John Lewis suspends applications for its Partnership credit card

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• SteveJ says:

  10 May10 May 06:55

  “If you have one of these cards, you should be seriously considering dropping it for the free Barclaycard Avios card”

  Except isn’t the anecdotal evidence that it is exactly “the John Lewis / Waitrose customer base to be good credit risks” types who are getting rejected from the Barclaycard for being too good a credit risk, I.e. unlikely to earn Barclaycard enough money?

  • Rob says:

    10 May10 May 08:34

    No. Our average reader income is £70k and our Barclays acceptance rate was very high. Not as high as the 90% we get with Amex but not far off. This includes those who used the acceptance checker route.

    The average Waitrose shopper is well below this in terms of income. They wouldn’t have a business otherwise.

    I did receive an email overnight from someone approaching £500k income who couldn’t understand why he was rejected for a card where Barclays loses money on every £1 spent …..

    • Andrew says:

      10 May10 May 08:49

      Surely Barclays still make money from the merchant fees and someone earning £500k will likely spend more money on the card than someone earning £50k.

      • Rob says:

        10 May10 May 08:57

        Let’s see. 0.3% fee, 0.8% spent on Avios. Nope, not working.

        Spend £10k per month and Barcs will lose £50 per month on you, forever. There are other fees but there are also other costs of course, including the float to fund the £10k.

        If you could make money on a card this generous, why is it 3x more generous than any other free Visa or MC on the market? (Excluding Virgin’s, which is a full joint venture so maths is different.)

        • yorkieflyer says:

          10 May10 May 12:10

          Which begs the question as to how sustainable this offer is?

        • Rob says:

          10 May10 May 12:12

          Barclays needs a big influx of 30+ well-heeled customers – its existing client base is 50+ I would guess. They are willing to spend heavily to get these people.

• Ken says:

  10 May10 May 08:04

  Why drop it if you spend a decent chunk at Waitrose & John Lewis ?

  why not just get another card ?

  • Rob says:

    10 May10 May 08:28

    I doubt many HfP readers would use it in JL because they’d have a BAPP or Barc Plus paying a more valuable 1.5 Avios per £1 plus working towards a voucher.

    I’ve never got one and we probably spend £7,500 per year across Waitrose and John Lewis. I can direct that spend more profitably elsewhere.

    Non Amex cards tend to be ‘fill the gaps’ products for our readers.

• Iain says:

  10 May10 May 08:49

  The Elizebeth line report is a bit London Centric! What’s happening for those of us in the west with the spur off the mainline to LHR, avoiding a back trip from Paddington?

  • ChrisC says:

    10 May10 May 09:26

    The western spur is not going to happen for a long, long time – if it ever does.

  • Mike says:

    10 May10 May 10:16

    Very London centric it doesn’t come anywhere near Doncaster ! I will use the comments section to keep readers up to date with any changes to the X78 Doncaster to Rotherham service as there are changes a foot

    • Rob says:

      10 May10 May 10:41

      I watched ‘Tan France – Beauty & The Bleach’ on iPlayer last night, which is primarily about racism in Doncaster. Worth a watch to hear about 5 year old kids being beaten up in the street for their skin colour.

  • yorkieflyer says:

    10 May10 May 12:11

    And those of us oop north coming into kings cross may as well continue to enjoy the Piccadilly line

  • Londonsteve says:

    10 May10 May 15:06

    Take the Elizabeth Line to Hayes and Harlington and change platforms to take a westbound train towards Maidenhead? Even if there was a western spur it might be impossible from a timetabling perspective to run Heathrow trains towards Maidenhead. Not only that but only a finite number of trains can run to Heathrow per hour, most passengers are wishing to get to central London and the greatest demand for the rolling stock will be in the central core. If your question pertains to when longer distance services will run to Heathrow, the answer is never. There is finite platform capacity at Heathrow, no option to run through trains and in any case, it is owned by HAL who also run the HEX and they will never agree to anything that erodes their revenue from HEX. It is, quite frankly, a near miracle that Elizabeth Line trains will run direct to T5 as initially HAL wanted to preserve the HEX monopoly and keep them running to Central and T4, like the old Heathrow Connect service. We can conclude that some horsetrading took place behind close doors whereby politicians threatened HAL with greater economic downside if they refused to allow TFL services to run to all terminals. Let us not forget that TFL is in dire financial straits and the premium tickets for Elizabeth Line services to Heathrow will provide a much needed boost for their treasury. It never ceases to amaze me the apparent number of people that need to get to Paddington in double-quick time, such that £25 is considered a fair price of a public transport ticket. Two people together and an Uber will be cheaper and it takes you direct to your destination. Surely HEX will be unviable once Elizabeth Line trains start running through the central core? There is a very finite number of people for whom time is in desperately short supply and their destination is in the vicinity of Paddington, such that £25 is a fair price for a faster train.

    • ChrisC says:

      10 May10 May 16:20

      It’s not that a lot of peoples time is so short the Hex is a life saver but that a lot of visitors are conditioned that they have to use the Hex by their travel agents or what they see in travel articles in the press.

      Whenever there is a “how to I get to central London” thread on flyer talk the automatic answer from many is the Hex whereas for lots of people the Piccadilly line and then changing is not only ultimately faster but also cheaper because they are actually going to proper central London or further afield.

      I once chatted to an American couple on a flight and actively had to discourage them from taking the Hex because it was so far from where they needed to be that it would add to their costs and journey time.

