Good news or bad news? Government bans credit card acceptance fees from January

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• John says:

  20 Jul20 July 06:02

  Small typo, *even, third last paragraph.

• James says:

  20 Jul20 July 06:03

  How was the BA fee always voluntary to those in the know? I’m evidently not in the know!

  • Adam says:

    20 Jul20 July 06:06

    Snap, would be delighted to find out more!!

  • Marc says:

    20 Jul20 July 06:07

    You can pretend to live in Ukraine. Im not sure whether it works with all kind of cards, but with Amex it works 100%

    • Callum says:

      20 Jul20 July 07:07

      It depends whether the bank does address verification. With most (all?) Amex cards they don’t do it so it always works, normal banks usually do the verification so it’s hit and miss whether they’ll be declined or not.

  • Adey says:

    20 Jul20 July 07:08

    Security validation on the address only uses House Number and Post Code

  • Frenske says:

    20 Jul20 July 10:58

    Or just use American Express Travel to book flights. Especially if you have a Gold Card.

    • John says:

      20 Jul20 July 14:21

      From November(?) BA will charge extra for GDS bookings

      Also the cheapest farebuckets are often not sold on Amex Travel

• Nigel says:

  20 Jul20 July 06:20

  Of course, the BA fee has always been voluntary for those in the know …

  Please explain the above as a sub article or give a link. Im not sure about pretending to live somewhere, or merely commencing the journey in Europe or elsewhere is required.

  I seem not to attract credit card fees on my BA Black AmEx card but do on my AmEx Centurion card. I also don’t seem to attract fees when paying in Euros (on my zero foreign currency transaction fee PO MasterCard) for flying from AMS or DUB long haul (usually to the USA)

• Mark says:

  20 Jul20 July 06:25

  Morning
  Great read
  Can I ask what you mean the B A charge is voluntary. just booked 4 B A flights using my B A Amex and paid 1.5%
  Thanks in advance

• Paul says:

  20 Jul20 July 06:32

  How to avoid the BA fees has been covered and with a little effort can be found. It’s not helpful to have every hack published and re published so that the business concerned the takes action to close the loop hole.
  When I last bought a ticket however the trick didn’t work and I wonder if the loophole has now been closed. It has however saved me a couple of hundred pounds over the years, particularly when BA charged £5 per person per ticket.

  • Bill says:

    20 Jul20 July 06:42

    It obviously hasn’t been covered extensively judging by the amount of people now asking. I’ve been a keen reader for a while and never stumbled across this. I just got stung by BA for £20 amex fees (ironically with the BA premium card) so this ‘hack’ would have been handy.

    • Genghis says:

      20 Jul20 July 06:43

      See Marc’s post above.

  • Genghis says:

    20 Jul20 July 06:42

    +1. A quick Google search brought it up for me. People need to do a bit of leg work…

    • GQ says:

      20 Jul20 July 07:49

      Exactly! To much baby feeding on here recently. This information is very easy to find. If readers are being very lazy and seeking all knowledge from these articles they are missing out on a lot.

      • GQ? says:

        20 Jul20 July 09:09

        Too much baby feeding? hahaha, you sir are a total knob

• Jonathan says:

  20 Jul20 July 06:47

  Glad this made it into an article after the comments yesterday.

  – I suspect fewer companies that don’t currently accept Amex would now sign up to start accepting it.
  – Some that do accept Amex but currently charge a surcharge will presumably stop.
  – Presumably bricks and mortar retailers that accept it today will continue to (as their costs haven’t changed).

  What’s people’s experience – have they seem instances where online retailers differentiate between the World Elite cards / business mastercards and regular mastercards (other than HMRC)?
  If not these changes will presumably make high earning MasterCard/ Visas more useful (assuming retailers don’t differentiate between them and the regular cards and stop accepting them).

  • the real harry1 says:

    20 Jul20 July 06:57

    well – it’s going to impact on me, one way or another

    my local Co-Op shifted ownership & the new owners kept PayPoint but don’t now take Amex (and yes, we still tried it & the machine rejected it)

    so I sourced a Texaco garage with PayPoint where it all went through fine, council tax paid on Amex etc etc

    but that operator charges 50p for using PayPoint – so I’ll either save 50p (likely) or they’ll remove PayPoint entirely (unlikely IMV)

    so try Texaco if you’ve no local Co-Op

    • Bryan says:

      20 Jul20 July 07:50

      My local coop accepts Amex if you put the card in the machine, but does not accept contactless Amex.
      Took me about a year to figure that out!

      • Genghis says:

        20 Jul20 July 08:29

        I know it’s random but the Robert Dyas in the City is like that too. Any reason why this is the case?

        • Wally1976 says:

          20 Jul20 July 09:05

          I don’t know why but I’ve found this in a few places. Generally prefer not to use contactless anyway as the transactions can take too long to hit the account – not good when completing last bit of required spend before cancelling a card.

        • john says:

          20 Jul20 July 09:13

          It’s common in a lot of places.. Superdrug to name one other major. Probably something to do with the card readers. More annoying is that the Post Office don’t take Amex on self service but do at the counter!

