount the business pays to its payment processor.

    • krys_k says:

      16 Aug16 August 09:43

      Is that December 2015 or 16 i.e. past or future?
      Any idea what % the equipment and service is?

      • Rob says:

        16 Aug16 August 09:48

        Past. However, small businesses have to rent terminals etc and that jacks up the total cost. The interchange fee is often not broken out to the shop.

        In reality, only Tesco etc can demand 0.3%.

        Look at the recent list I published of HMRC charges. They want 0.386% on most personal cards which is interchange and handling combined.

        • krys_k says:

          16 Aug16 August 10:01

          Thanks for that. I’ll get that upgrade voucher, so OK to pay a bit more.

    • Russell says:

      16 Aug16 August 11:35

      Merchant Acquirers also take a view on the risk of the business collapsing, particularly given that they will be liable under section 75 for customer’s losses.

      When I wanted to change merchant acquirer several years ago, I quickly discovered that most of the new ones then starting up had an absolute ban on dealing with any firms in the travel business.They had no interest in looking at the books or how the business was run. I am out of the business now, but would not be surprised to learn that some merchant acquirers may be trying to drop travel businesses follwing the Lowcostholidays debacle.

      I believe that this is a purely UK thing. If US merchant acquirers are not liable in this way, this would also contribute to why they are able to offers more points and better sign-up offers than they do here.

      On the subject of motor dealers, my local dealer introduced a 3% charge for Visa/M’Card at the beginning of the year. The service manager who I know pretty well keeps telling me that until then, card firms did not make any charge to the motor trade at all, which I find very hard to believe.

      • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

        16 Aug16 August 12:04

        I don’t believe acquiring banks have any S75 liability. They may have other liabilities though.

      • Fenny says:

        16 Aug16 August 18:10

        When I bought my car last year, they told me there would be a 3% fee for paying by CC. I was splitting it across 2 cards, so had to take account of this due to different credit limits. In the end, they never charged me the card fee, which saved me over £120.

  • Alan says:

    16 Aug16 August 09:58

    Amazed you managed to get a garage willing to take a credit card for more than just a deposit! Given the other costs the small business will incur that sounds like a fairly reasonable level of charge to me.

    • Mr(s) Entitled says:

      16 Aug16 August 10:28

      Whenever I buy a car I always, once the price agreed, confirm that I can use my card for no fee before saying done. It’s an unsual dealer who will let a sale walk out the door for the sake of 1% after all the hard work in getting so close.

      • Alan says:

        16 Aug16 August 10:33

        Interesting. Always managed to get deposit on card before (which covers you for the whole sale under Section 75) but not the full thing – you make a good point though 😛

    • John says:

      16 Aug16 August 10:42

      If the garage is passing on the full card fee to the customer then I don’t see why they wouldn’t take it.

      • Alan says:

        16 Aug16 August 10:43

        Yes, although I’ve seen one garage that just flat-out refused for anything above 500 – didn’t go as far as Mr(s) Entitled though in pushing the point!

    • CV3V says:

      16 Aug16 August 11:00

      My partner managed to put a huge chunk of a car purchase through on an amex! This was done at the stage of working out the best finance option (silently we were calculating what was best in terms of points!), eventually the salesman got tired and put it through without the fee.

      • Doug says:

        16 Aug16 August 12:25

        Well when I purchased mine last month, the posh Surrey garage asked me 2% for the benefit of using a credit card. Sadly I don’t get 2p from my avios so I just paid with debit.

        • Wally1976 says:

          17 Aug17 August 09:50

          Garage I just bought a car from had a 1% fee for credit card transactions over £1k. I got them to take £999 deposit on Lloyds Amex (currently 2.5 avios/£) then when it came to paying the balance I put a further £999 on the Amex and the remainder on Tesco debit 🙂

• n says:

  16 Aug16 August 09:23

  OT – Need to top up my Accor account with ~2k points. I have a load of Amex MR points, Virgin Atlantic FC points and Avios. Any way to do this? Thanks!

  • Rob says:

    16 Aug16 August 09:34

    Amex to Finnair, Finnair to Accor – but you will lose value. Check minimum transfer level first.

    • n says:

      16 Aug16 August 09:54

      Thanks.

      1 MR = 1 Finnair Plus point
      3,500 FP = 500 Accor

      At 2,000 Accor = 40 EUR, that’s 0.25p per MR point.

      I think I’ll pass!

