HSBC Premier World Elite bonus pay-out developments (positively)

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• RichE says:

  14 Jan14 January 06:00

  Shame with HSBC – We just paid two lots of 2nd year fees last month 🙁

  • Polly says:

    14 Jan14 January 06:12

    The only positive side to it is you are earning ongoing avios with every £ spent instead of this nonsense Tesco MasterCard, which l found quite annoying, as lots of our small spends were around £6 or £7 which gave us nothing. We do have a lot of MasterCard spend which l just can’t use our Amex on. Much as l have tried. Even as far as asking our local garage to send us a PayPal invoice which we could then use our Amex on, but no joy.
    It’s also quite handy that the 2nd person fee is only £60 pa, which gives same benefits, albeit no lounge key guest.
    Just wish a transfer bonus was offered soon.

  • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

    14 Jan14 January 07:10

    If you haven’t already tried, this change in stance may lead to more success through their complaints process (although less likely if you’ve been continuing to use the card).

• Stu R says:

  14 Jan14 January 06:05

  OT: what’s the deal with the ban on card fees? I know it came into effect yesterday and BA, EasyJet, Ryanair etc have all ceased their fees. However, KLM still seem to be charging for Amex and some MC, not all. I’d have thought if you trade in the UK, you do it under UK law?

  • Polly says:

    14 Jan14 January 06:13

    Thought it was Eu law, not just UK…

    • Rob says:

      14 Jan14 January 09:06

      They can charge the shop a higher fee, shop cannot pass it on.

  • Graham Walsh says:

    14 Jan14 January 09:17

    I was able to pay my council tax online now without a fee. However Just Eat call it a “service charge” of 50p per order.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      14 Jan14 January 18:44

      Are they charging everyone who pays cash 50p service charge too?

      • Graham Walsh says:

        14 Jan14 January 20:06

        Just reading their T&Cs. They take 14% of the order value plus 50p. They will, on behalf of the Restaurant, charge the Customer: a £0.50 admin charge per Order paid for online

        Seems like it regardless of card or cash

  • Lady London says:

    14 Jan14 January 13:13

    About time too. Handling cards these days is a normal part of doing business that costs pence and fractions of pence, for large merchants certainly. How this ripoff (I’m looking at you British Airways) was ever allowed to continue is beyond me.

    If it was the EU that got this sorted out then another case where something good came to normal people from the EU that was not given by the UK government.

    Sorry for the OT it’s January and miserable weather so I’m taking the opportunity to grump 🙂 Think I’ll rename myself “Grumpy London” 🙂

    • Andy says:

      14 Jan14 January 18:41

      It certainly doesn’t cost pence if you’re a small business. If you aren’t doing high volume then it’s normal to be giving up 2% depending on the transaction size. On some small transactions if a customer pays by PayPal I can be giving 8% in fees to PayPal.

      • Rob says:

        14 Jan14 January 20:54

        But why take Paypal? I will use it if it is offered, purely to save me having to get my card out, but it absolutely isn’t essential.

      • Cate says:

        14 Jan14 January 21:35

        We’ve just changed energy suppliers and none of them would take credit cards, either cheque or cash! Cash for goodness sake !!

• Rob says:

  14 Jan14 January 07:35

  Hi Rob – any jdea why the regulator sided with HSBC re the Premier World Elite card? Surely the marketing material / T&Cs are misleading if they don’t include something along the lines of ‘you must hold the card, and pay the annual fee, for a minimum of 2 years in order to receive the 40,000 bonus’.

  • Mr(s) Entitled says:

    14 Jan14 January 08:24

    See “Anniversary Bonus” in the comments below.

  • Rob says:

    14 Jan14 January 09:05

    ‘You have a year to spend £12k so HSBC is allowed to only check once a year whether you hit the target and only pay then’

    • Lady London says:

      14 Jan14 January 13:17

      Hum. A backward leaning double somersault by the regulator, in order to find in favour of HSBC’s intention that they did not state explicitly enough in the t’c and c’s.

      Come on HSBC you need to honour anyone that signed up to t’s and c’s that did not fully cover the restriction you wanted to put. If you want to stop honouring your own t’s and c’s then by all means create contracts with new customers under different t’s and c’s that do state clearly any extra restriction on payout you would like to put.

