The UK Hilton Honors Platinum Visa credit card has closed to new applicants – what now?

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• Czechoslovakia says:

  1 Mar1 March 05:47

  My Lloyd’s avios twin pack only arrived last week, after having to wait 6 months for my old product to “Drop out” of the system. Nowhere did they ask for my avios account number when applying. Is that right, anyone? TIA.
  Shame about both the Hilton and Lloyd’s cards… Im afraid there are some enhancements looming….

  • Ian says:

    1 Mar1 March 06:12

    That means they will open you a new avios account and points will end up there.

    Phone and ask right away where the avios are going. It’s much easier to get this number and merge with avios than get lloyds to change it!

    • guesswho2000 says:

      1 Mar1 March 07:10

      Not necessarily, but possible. They did manage to match it correctly with mine. Wait until the first month’s points are due to drop, then see if they turn up. If not, call Avios and ask them to check for/merge, don’t bother trying to deal with Lloyds.

      • Mycity says:

        1 Mar1 March 07:17

        They’ve matched it with mine and my wife’s? I called and they told me that it’s matched by name and postcode

      • Ian says:

        1 Mar1 March 07:22

        That’s great you had better luck than me! It took me 8 months to get my avios they had matched it with someone else. I got a refund of my fees though as compensation it took so many emails!

  • Claire says:

    1 Mar1 March 07:42

    My husband just got one of these. They do it by email address .. so if you signed up to the card wth the same email address as you use for your Avios a/c then the points go in there automatically. If not they create a new a/c for you and then you need to speak to them (they have a live chat) and they can link it. This is what my husband was told last month, he used the same email address and his points went in to his Avios a/c no problem.

    • Michael says:

      1 Mar1 March 08:10

      They messed mine up quoted 6 month to fix and gave me £150 cheque. I have to call and they send me the point manually, although it takes a lengthy phone call. Each time they send the wrong amount also. Once I needed 8700pts, so they sent me 45000. Lloyds are worse than useless and im not suprised this has stopped the card.

      • RTS says:

        1 Mar1 March 10:22

        I am not sure why you are so upset about receiving free money and too many points…

      • Michael says:

        1 Mar1 March 10:35

        you assume I’m upset? no. Quite happy at their incompetence.

      • Michael says:

        1 Mar1 March 10:48

        Believe it or not but my postman has just been and I got a cheque for a further £75 as they have not been able to fix my account in the 6 months that they said they would. I closed the account last week as my double points offer had finished and got my last manual transfer done. How are Lloyds still in business, haha. Not complaining but come on they are totally incompetant. £150 + £75 + 45k extra points. Gutted they are stopping this card…

      • Lady London says:

        1 Mar1 March 11:05

        🙂

      • Phil says:

        1 Mar1 March 18:57

        Also £100 cheque delivered by postman today. I’ve lost track on whether they’ve sorted my points or not. Letter says they will have a final decision by April. Maybe I’ll get another cheque by then!

• David says:

  1 Mar1 March 06:01

  I’ll be glad if Hilton move their agreement to MasterCard instead of Barclaycard. I never managed to get the Hilton card despite being “accepted” twice, because I already had a Barclaycard product. Hopefully a new Hilton MasterCard would be more accessible…

  • David says:

    1 Mar1 March 06:19

    Maybe? Mine have always been Visas… Either way, if Hilton can bin any sort of relationship with Barclaycard, the world would be a better place…

    • paulm says:

      1 Mar1 March 06:54

      Careful what you wish for, they may go to Creation!

    • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

      1 Mar1 March 08:19

      It won’t go to Creation. As I understand it, the P&L of the IHG cards is a horror show.

    • Andrew says:

      1 Mar1 March 08:38

      NewDay would be much worse than Creation.

    • Michael Jennings says:

      1 Mar1 March 08:43

      Barclaycard did issue Mastercards, but stopped doing so a couple of years back. he Mastercard that I had with them was changed into a Visa at the time. They now issue only Visa.

  • David says:

    1 Mar1 March 09:26

    N.b. Mastercard don’t issue cards themselves, so you are not comparing like with like.

    Mastercard is a payment network, the same as Visa.
    Barclaycard is a card issuer, that same as Natwest, MBNA, Creation, HSBC, etc.

    Amex is both a card issuer and a payment network.
    And other companies currently also have issued cards on the amex network.

  • john says:

    1 Mar1 March 10:36

    My work Barclaycard Business Visa card switched to Mastercard about a year ago so it’s not that Barclaycard don’t work with mastercard..

  • Michael Jennings says:

    1 Mar1 March 11:54

    I had a personal Barclaycard Mastercard that changed to being a Visa a couple of years ago. More recently than that, a notice of changes to terms and conditions for Barclaycard personal cards deleted all references to Mastercard and American Express, with a footnote saying that they no longer issue these types of cards. I guess it’s vaguely interesting that business cards are different.

• Paul says:

  1 Mar1 March 06:05

  Pity about Hilton. My wife and I just cancellledcour cards and had hoped to churn them later in the year. Oh well looks like another travel benefit door closes. I just hope Hilton don’t go near Creation as they are truly awful credit card provider. Their IT and almost every aspect of their service is poor.

  I would speculate that big changes are also coming to Amex. I had a survey yesterday which asked me about the types of benefits I found most and least appealing. They were generally underwhelming and included airline status “without lounge access” as well as varying levels of travel related spend credit.

  I got the impression that major enhancements were coming dressed up as “ our customers have told us they want”………all for higher fees!

