Virgin Atlantic launches Delhi flights from Manchester Airport

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• Andrew says:

  26 Feb26 February 13:09

  Bits £100 free when opening a Virgin Current and savings account.

  “£100 top up, just for you
  You’re already part of the Virgin family. However, if you open a new Virgin Money Current Account, log in to our brand new app and add at least £1,000 to the linked Savings Account by 31 March 2020, we’ll add £100 to your linked Savings Account to say thanks.”

  • Keith says:

    26 Feb26 February 13:12

    Targeted in an email or on a website?

• Top Boy says:

  26 Feb26 February 13:34

  OT – Just been denied £1700 worth of gift vouchers at Morrisons. I’ll wear a suit and won’t call the Store manage “Blud” next time, hopefully the won’t report me for running a County Lines operation.

  • Anna says:

    26 Feb26 February 14:06

    Denied by whom/what? Though maybe they thought you were a victim being scammed? I had a right old do at the weekend trying to put all of 2 x £50 B & Q vouchers through the self serve. First one was fine but second one needed multiple overrides by a human. Will just queue at the checkout next time.

    • Anna says:

      26 Feb26 February 14:09

      Though it’s very unlikely that any HFP regular would get me involved with county lines as I doubt very much they take Amex.

    • Andy says:

      26 Feb26 February 14:10

      It’s better doing them at a normal till because the gift cards are a bit light to register on the scales sometimes.

      • EwanG says:

        26 Feb26 February 14:20

        Take a pair of gloves and/or hat with you, use one with each card when you place it in the bagging area and you’ll be fine!

        • Doug M says:

          26 Feb26 February 15:06

          Not true for me, the weight is the first issue, but in two different London stores the second issue is the refusal to sell more than 2 gift vouchers. To be clear this is an attempted mix of John Lewis and Amazon ones, not Morrisons own.

        • mark2 says:

          26 Feb26 February 16:46

          an assistant suggested using one of the chocolate bars on the side of till. Additional bar required for each card.

      • Secret Squirrel says:

        26 Feb26 February 17:03

        1 x GC rule in a lot of stores now, self serve & manned till.

    • Secret Squirrel says:

      26 Feb26 February 15:18

      Yep, same in my local store. One GC per transaction, even the same at a manned tillpoint with manager override required. Would of been a ball if I wanted quantities like Shoestring! 😂

  • Allycat says:

    26 Feb26 February 15:10

    I did 5 x £50 of Amazon and 5 x £50 of John Lewis yesterday and it stopped at £300 limit saying “restricted product”. After that it would only let the checkout operator do one £50 card at a time, even after calling a supervisor and trying to override. I was mega-popular with the customers behind me in the queue by the time it was all done 🙁

    • Freddy says:

      26 Feb26 February 15:20

      I did £600 Amazon on 1 day and £600 John Lewis on another. No issues on the manned till for me

      • BJ says:

        26 Feb26 February 15:58

        I’ve done 8x£250 Morrisons plastic since the current stack opportunity started. Hope I don’t end up regretting it.

        • Andy says:

          26 Feb26 February 16:38

          Just to use on petrol?

        • Shoestring says:

          26 Feb26 February 16:47

          I tested the PFS for the first time today on the plastic giftcard – first time for them as well – but they just took an extra couple of minutes working it out and all went OK

        • BJ says:

          26 Feb26 February 17:09

          Yes, hopefully for petrol. As several readers have reported it works fine, my concern is that they may stop accepting then. I can always use tgem on groceries if they do so it souldn’t be a total disaster.

        • Shoestring says:

          26 Feb26 February 17:13

          you could always use them to buy some more lottery tickets, you lucky fleabit 🙂

          & indeed – buy some stamps before they go up by a scandalously high % amount in a few days

        • BJ says:

          26 Feb26 February 17:18

          @Shoestring, where were you getting your 0.5% More rebate you referred to earlier? At a manned till in my local store they would not accept my More card for gift vouchers. Is that wrong? I still have all the receipts so I presumably could go back to get More points added. I rarely use Morrisons so I’m not fully up to speed on the details.

        • Shoestring says:

          26 Feb26 February 17:26

          the till person was wrong, you missed out on 10,000 More points

        • BJ says:

          26 Feb26 February 17:40

          Thanks, I’ll see if I can get them credited. It wasn’t all, just those where belt till was too busy.

