Tesco Bank suspends applications for its Avios-earning current account

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• aston100 says:

  8 Jan8 January 10:00

  O/T: am I right in presuming that if you use the IHG MasterCard to pay for things inside an IHG property abroad, that you would still be hit with the foreign currency usage fee etc?

  • guesswho2000 says:

    8 Jan8 January 10:29

    Correct

  • Genghis says:

    8 Jan8 January 10:36

    And still only get 4 points / £.

  • Kai says:

    8 Jan8 January 10:46

    From my limited experience, you can double points even when it’s fronted with Curve.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      8 Jan8 January 11:42

      I have a feeling that creation have it coded to any hotel spend not just IHG.

      Ive got double points on spend in non IHG hotel bars/cafes paid through curve.

      • aston100 says:

        8 Jan8 January 11:53

        Hi, sorry is this where you have the IHG Mastercard underlying the Curve front end – pay with Curve and the funds come from the IHG card?
        And if so, are you saying you get the points for spend at non IHG hotels at the same rate as if you were spending at an IHG property?

        Thanks – not used Curve before as if I’ve not had a need for it. Maybe that might change now.

      • Kai says:

        8 Jan8 January 12:10

        Is that abroad? IIRC the IHG card offers double points on *overseas* spend, so it doesn’t matter what currency it is in, as long as the transaction is physically abroad.

        • TGLoyalty says:

          8 Jan8 January 17:17

          Yes Curve for the transaction and IHG as the underlying card.

          All transactions via Curve take place in London regardless of where the card physically is

• Chris P says:

  8 Jan8 January 10:01

  One advantage of a Tesco Credit Card is if you order foreign currency in advance online and collect in store there are no charges and the amount is treated as a purchase rather than a currency transaction (so a few extra Tesco points/Miles) with no charges for the currency. The online rate always seems more competitive than in store also.

  • Sean says:

    8 Jan8 January 13:32

    Only if travelex is working though!

• Gulz says:

  8 Jan8 January 10:31

  Tesco related, so should I’d share. I checked my clubcard account over the weekend to find that my vouchers had been reduced by about £300ish… called them up yesterday to find out that my £350 clubcard vouchers expired in Nov. After a lot of pleading, they’ve reinstated the 35000 points. Said that their systems are changing in near future and they won’t be able to look at historical voucher/points information so won’t ever again be able to reinstate vouchers.

  • Genghis says:

    8 Jan8 January 10:40

    Lucky! Voucher expiry is tracked by Awardwallet. You might still have points taken away for going over the 30k /qtr points cap which is still in the terms? I’d convert the points to vouchers in chunks under 30k asap.

    • Gulz says:

      8 Jan8 January 10:43

      I was thinking the same. Will convert to avios or virgin straight away

      • Gulz says:

        8 Jan8 January 10:47

        The only option I get is to convert to £300 worth of Faster Vouchers (that’s the max limit per quarter). No option to reduce it

        • Secret Squirrel says:

          8 Jan8 January 12:37

          Don’t do faster vouchers then, reduce down to closest voucher redemption under £300, you could be lucky and have a £2.00 voucher in your account. Then redeem the £2.00 voucher at a later date.

  • Lady London says:

    8 Jan8 January 15:30

    I found out I’d lost about £300 off my Clubcard points about 1 year ago and Tesco flatly refused to reinstate them saying they didn’t have the records.

    Since shortly after, suddenly emails about voucher expiry on the small amount of points remaining have started appearing assiduously when I received nothing from them before. I’m not happy about this is there any way I can get redress perhaps by using GDPR?

