The British Airways Prepaid Mastercard thread

[Paul B]

Carlos wrote:

Still waiting for a refund on my prepaid mastercard, such a disappointing product

What exactly are you waiting for a refund for, out of interest?

[Alex G]

Paul B wrote:

Paul B wrote:

For those that have been charged ‘hidden’ fees for paying off Amex etc, do you think these fee’s, which in my case have not appeared as transaction lines, will count towards the required £500 spend?

Anyone know the answer to this?

The answer is, they can’t charge you a fee unless the fee is contained in the T&Cs. Make a formal complaint. The compensation should be worth more than 3000 Avios.

But I wouldn’t have thought that paying off your Amex should count as qualifying spend.

[laughingplace]

tw33ty wrote:

You’re only ever going to earn 1300 avios a month with the monthly spend cap, but there are ways to ms that amount, but the cap and the fee after six months means it’s not really worth the hassle.

Where are the details of this cap? Thanks

[NigelthePensioner]

Marlinspike wrote:

Got mine the other day. Anyone else have an issue registering a debit card? Just keeps failing for me.

Are you trying to use a First Direct debit card? If so, they are blocked by First Direct and you have to ring First Direct and they will free up your debit card to allow it to be linked to the BA card. Ive just done this today after trying umpteen times to link it! I assume I will only have to do this on this one occasion!!

[Alex G]

laughingplace wrote:

tw33ty wrote:

You’re only ever going to earn 1300 avios a month with the monthly spend cap, but there are ways to ms that amount, but the cap and the fee after six months means it’s not really worth the hassle.

Where are the details of this cap? Thanks

The “Limits” Schedule at the end of the T&Cs.

https://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/executive-club/collecting-avios/shopping/mastercard

[laughingplace]

Alex G wrote:

←

Thanks

[Paul B]

Alex G wrote:

Paul B wrote:

Paul B wrote:

For those that have been charged ‘hidden’ fees for paying off Amex etc, do you think these fee’s, which in my case have not appeared as transaction lines, will count towards the required £500 spend?

Anyone know the answer to this?

The answer is, they can’t charge you a fee unless the fee is contained in the T&Cs. Make a formal complaint. The compensation should be worth more than 3000 Avios.

But I wouldn’t have thought that paying off your Amex should count as qualifying spend.

Interesting, are others complaining?

I can quite believe that payments to Amex etc are excluded from the £500 spend required for this promo, however what about ATM withdrawals? (which don’t incur a fee and earn Avios)

[Hashslingingslasher89]

Have had the card for about a month and really happy with it. Contrary to the information page on this website it is possible to stack points by using the BA online shopping portal- has anybody else found this to be true?

I also withdrew some cash from the card yesterday and was rewarded with avios! So technically it should be possible to top up £300, withdraw it all for free and get 150 avios for nothing every month? If so that’s brilliant and even justifies the eventual £2.99 a month charge.

[Londonsteve]

Are other people having trouble with getting one-time authentication codes to come through onto their phone? I only manage to get one about 20% of the time when trying to pay online which is incredibly annoying. Customer service cannot find anything wrong and my phone number is correctly registered, evidenced by the fact that I can get PIN reminders to come through (most of the time). I suspect the back-end IT is rather poor. CS informed me that OTA codes can only be delivered via sms, unlike other products which can be managed via the app or they can also arrive on e-mail.

[flyoff]

Londonsteve wrote:

Are other people having trouble with getting one-time authentication codes to come through onto their phone? I only manage to get one about 20% of the time when trying to pay online which is incredibly annoying. Customer service cannot find anything wrong and my phone number is correctly registered, evidenced by the fact that I can get PIN reminders to come through (most of the time). I suspect the back-end IT is rather poor. CS informed me that OTA codes can only be delivered via sms, unlike other products which can be managed via the app or they can also arrive on e-mail.

I can’t get the SMS verification to work at all on my new card. Did a chip and pin transaction today and still not working. I will call Cust Services tomorrow but I don’t feel confident it will be resolved due to the quality of BA IT.

[jonnyfly]

What a shoddy product.

Just wasted time as my account was missing about 10% (i.e. money out less than money in despite £0 balance). After having to manually copy each transaction from the app into Excel, and call CS, it turns out that two transactions from two weeks ago are simply missing in the app, but contribute to the app balance (and are on the internal systems). They were TfL transactions from about 2 weeks ago and are not pending.

Agent said this is not the first time this had happened and asked me to complain to:
complaints@prepaidfinancialservices.com as they do not have a route for feedback!
I have just emailed them.

In case this helps others, as First Direct would not play, my initial top-ups were on my HSBC CC. Interest charged (by HSBC) and no world points issued. After a 20 minute call to FD, they have now ‘unfrauded’ the top-up option. I won’t be using the card again and will close once the bonus points arrive.

[Toppcat]

How are people reaching CS to discuss the undisclosed fees etc. I have tried calling the phone line, but have given up after a 1h+ wait each time… Is there an email / Twitter account or anything else that people have had success with?