        • Shoestring says:

          26 Feb26 February 17:43

          actually my cashier said no point scanning the More card as well, but she was kind enough to humour me and very happy for me that it gave me the points

          I had a 2000 points for £20 spend as well but that got rejected

        • Lev441 says:

          26 Feb26 February 18:06

          @shoestring – you never used to get points buying the Morrison’s paper vouchers so that’s a nice surprise!

        • BJ says:

          26 Feb26 February 18:39

          Called the store, they said points are not awarded on either Morrisons paper vouchers or new plastic giftcards.as we get the points on spending them. Your experience suggests the tills do not know this so best option would seem to be self checkout.

        • Shoestring says:

          26 Feb26 February 18:54

          BJ you can’t expect to get the correct answer just by asking someone in mgt or CS. When I got paper vouchers for the first time, I was able to ask the head honcho himself, the Store Manager, if they were good for the PFS (the CS kiosk lady buzzed him over). He first said no, then said he didn’t know, then said maybe, rang up somebody he knew and said probably not. I then rang M’s CS and they were categorical that they worked fine in the PFS, which as we know is the case and there’s even a M’s giftcard button on the PFS till settings. And I have a receipt sitting here showing 10,000 More points for the £2K M’s giftcards. You always could get points on other giftcards – at one time extremely generous points but they cut that back. But yes, possibly a mistake if the M’s giftcards have been incorrectly lumped together with ‘other store’ giftcards. Or maybe the IT bods haven’t got a fix yet since paper vouchers went over to plastic.

        • aDifferentSimon says:

          26 Feb26 February 19:07

          Oodles of 100 Amazon and 50 John Lewis in wimbledon. So annoyed I’ve only just started this on the last day of the virgin offer!

        • BJ says:

          26 Feb26 February 19:25

          Ok, I’ll take my receipts to the kiosk on Sunday and try my luck.

        • Boi says:

          26 Feb26 February 19:26

          Definitely got more points for my gift card purchases yesterday. Annoyingly I forgot during my purchase last week which was higher. I can’t find the receipt!

        • xcalx says:

          27 Feb27 February 10:54

          Just add a few bits and bobs with the cards, this stops them saying no point using the m&m card. I have used the email to activate 6000 for £60 with success I now have a till spit for 6000/£60 and a few 2000 / £20 paper vouchers through snail mail. to try. Used card for fuel twice now. I keep the first receipt around the card in case of a future refusals

    • Heathrow Flyer says:

      28 Feb28 February 00:11

      I managed 17 JL £50 gift cards yesterday.

      1 at a time at a manned till.

      Needless to say, I was popular with other customers.

• Russ 😷 says:

  26 Feb26 February 14:05

  Good news from Shangri-La. Hopefully the other chains will follow….

• Anon says:

  26 Feb26 February 15:19

  OT – any multi currency current accounts similar to Citigold with less onerous wealth criteria? I’m trying to deposit a USD cheque and don’t want to be hit too hard by fees.

  • Bs says:

    26 Feb26 February 15:54

    Barclays – just need a current account for USD savings account that allows cheque deposit
    HSBC – need Premier status to get HSBC expat for USD current account with cheque deposit.

    • Anon says:

      26 Feb26 February 16:05

      Thanks! I have a Premier account with HSBC so that should work out well.

      • Benilyn says:

        26 Feb26 February 16:15

        Note HSBC has rubbish FX rates if you transfer it out to your GBP account. Would be better to do HSBC USD to Revolut USD and then convert to GBP, save c5%

        • Lady London says:

          26 Feb26 February 17:43

          I was going to suggest the same. Depending on how much it’s for and where you are I believe there are high street shops perhaps Kanoo? that might agree to take the cheque at a rate you agree with them and negotiate the cheque for you. Wondering if anyone like Fairfax would do it.

          A pity Amex closed their shops in London as taking and negotiating a cheque in any major currency for you if you handed it over the counter in an Amex shop used to be an unpublished benefit of having an Amex. Rates were ok too.

        • Waddle says:

          26 Feb26 February 18:00

          Note Revolut cannot receive domestic transfers via ACH from the US (it can however send via ACH). You will need to top up Revolut using your debit card but Revolut will charge a fee of around $1.6% for cards based outside the EEA. You can use Curve to get around this. Add your US debit card to Curve, set currency to USD, top up Revolut in USD from your HSBC US debit card via Curve. Should be fee-free.