    • Shoestring says:

      8 Jan8 January 15:43

      [Here’s how to reclaim lost Tesco vouchers]
      https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/reclaim-tesco-vouchers/

      LL – plenty of people are still reclaiming expired vouchers

      • Shoestring says:

        8 Jan8 January 15:45

        though maybe not so easy, some people just seem to have lost them but not actually expired

        however, I have read over the past few years of many people getting back expired vouchers with a friendly agent

        • Secret Squirrel says:

          8 Jan8 January 16:48

          Jeez, how do you lot even have over £300 worth of clubcard vouchers unspent? Let alone two years in which to spend them in…😢

        • Shoestring says:

          8 Jan8 January 17:16

          waiting for a 20% bonus was the old reason for waiting

          don’t forget it used to be fairly easy to get 30,000/ £300 *per quarter* & my wife & I both did that fairly consistently, ie 60,000 (Tesco Direct etc)

          these days? diddly – as I don’t shop there & Morrisons gets my diesel business

        • Lady London says:

          8 Jan8 January 17:17

          @SecretSquirrel I hang my head in shame.

        • Secret Squirrel says:

          8 Jan8 January 18:30

          You can’t wait two years for a bonus on redemptions surely?
          Use AW to keep on top of accounts & expiring points – simple!

        • Lady London says:

          8 Jan8 January 18:52

          Tesco changed their login procedure a long while back and AW couldn’t get in. Thus happens a lot btw. If AW fail to notify you of an issue they don’t have liability. Its just a tool that can help and not infallible, it’s affected by many things sites can do over time.

        • Rooster says:

          8 Jan8 January 20:28

          @Shoestring Hope you are still using the Morrisons vouchers, I hear a whole book of 100 vouchers is at a time is cheap at 10% off and if your lucky get 2 lol

• Martha says:

  8 Jan8 January 12:27

  OT. Virgin CC.
  If I cancel will I still get the flying club points due? Would like to cancel before fee for year 2 hits.

  • Louise says:

    8 Jan8 January 12:32

    Just dont spend on it past your anniversary and they will cancel the card and fee

    • Alex W says:

      8 Jan8 January 14:02

      No they won’t. I tried to cancel after paying the 2nd annual fee and they refused, even though I hadn’t spent on the card after the anniversary. Forced to keep the card for another year and finding as many ways as possible to rinse the MS.

      • Louise says:

        8 Jan8 January 16:13

        When was this.
        I didn’t, plus they had the audacity to add the 2nd year fee a month early. I pulled them up on this and they sorted it.
        Nearly sure someone else had this issue too and got sorted

        • Alex W says:

          8 Jan8 January 20:52

          Couple of months ago. My fee was not charged early, I just forgot to cancel. They refused refund the fee.

  • jimA says:

    8 Jan8 January 14:42

    I asked Virgin Money when the fee for the second year was due planning to zero the account a week before then they took the next years fee 2 weeks early !

    fortunately I had the email evidence -eEventually got it refunded and cancelled the card – Their CS is shocking

  • Steve-B says:

    8 Jan8 January 16:40

    My wife cancelled her card mid December and that months points did post on the 23rd Dec as usual. Just a data point though!

• Pez says:

  8 Jan8 January 12:30

  Are you going to write another “ways to pay your tax bill and still get rewards” article? Many of us have large payments due on the 31st of Jan

  • ben says:

    8 Jan8 January 12:57

    Curve……

    • John says:

      8 Jan8 January 13:42

      …. is going to charge for HMRC payments from the 24th.

      • Rob says:

        8 Jan8 January 13:59

        … unless you get Metal.

      • ben says:

        8 Jan8 January 16:06

        so pay before… or suck it up and get metal or pay the fees!

  • Rob says:

    8 Jan8 January 14:05

    Probably. Currently testing a new method out first!

  • Lady London says:

    8 Jan8 January 14:27

    Personally with it disappearing I’d pay earlier on account. Interest rates are so low the benefits have got to be greater if anyone’s got the free cashflow earlier.

    I’d say it’s paused because T. are negotiating a selloff – or more likely hoping to complete a sale imminently – of the credit card portfolio.

• Michael says:

  8 Jan8 January 12:43

  O/T: Curve (blue) limit increases, is it as easy as contacting them to ask for an increase or is an increase automatic the more (and varied ways) you use the card? £10,000 p/a isn’t touching the sides.

  • TGLoyalty says:

    8 Jan8 January 13:33

    Lots of varied spend usually gets it to £50k automatically, if you need it before that and you have lots of proper spend on the card not just brighton and atm transactions then I would contact them

    after £50k I think contacting them to get it increased further is the only option.