[Londonsteve]

I’ve twice got through to them via a chat window that opens on my phone from the BAEC app – BA Prepaid Mastercard – Card Settings – Retrieve PIN – Contact us via webchat.

[rahaney]

Hashslingingslasher89 wrote:

Have had the card for about a month and really happy with it. Contrary to the information page on this website it is possible to stack points by using the BA online shopping portal- has anybody else found this to be true?

I also withdrew some cash from the card yesterday and was rewarded with avios! So technically it should be possible to top up £300, withdraw it all for free and get 150 avios for nothing every month? If so that’s brilliant and even justifies the eventual £2.99 a month charge.

This sarcasm?

£300 spend for 150 avios with a monthly fee of £3…

If Avios are worth ~1p each you’d need to spend £600 a month just to break even. You are essentially buying avios…

You can stack it with BAEC sure but why would you when you can earn more and have section 75 protection via a whole host of other CCs reviewed on this website.

R

[pabenny]

flyoff wrote:

I can’t get the SMS verification to work at all on my new card. Did a chip and pin transaction today and still not working. I will call Cust Services tomorrow but I don’t feel confident it will be resolved due to the quality of BA IT.

I got through to CS fairly quickly. Apparently my mobile number wasn’t in the profile. Added by the CS agent and worked after that.

[_nate]

pabenny wrote:

flyoff wrote:

I can’t get the SMS verification to work at all on my new card. Did a chip and pin transaction today and still not working. I will call Cust Services tomorrow but I don’t feel confident it will be resolved due to the quality of BA IT.

I got through to CS fairly quickly. Apparently my mobile number wasn’t in the profile. Added by the CS agent and worked after that.

This happened to me. It worked fine for a week or two, then I once again stopped receiving the SMS messages and have failed to get through on the phone ever since.

[Londonsteve]

They only seem to come through when I’ve got a strong signal. The CS agent confirmed that they won’t be sent if your signal is not strong. I’ve never had a problem getting OTA messages to come through from any other financial services provider even with only 1 bar of reception but with this product it appears to be an issue. Not sure how they can tell how strong my reception is; perhaps if they don’t receive a delivery acknowledgement within a certain number of seconds they recall the message. I often only get one on the second or third attempt after repeatedly requesting a new code during the payment process, while sometimes it doesn’t come through at all. I’ve no idea why I need to go through this palaver each and every time I try to buy something on the internet whereas on my Barclays debit card it’s only every 6-8 transactions, say. Strikes me as an excessive level of security, especially for low value transactions when the contactless limit is so high these days.

[Londonsteve]

@rahaney, my feeling is that the £2.99 monthly fee will be dropped or reduced otherwise nobody will keep the card. As you point out, you’d need to spend £600 just to break even, assuming you’re getting at least 1p per Avios when redeeming, which isn’t the case via Nectar.

[andiron]

@londonsteve you’re assuming everyone remembers to cancel, especially when bonus arrival is so close to the date when they’ll start charging fee..

Anyway, any bonuses received in September?

[Ash]

so…..after 2 months (emailing in IDs) – card arrived. Woohoo! Come this far so might as well carry on….

whats the consensus – can I load it with £500 from my curve (underling cc is Virgin MC, I could use another) – and not be charged?

And can you use the pre-paid card at ATM without incurring charges (whether UK or overseas ATMs)

If I emailed their customer service I’d be waiting 3 months – hence asking the community here

[rahaney]

Ash wrote:

so…..after 2 months (emailing in IDs) – card arrived. Woohoo! Come this far so might as well carry on….

whats the consensus – can I load it with £500 from my curve (underling cc is Virgin MC, I could use another) – and not be charged?

And can you use the pre-paid card at ATM without incurring charges (whether UK or overseas ATMs)

If I emailed their customer service I’d be waiting 3 months – hence asking the community here

Nope, cash advance fee from all my cc’s backed via curve or no points given if no fee. Spent my 500 now just waiting for avios then closing…

[Steve]

Londonsteve wrote:

Not sure how they can tell how strong my reception is; perhaps if they don’t receive a delivery acknowledgement within a certain number of seconds they recall the message.

There’s an ability within the GSM spec to send SMS messages with an expiry period. I wonder if they set the expiry period very short, so if you are not in a strong signal area, whereas a normal SMS will stay in a queue for hours/days (within the network operator’s system) for redelivery at a later time, this message will expire and be deleted from the queue before it gets a chance to be redelivered?

If it’s actually an in-app notification, they could have coded their application as you’ve described (not sure if this card uses SMS or in app notifications).

[andiron]

Has anyone received bonus recently?

[Alex]

andiron wrote:

Has anyone received bonus recently?

Yes, received 3000 miles today, finally. A little annoyingly, like some others, had a 2% charge on some transactions which is not stated in their T&C and still waiting for a reply from their customer service having send a complaint to them many weeks ago.

[SteveJ]

Alex wrote:

andiron wrote:

Has anyone received bonus recently?

Yes, received 3000 miles today, finally. A little annoyingly, like some others, had a 2% charge on some transactions which is not stated in their T&C and still waiting for a reply from their customer service having send a complaint to them many weeks ago.

Do you recall/have a record of your application date per chance?