• JB says:

  14 Jan14 January 07:36

  Have had the Hsbc premier world elite since July and this month was credited the second tranche of 40k points for hitting £12k spend with no complaint or contact to or from Hsbc, they just appeared ????

  • scottnothing says:

    14 Jan14 January 10:50

    Same for me. My card is due for renewal on 8 Feb and an additional 20,000 points credited to my existing tally on 8 Jan. I haven’t called HSBC to press them on this, but had planned to. A very nice surprise.

• Ian says:

  14 Jan14 January 07:55

  I made many calls to HSBC about this and they always refused to accept that their terms & conditions were misleading. The heading for the 2nd bonus in the T&Cs is ‘Anniversary Bonus’. So they always held that the within 60 days of qualification meant within 60 days of the card anniversary if you’ve spent £12,000

  • Rob says:

    14 Jan14 January 08:09

    All I can say is that there are examples where HSBC have accepted they were wrong and paid out, so keep trying if it’s worth it for you.

  • Mr(s) Entitled says:

    14 Jan14 January 08:23

    I couldnt work out from the article how HSBC could contest and win. Thanks for providing the “Anniversary Heading” incormation. That is an important data point and while the T&Cs could be better written I would argue their intent is clear.

    I’m on HSBCs side but fair play to anyone who can make them cough up.

    • Rob says:

      14 Jan14 January 09:02

      In my experience – having made a FOS complaint against Amex which was 100% justified and lost – is that they are biased against you.

      • New Card says:

        14 Jan14 January 11:27

        This happened to me. I complained to the FOS and got a response rejecting my complaint on extremely spurious grounds.

        I was minded to appeal but I’ve just checked my account and the points are now in there!

        It strikes me as at least possible that HSBC run the assessment at calendar year end for convenience sake – might explain my experience and the number of people now reporting receipt of the extra points in January?

  • Lady London says:

    14 Jan14 January 13:23

    It cannot be questioned whether anyone who spent the required amount had qualified for the payout. The regulator could give HSBC right on the timing of the payout but not on whether you had qualified for it based on the t’s and c’s. So anyone who qualified should still receive the payout even if they’d closed their card by the time HSBC believed they had promised to pay it. I think the regulator did a poor job and would have appealed.

  • Rob says:

    16 Jan16 January 06:48

    Does anyone know how it works with the Amex Gold when you spend £15k in 1 year to get 10000 bonus MRs? They seem to have similar wording – does that mean you have to keep Amex Gold for at least 2 years, paying £140 in 2nd year?

    ‘Anniversary Bonus
    Celebrate with 10,000 Membership Rewards points after each year of Cardmembership when you spend at least £15,000 within the 12 month period of your Card anniversary.’

• Craig Strickland says:

  14 Jan14 January 08:14

  Mine posted the same month as the £195 renewal fee. I’ll keep a good eye on it this year to see whether it is worth it for the number of Avios earned. They really need to look at some ongoing bonus or perk system beyond the lounge access.

• mark2 says:

  14 Jan14 January 08:23

  Presumably you mean the financial regulator.
  Has anyone tried referring them to the Advertising Standards Authority?
  (this card does not appeal to me even if I still had the income).

• Nilesh says:

  14 Jan14 January 08:31

  Following my query on this site just before Xmas, I sent a Secure Message to HSBC about my anniversary points. Note (not sure whether it matters or not) but I didn’t refer to them as “anniversary points” but “additional points” (or something like that). Just checked my secure messages and they sent me message in early Jan saying my 40k points will there in the January statement.

  • Polly says:

    16 Jan16 January 01:41

    Same here.. In my ongoing discussions with them from July to oct, they had no clue about their own t and c. Finally got a clef in manager, whom l managed to inform about how much better Amex were when dealing with high value customers. Felt they could learn from them, actually. The regulator has warned HSBC to clean up their act and play fair, in private. Publicly they are sticking to the anniversary wording. However, they did agree with me that waiting until the very last moment to apply the bonus, and forcing you to pay another fee was unfair. So they have been dropping he bonus in ahead of year end now. I have not been able to read the judgement. But l certainly quoted may examples of where they could improve their customer services in future, if they wanted more stayers. They asked me a lot about a bonus system. Told them even high value customers appreciate an odd bonus.
    So yes, worth a gamble taking thermos,,but like think lesson has been learned.
    Now for a transfer bonus…..

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