    • Michael says:

      8 Jan8 January 14:12

      Cheers TGL, unfortunately almost all my spending goes to the Seagulls and cash machines. I’ll drop them an email and see what they say.

      • Anna says:

        8 Jan8 January 14:19

        Can you overpay your utilities (then have it refunded to your current account if you need to)? I found this a good way to build my Curve profile and got the £50k increase without even realising!

        • stevenhp1987 says:

          8 Jan8 January 16:38

          If you overpay via card, it should get refunded to the same card, not to your current account!

        • Anna says:

          8 Jan8 January 17:07

          Not with OVO, it goes to the account your direct debit comes out of.

        • Shoestring says:

          8 Jan8 January 17:18

          same with others, they refund to DD current a/c

          council tax overpaid – they sent me a cheque

      • Gringo says:

        8 Jan8 January 16:49

        I’m Crv blue and hit my £50k limit on Monday. I raised a query in the app to increase the limit and within 15 minutes had a confirmation up to £100k. 98% of my spend is to the Seagulls (great name btw:)

        • Anna says:

          8 Jan8 January 17:10

          I moved to Revolut as I was up to the £50k limit and didn’t want the seagulls pooping on me, I’ve hardly had to use Curve since!

        • Polly says:

          8 Jan8 January 18:25

          Anna,
          Love the description!

  • Michael says:

    8 Jan8 January 20:44

    Cheers for the advice folks, I’ll keep using it and hopefully get a bump up to £50,00 soon otherwise Revolut might start doing most of the heavy lifting.

    • Benilyn says:

      8 Jan8 January 22:49

      it is completely random, few of my accounts at £100k, some they won’t move above £50k.

• ben says:

  8 Jan8 January 12:57

  o/t – how does revolut treat the lloyds avios mastercard? Does it go through as a purchase?

  • pablo says:

    8 Jan8 January 13:15

    It used to go through as a purchase but some people reported over Christmas that Virgin Money charged them a cash advance fee because Revolut changed the merchant category code from a purchase like to a cash like transaction. If that’s the case then Lloyds would also charge you fees.

    • MattB says:

      8 Jan8 January 14:39

      Thought it was one person who made a comment and never replied again? No issues with this on both our cards.

      • Colin MacK says:

        8 Jan8 January 15:20

        Was me, but then off to Africa for a month so not chased it up.

        My Virgin and Lloyd’s suffered cash fees but wife’s didn’t. So it came from Revolut.

        Haven’t hassled Revolut yet since I have a few thousand on account from a failed safari payment and want to empty account before reading hassle.

        • Lady London says:

          8 Jan8 January 18:22

          And thinking the manual intervention on that failure was what brought attention and landed you the recoding?

  • Ash says:

    8 Jan8 January 13:22

    Please keep us informed. Anywhere else is good for curve payments? How starling bank can be used please? Can we do Google pay?

    • The Urbanite says:

      8 Jan8 January 16:36

      Genuinely haven’t found a way to MS Starling!

      • Ash says:

        8 Jan8 January 18:42

        curve only useful paying hmrc or Amex these days?

        • The Urbanite says:

          8 Jan8 January 19:22

          And ATM withdrawals

        • Neil says:

          8 Jan8 January 21:30

          Any reason not to use curve for card purchases overseas? Just curious, as I have curve and revolut but tend to load revolut primarily for cash withdrawals overseas and use curve for the card purchases. Anything else worth using or much the same? (I link the curve to my IHG premium card and load revolut from the same).

        • TGLoyalty says:

          9 Jan9 January 00:36

          I use my curve abroad except at weekends when I’ll try and use my preloaded Revolut balance.

• John says:

  8 Jan8 January 13:45

  TL;DR £5.99 monthly fee to continue earning the cb and forex-free use, also the interest rate becomes 0% i.e. you can pay the min payment until your credit limit is reached (provided you have lots of unused credit limit elsewhere so as to not up your utilisation ratio) and a 1.5% savings account (barely higher than other contenders)

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