      • n says:

        16 Aug16 August 09:56

        For ref;

        Minimum MR to FP transfer is 1000 MR points
        Minimum FP to Accor transfer is 3,500 FP points

• M says:

  16 Aug16 August 09:29

  Hi guys,

  I just got my priority pass prestige. Yesterday around 2pm I got declined entry at Gatwick South Lounge No.1 (ouch. My first attempt to get inside a lounge!)
  They didn’t grant me access because “I hadn’t pre-booked (£5)”.
  First, I was quite shocked because the priority pass website doesn’t mention pre-booking.
  Secondly, why do I have to pay £5 more when the prestige membership is already quite high and gives me unlimited visits…. I am not sure the lounge was full as they only mentioned the pre booking reason.

  Is it common practice to get declined entry? What is your ratio success/fail? I feel disappointed… Maybe I am just being pessimistic! Let me know!

  Thanks

  • Rob says:

    16 Aug16 August 09:33

    No 1 lounges get very busy as a) a lot of airlines use them as official lounges and b) No 1 sell a lot of spots direct. PP just fills in the gaps.

    You can go online, pay £5 and guarantee a spot. They are the only lounge group to do this.

    • Mdhayes says:

      16 Aug16 August 09:49

      we just paid £7.50 for a glass of champagne instead, rather pay £7.50 than £5 and actually get something. If you purchase any of the extras you get the £5 waived.

  • Alan says:

    16 Aug16 August 09:59

    Gatwick is a major problem just now – never had an issue at Edinburgh (although we’re pretty well covered with BA, No 1 and an Aspire lounge!)

  • M says:

    16 Aug16 August 11:45

    Thanks guys for your inputs

  • Doug says:

    16 Aug16 August 12:27

    Which day of the week? I will be there next Wed 6pm and I wonder if I could save £10…

    • M says:

      16 Aug16 August 20:14

      It was on Monday around 2pm.

• Ben says:

  16 Aug16 August 09:40

  I bought an unlimited visits priority pass with the previous 15 months + 20% off offer. From memory it was about £220 for the 15 months. I’ve used it at least 12 times in the past 4 months alone so it will easily be ‘worth it’. As someone with OW Sapphire and *A Gold, yes its very nice to fly with an alliance carrier with lounge access (LHR T2 is lovely) but when you’re comparing this flight at £100 compared with a £30 LCC flight its very hard to justify the extra expense just for the status benefits, and that’s where my PP membership comes in.
  I’d value each visit at about £10 and with the exception of the LHR T4 Plaza Premium lounge, there have been none I’ve wanted to spend more than about 30 minutes in (some of them are horrid). It is however nice to grab a drink, something to eat (the food varies more than anything else in these lounges), recharge devices and use a clean, quiet bathroom. The food and drink savings alone compared with buying on board easily covers the cost of the visit.
  If you take a LOT of LCC flights I’d recommend considering it but you’d want to use it at least once a month for it to be ‘worth it’.

  • The_Real_A says:

    16 Aug16 August 09:43

    Totally agree. have been doing this for that 10 years (private lounges rarely served food in those days!)

• Russell says:

  16 Aug16 August 10:17

  Good publicity for the site, but Jesus, that article was awful.

  Are they sure they know what “implicated” means?

  • Robman says:

    16 Aug16 August 10:39

    O/T, I want to cancel my BAPP card when I trigger the 2-4-1 voucher. I will refer my wife before cancelling my card. Does anyone know whether she will be successful in being approved the card if she is a housewife and has no personal income, only joint income through me?

    • Rob says:

      16 Aug16 August 10:41

      Should be ok, theoretically household income

      • Robman says:

        16 Aug16 August 11:54

        Cool. All approved.

• simon says:

  16 Aug16 August 12:19

  O/T Sorry if this has already been covered, but can anyone shed any light on the reason why the BA Avios Explorer Map is not working. Every time I log on it says ” temporarily unavailable” .

  • Rob says:

    16 Aug16 August 12:26

    BA has scrapped it

    • Worzel says:

      16 Aug16 August 17:44

      Any reason for this Rob? I found it a useful facility-and chased them up nearly 3 weeks ago with no reply.

      It was due to be out of order for most of May but…….?

      • Rob says:

        16 Aug16 August 18:17

        No idea. However, the bottom line is that it wasn’t accurate and BA may have found it was causing more trouble than it was worth.

        • Worzel says:

          16 Aug16 August 21:27

          Thanks Rob, questions remain, w.

  • Jonathan says:

    16 Aug16 August 12:27

    The avios flight finder app on the iPhone doesn’t show any availability on flights past November 2016. What’s the reason for this?

• harry says:

  16 Aug16 August 12:34

  O/T Flash sale on WizzAir today only 20% off all flights.

  Thought you might want to send Anika somewhere, Raffles 🙂

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