        • Roy says:

          26 Feb26 February 21:24

          The Transferwise borderless account can accept ACH transfers, I believe.

• Jason says:

  26 Feb26 February 18:46

  Has anyone else noticed that BA First has stopped serving Laurent-Perrier Grand Siecle on boarding??? I flew BA First last night from Chicago and questioned it as I could tell it wasn’t it. Cabin crew told me it was changed a few weeks ago and they no longer serve it on boarding and only serve the cheaper Jacquart.unti they are up in the air! I Travelled outbound in First a week before and pretty sure I was served it on the ground then!
  Flight was really quiet so got to try out for a few minutes the new CW seat ….thought it was great……..when I went back into First it Did make me think is this First seat really worth the difference in price….BA really need to stop cutting in First class…All they are going to do is make people like me think twice before spending a lot more on very little extra / better!

  • meta says:

    26 Feb26 February 20:05

    They might have used too much on the outbound, so were saving. The crew perhaps just made it up, so you wouldn’t complain.

  • Jonathan says:

    26 Feb26 February 23:09

    They’ve been doing that for years! They have to pay duty on drinks served on the ground in most countries. In order to comply with these rules they have a separate trolley loaded with pre departure beverages. It’s only stocked with the bare minimum so everyone in F & J gets the same champagne till in the air. The LPGS is kept in the sealed (till airborne) drinks trolleys.

  • Lady London says:

    27 Feb27 February 11:38

    Why ruin your tastebuds with an inferior Champagne on boarding ?

    I always check the label and if it’s not quality I don’t drink it.

• Dominic Barrington says:

  26 Feb26 February 20:25

  OT – what does one do with 4500 Radisson points? I don’t ‘do’ Radisson, but have an instinctive desire not to let these expire. Should I just transfer them to Avios, even though the rate is awful? I can’t see anything else to do…

  • Rob says:

    26 Feb26 February 20:51

    Do they still let you redeem for prepaid Mastercards?

• Odin says:

  26 Feb26 February 20:48

  Any update from shoestring on the Pussycat virus? I enjoy his insight

  • Shoestring says:

    26 Feb26 February 21:02

    I’ve always been more concerned about its impact on wealth creation than on the human side (deaths & illnesses). Both aspects are playing out pretty much as expected. Total over-reaction to the numbers affected by & risks of dying from coronavirus. Open any newspaper to see many examples of wild, disproportionate responses.

    Yet these actions & general panic have predictable consequences – coronavirus should not in itself be a black swan event because the numbers dying from it until it goes away will be quite small & then it’s mostly older people with underlying conditions or just old & going to die of something sooner or later anyway. But it is turning into a black swan event that wasn’t but is – because yes, economies & businesses will take a big knock backwards and yes, they were overheating anyway so pussycat virus came along at a bad moment with investors just needing a reason let markets cool down.

    • Doug M says:

      26 Feb26 February 21:17

      ” going to die of something sooner or later anyway.” That’s all of us 🙂

    • Shoestring says:

      26 Feb26 February 21:59

      put it this way: there will be a time in the next 6 months which will be the perfect time to re-invest in the markets

      just when that perfect time occurs is slightly difficult to calculate

      • BJ says:

        26 Feb26 February 22:17

        Not at all, it’ll be precisely one day before you recommend we jump back in 😀
        …but I think that’ll be an acceptable margin of error.

      • Roy says:

        27 Feb27 February 00:33

        An economic recovery with six months is hugely optimistic.

        If we’re very lucky, six months will be about the time the first vaccines become available. Until then, socially and economically disruptive measures like mass quarantines and travel restrictions will be the only available means to slow the spread of the disease in affected areas and prevent health systems from becoming overwhelmed.

        • Shoestring says:

          27 Feb27 February 06:47

          @Roy- I wasn’t talking about an economic recovery but a recovery in markets, which look ahead

• The Original Nick says:

  26 Feb26 February 21:02

  O:T, Roberto maybe interested in this or maybe someone else who’s got a planned holiday to Cuba. I have just got back last Saturday. I have 113 CUP and a 1 hour ETECSA wifi card that I won’t need now. If anyone is interested they can make me an offer. The wifi card I’m not asking for any Euro’s or GBP for. Please email at gaul.nick@gmail.com if you’re interested. And don’t worry, I’ve run this past Rob before I put this comment on.

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