  • The_real_a says:

    1 Mar1 March 08:04

    If you have priority pass as part of the package then you dont need lounge access 😉

  • Heather says:

    1 Mar1 March 09:08

    Just wondering what you mean by churn? I thought it was a once lifetime sign up bonus with the Hilton visa? Not that it matters now…

    • Genghis says:

      1 Mar1 March 09:17

      It was possible to get it more than once…

    • TripRep says:

      1 Mar1 March 09:51

      Yes it was possible to get the sign up bonus again if you left a good grace period between cancelling and applying, I left over a year and got new Certificate for mine and Mrs TripReps for us to both use in the Maldives 😀

• Brian says:

  1 Mar1 March 06:14

  Wow I literally applied and was approved for this card late last week. Things like this come totally out of the blue. The hotel credit card market in the UK is so volatile, just look at the changes in recent years with IHG and when creation pulled the Marriott Rewards MasterCard.

  • rob says:

    1 Mar1 March 07:20

    “The hotel credit card market in the UK is so volatile”

    Not just hotels but all credit cards, this due in part to the new EU interchange fees. If the Lloyds card goes that will be 3 of my credit cards gone.

    Maybe post-Brexit this rule can be changed; it just limits choice for the consumer. Frustrating.

    • Alan says:

      1 Mar1 March 08:22

      Didn’t Rob say previously that it was the UK Government pushing this interchange fee restriction with the EU? If that is correct then I wouldn’t put too much hope in it changing post-Brexit

      • George says:

        1 Mar1 March 08:27

        Yep. The UK gov had a big hand in this and I think it’s unlikely to be undone.

    • Andrew says:

      1 Mar1 March 09:05

      Let’s be honest here. The new interchange rules are good for consumers on average. Our generous rewards funded by relatively high Amex and other interchange fees were being subsidised by consumers in general since no stores listed separate prices for each and every card on the market. If a retailer had to pay 3-4% for an amex purchase compared to a fraction of a percent for a debit card then obviously the average consumer was subsidising the average points collector. If consumers all exercised their choice and went for similar expensive rewards cards then prices would have to go up to compensate retailers.

      That doesn’t necessarilly mean prices will now come down but hopefully when retailers next analyse their costs they’ll be less likely to put prices up given they’ve got a bit more headroom on their payment fees.

      • Rob says:

        1 Mar1 March 13:53

        My main concern was that this has, unequivocally, reduced choice for the consumer in the card market. Less choice potentially means higher charges for consumers, which i guess will include higher interest rates/fees or reduced bonuses/vouchers.

        The main drivers for reducing fees will be payment processors like Square, Worldpay, Alipay, izettle etc, some of those charge 1.5%. The interchange fees are a small part of a larger fee-pie for the retailer and a very small part of their overall cost base.

• Trev says:

  1 Mar1 March 07:05

  Another one bites the dust… our options for non Amex spend are very limited now!

  Any ideas as to what to replace it with if this doesn’t get renewed as a viable/useful new card?

  Amazon or John Lewis cards maybe? I know they aren’t travel related but that market appears to be getting annihilated.

  • Rob says:

    1 Mar1 March 09:10

    New Virgin card

    • Genghis says:

      1 Mar1 March 09:18

      When can we expect an article?

      • pauldb says:

        1 Mar1 March 09:40

        Virgin Money had their results this week and gave an H1 launch, so not imminent.

        • Rob says:

          1 Mar1 March 11:22

          We’re talking weeks not months.

      • Rob says:

        1 Mar1 March 11:24

        When they tell me I can write it …. the snag with what we’ve done re the NDA is that we can’t write about rumours which turn out to be true (as we know the truth) which is our normal editorial approach!

    • Trev says:

      1 Mar1 March 10:15

      I’m waiting to see what they come up with, do you have any ideas what the benefits might be? If they keep the fee from the old black card do you think they will be keeping the earnings and vourchers at the same rate too?

      • New Card says:

        1 Mar1 March 11:31

        You can’t write about rumours which turn out to be true … so does that mean it’s months not weeks then?! 😛

• will says:

  1 Mar1 March 07:08

  I qualified for Gold (£10k spend) and Honors website said will remain Gold for as long as I am a cardholder (not 1 year and need to requalify) – that was a nice surprise

  However IF this card gets pulled tomorrow (or on 30 days notice or whatever) that seems to have been a bit of a pointless exercise! Can this legally happen?

  • guesswho2000 says:

    1 Mar1 March 07:11

    Yes, anything can happen, because the T&Cs give them the right to change the T&Cs at any time.

  • sunguy says:

    1 Mar1 March 09:18

    Where exactly did it say you will remain gold for as long as you are a cardholder ?

  • TripRep says:

    1 Mar1 March 11:13

    Will – where exactly does is say this??? can you quote it with the web page address, please 😀

    • New Card says:

      1 Mar1 March 11:14

      +1

  • Michael Jennings says:

    1 Mar1 March 11:57

    I also got the message as Will – that I will remain Gold for as long as I have the HH Barclaycard, However I qualified for Gold using a route that had nothing to do with the Barclaycard, and I was wondering if this was real. I guess it is moot if they abolish the card.

• Anna says:

  1 Mar1 March 07:21

  Does “no impacts on existing customers” mean they will still honour the free night certificate? I got my HH visa last week.

  • Peter K says:

    1 Mar1 March 08:44

    You should be okay. Basically the first step to getting rid of a card is stopping applications. Stopping it for current users often takes months (years?) longer.

  • Rob says:

    1 Mar1 March 09:09

    Yes

• Andy says:

  1 Mar1 March 07:25

  Blimey Rob, what other cards did you say they should get? I better apply for them today before they get pulled too!

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