        • Will Squires says:

          20 Jul20 July 09:25

          They just aren’t set up to do Amex Expresspay (the equivalent to Visa payWave and Mastercard PayPass). Asda is another place that hasn’t for whatever reason.

          Intu car parks seem to only be setup with Visa payWave – they can’t even do Mastercard contactless.

        • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

          20 Jul20 July 10:17

          It’s usually a config issue with the POS terminal.

      • Fenny says:

        20 Jul20 July 18:09

        Interesting. I got a new set of Virgin Black cards in March. Ever since then, my Amex has worked intermittently on contactless terminals. I never had any problem with the previous card.

    • Peter K says:

      20 Jul20 July 12:41

      That sounds like exactly where I live therealharry1 ! You don’t happen to live in a town in North Shropshire do you……..

      • the real harry1 says:

        20 Jul20 July 15:06

        ha ha! nope – we’m from down real southwest 🙂

  • Genghis says:

    20 Jul20 July 07:05

    Or smaller shops will no longer accept Amex since no interchange cap on Amex cards. Overall price rise to take into account no credit card fees?

• Jovanna says:

  20 Jul20 July 07:20

  Just Eat have a 50p card fee and there’s a £1.90 delivery charge.

  There’s no card fee when ordering from hungryhouse. The delivery charge is £2.50.

  • Doug M says:

    20 Jul20 July 07:32

    Exactly. This will just change how we pay additional fees. I can’t see how a business will just absorb this.

    • the real harry1 says:

      20 Jul20 July 08:00

      despite the usual politician guff about saving consumers money, this won’t in itself save [all] consumers a penny

      some individuals will be up, some down – but overall we’ll all end up paying pretty much the same

      however – it will have the major benefit of making comparing like-for-like offerings from different providers a much easier task, ie improve competition

      you could argue of course that improved competition means keener pricing therefore cheaper prices overall – it won’t work like that

      those who shop around will do well, those who don’t will still get stuffed

      • Clive says:

        20 Jul20 July 09:23

        Well if the fees are absorbed into prices what it will mean is people using Amex cards will be subsidised by people who don’t use Amex or don’t use credit cards. I suspect the latter group is likely to be less well off in the first place. Not a great result.

    • Will says:

      20 Jul20 July 08:32

      Wrong link, correct one here…
      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/03/07/worldpay-promises-jobs-boost-profits-soar/

    • Sundar says:

      20 Jul20 July 08:33

      Yes, I also feel that the fees may now be called Online convenience fee or something else to tack on the additional charges.
      Personally I have moved away from paying these delivery charges and convenience fees and pay cash depending on circumstances – if the extra doesn’t match the rewards earned, cash it is.

      • Fenny says:

        20 Jul20 July 18:11

        I’m going to order a new cheque book and insist on paying online vendors by cheque!

• Paul says:

  20 Jul20 July 07:21

  ‘Living in fairy land’ ? Slightly harsh I think 🙂 though like you will be paying tax before the 13th

  • Cassie says:

    20 Jul20 July 07:30

    The BA fee is not voluntary.
    Just because there is a way to lie and fraudulently avoid it, does not make it voluntary.
    Integrity is not flexible because you can ‘get away with it’.

    • Alex W says:

      20 Jul20 July 08:04

      If you’ve paid £195 for a BRITISH AIRWAYS Amex card, in particular, I think your conscience should be entirely clear when doing this.

      • Clive says:

        20 Jul20 July 09:31

        Are you saying you believe BA receives your £195 Amex fee?

        • Yuff says:

          20 Jul20 July 10:06

          Do BA waive the fee when booking using avios?
          I’ve booked lots of flights, all reward flights, and never been charged the fee:)

        • Genghis says:

          20 Jul20 July 10:16

          @Yuff. You’re not charged any credit card fees on reward bookings.

        • Pangolin says:

          20 Jul20 July 10:16

          I think the point being made is that it’s ridiculous that BA even slaps users of BA-branded credit cards with the same inflated surcharge as for other cards.

      • Alex W says:

        20 Jul20 July 17:09

        Exactly.

        • Genghis says:

          20 Jul20 July 17:28

          So how does the economics of the BAPP work? Sounds like you’re in the know…

        • Alex W says:

          20 Jul20 July 23:42

          I meant exactly @pangolin. Yes I know the £195 goes to Amex. But it still has a BA logo on it.

    • Mr(s) Entitled says:

      20 Jul20 July 11:08

      “Integrity is not flexible” +1000

      • Will says:

        20 Jul20 July 11:25

        That works both ways, until recently BA would slap a £5 fee on a one way £50 ticket paid on visa when in reality they were being charged around 20p by the processor.

        Likewise now they charge £50 on a £5000 ticket when in reality their fee is only around £20.

        If the company lacks integrity, I think you can expect consumers at the margin to also put their integrity to one side too.

        • Genghis says:

          20 Jul20 July 11:46

          There is a £20 cap

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