      • Londonsteve says:

        11 May11 May 11:02

        Agree entirely and I’ve also had this conversation with people to try to dissuade them from taking the HEX. One of the most recent was a former colleague travelling to London on business, seeking to get to Canary Wharf. She was absolutely determined to take the HEX, even though I explained that it deposits you nowhere near Canary Wharf and she will have to change trains twice in an unfamiliar city, as opposed to once if she took the Piccadilly Line. The fact that I was providing her with a Londoner’s insight seemed to have no bearing. I think it was some combination of FOMO as she thought the HEX would be something really amazing to try as well as a matter of prestige. Her job might be diminished in the eyes of family and friends if she had to tell them that she took the Underground as opposed to some dedicated train with a reassuringly expensive price.

      • Londonsteve says:

        11 May11 May 11:19

        As an aside I have to wonder how the economics for TFL stack up with this expensive-to-run expansion in public transport services to Heathrow. There are a finite number of employees and airline passengers seeking to use public transport into London, effectively capped by the handling capacity of Heathrow which cannot increase without a 3rd runway, that is a near certainty it will never get built. The EL will inevitably cannibalise many Piccadilly Line customers but the frequency of tube services are unlikely to be reduced, not least because a vast tract of London is served by the Heathrow branch and those trains have to terminate somewhere. TFL will have to fund expensive track access charges payable to HAL for the use of the access tunnel. Overall revenue will increase due to the premium single fares chargeable for the EL but overall, I struggle to imagine it will increase by enough to cover their additional running costs. HAL will be directly contributing to the increase in TFL’s deficit that will have to be made up by the taxpayer, an indirect public subsidy to HAL who maintain amongst the highest handling charge and passenger services charges of any airport in the world and feel entitled to claw back pandemic-induced losses by raising prices even higher. What’s wrong with public ownership for airports? Nearly all the airports in the UK are in a state of meltdown and charge for everything short of the air you breathe in the terminal. Visiting publicly owned airports overseas is nearly always a relaxing relief compared to transiting the UK’s appalling specimens, all of which are on a near vertical downward trajectory, so much so that P&O to Calais is an increasingly tempting alternative when travelling to Europe.

• Peter says:

  10 May10 May 08:50

  “At some point in 2023, once the necessary signalling works are complete, trains will run directly from Heathrow into Central London.”
  It’s actually gonna be in autumn this year from Central London/Abbey Wood – only a few months away! In 2023 direct from Shenfield/Stratford.

  • John says:

    10 May10 May 09:15

    I’ll believe it when I see it. Crossrail was initially meant to open when? 2016?

• Phil W says:

  10 May10 May 08:52

  My assumption would be that JL/Waitrose will run the book down with HSBC. The cost, complexity and risk involved in a data migration from one core processing platform to another is disproportionately high versus any benefit of actually undertaking the task.

• Nick says:

  10 May10 May 08:54

  The current Crossrail plan is actually to run through from Heathrow to Abbey Wood by the end of 2022. The final join – linking the Shenfield branch with the core – is the bit that won’t be opened until 2023.

• Froggitt says:

  10 May10 May 09:07

  Elizabeth line not Elizabeth Line

  • G says:

    10 May10 May 10:05

    Grammar Russian detected.

  • lostantipod says:

    10 May10 May 10:57

    The real issue is the signage says “Elizabeth Line” . Unlike “Victoria”, “Bakerloo”, “District”. A basic, basic error by TFL.

    • Nick says:

      10 May10 May 19:17

      That doesn’t count because it’s all-caps!

• Richard T says:

  10 May10 May 09:08

  I encountered 3 cancelled Heathrow Express trains in a row early morning last week, so ended up having to take the TFL (Elizabeth Line) train to LHR from Paddington instead. On the plus side the seats are if anything more comfortable than HEX, and it’s £10.30 rather than £25. On the downside, it takes 38 minutes rather than 21 minutes to T5, runs only once every 30 rather than 15 minutes, and has no onboard lavatories.

  • flyforfun says:

    10 May10 May 10:25

    Is there an extra fee for using TFL to Heathrow? Will that be the case when it formally becomes the Elizabeth Line? And will there only be 2 trains an hour?

    If you can book 90 days in advance, you can get HEX tickets for £5. If there is a fare difference and I can plan ahead, I may stick to the HEX. Of course, if I miss the prebooking deadlines and the HEX price rises I’ll take the EL.

    • Rhys says:

      10 May10 May 10:32

      When Elizabeth line fully opens there will be 6 trains per hour to Heathrow, which is obviously more than HEX. Probably won’t be until the schedules are fully finalised next year though.

      • Londonsteve says:

        10 May10 May 16:10

        Of those only 2 an hour will go to T5. The remaining 4 per hour will have to go to Terminal 4 to terminate and reverse direction. Running a restricted service to T5 in order to preserve HEX revenues is a concession that HAL won from TFL. The upside is that T4 will be served with a train every 15 minutes. The station platforms and departure concourse are a short walk from one another, the terminal building itself is compact and well designed while T4 is blessed with an abundance of nearby airport hotels that avoid the need to take the Heathrow Hoppa or a local bus between hotel and terminal. The overall package is so compelling it could influence choice of airline for some people. I preferred to fly to Sofia on Bulgaria Air out of T4 for this reason, even before BA went into its current state of meltdown. Bulgaria Air also provide a meaningful sandwich and complimentary alcoholic and soft drinks on board, making the experience that much more pleasant.

    • ChrisC says:

      10 May10 May 11:39

      The TFL fare will same as a zone 1-6 travel card so about £13 – 14

      • Lumma says:

        10 May10 May 14:22

        The Elizabeth Line/TFL Rail costs more than taking the Picadilly Line as there’s an extra charge for using the tracks into Heathrow that the airport charges.

        However, if you reach the daily cap for Zone 1-6 you’re not charged any extra.

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