Free Avios with 3V Virtual Visa – our list of places where you can use the card

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• Swiss says:

  8 May8 May 18:55

  When are they going to stop us doing this? Done 50 cards now. Anyone had any problems going over their £1625 limit?

  • Alan says:

    8 May8 May 18:59

    LOL I think the rate limiting factor is the availability of cards – probably very few left in the UK at this rate if you’ve done 50, Swiss 😉 I only bought 3 (that’s all there were in my local store) and it took them AGES to try and get them to scan properly, so I dread to think how long it must have taken at your checkout!! 😛

• Iain Beale says:

  8 May8 May 19:48

  Done 56 cards so far and gf has done 14. Nobody else seems to be doing this in my area. Not gone out my way for my cards but checked in if I was passing a Tesco. Worst haul from a store was 14. Glad I’m near the yearly limit I’m not sure I can stand putting through any more of these damn things. Was fun at the start. Then I just thought about the miles. Now I hate them.

  • Adey says:

    8 May8 May 19:59

    Still in stock in my part of Kent.

    Had problems trying to buy 12 at my local Metro. The cashier and supervisor thought there was some sort of scam going on and they called the manager to check if there was a limit on the number of cards one can purchase (apparently not). I was also asked why I wanted so many… This caught me off guard (I should have explained they were too low denomination for the £ amount I wanted), I mumbled “Personal reasons”, to which the supervisor asked “Are you going on holiday?”, “yeah…..” I replied and that was that!

    Going back for more tomorrow.
    Adey

    • jonny says:

      9 May9 May 08:26

      well, they are “gift” cards, why not just say they are…er…gifts! 😉

• DANIEL says:

  8 May8 May 20:19

  HL seems not to be liking them, despite useing them ok yesterday!

  ‘Please enter a valid card number.’

  • Swiss says:

    9 May9 May 06:42

    Yeah HL now rejecting for me too. I guess they’ve blocked the numbers. Will be interesting to see if other cards also stopped now.

    10p off coupons printing fine. And I have had some funny looks at check-outs…. and been made to pay in cash twice.

    • Fidelityutensils says:

      9 May9 May 06:55

      Sorry Swiss, I’m having acronym issues, what’s HL?

      • jonny says:

        9 May9 May 07:57

        from the list above, looks like, Hargreaves Landsown, still non the wiser though….

        • Fidelityutensils says:

          9 May9 May 08:10

          Ah, of course. They are a Financial Service company!

        • Joule says:

          9 May9 May 10:40

          Yes, HL not working for me either – looks like the sit doesn’t even try to authenticate the card, the form just doesn’t like Visa number beginning with 4998 anymore. I put over 25 cards through on HL over the weekend (perhaps this sounded the alarm -sorry!). Too bad as I thought it would be a brilliant way to meet my minimum spends by just topping up my ISA, regardless of the current CC deal.

• sandgrounder says:

  8 May8 May 21:05

  I bought 12 today from the next Tesco over (my local store is now sold out :-)) Interestingly, contrary to the terms of the 10p off a litre of fuel deal, the transaction produced a voucher for me. A nice extra benefit!

  • Alan says:

    8 May8 May 21:15

    Yep, I found that too (see other thread) – they qualify both as spend to meet targets for money off coupons and for getting petrol coupons – win-win!

    • Roy says:

      9 May9 May 21:40

      When you’ve got the 10p off voucher have you bought anything else at the same time? I bought 4 cards a few days ago and didn’t get one. Added a pack of mints earlier today on latest purchase and did.

      So, who’s going to split 12 cards over 3 transactions at the till with a packet of mints against each to really annoy/confuse/p’off the sales assistant?

      • Alan says:

        9 May9 May 22:33

        Ah, interesting – yes I had a few other items I bought too. All well under the threshold – my eligible Clubcard spend was only about £35 – it was the giftcards that took me over the £60 mark.

        • Roy says:

          9 May9 May 23:31

          It seems the rule is “Have *any* groceries been bought” rather than “have £60 worth of groceries been bought”.

          So, for each £100 of vouchers + say, 50p token purchase…..
          300 bonus CC points
          £100 towards credit card target
          normal bonus for whatever credit card used for purchase.
          PLUS 10p off per litre of fuel

          I’m surprised the till assistants are still asking why you’re purchasing so many cards!!

      • Steve says:

        11 May11 May 04:12

        Just to add my bit – I bought 6 of the £25 cards tonight costing £150 and nothing else, and I got the 10p per litre off, which was handy cos I was actually only going there for fuel but thought I’d pop in on the off chance :).

        So far I’ve bought 30 – a batch of 6, batch of 16 & batch of 8. Only question asked was “do you want them all”, to which I said yes, and that was it.

• luckyjim says:

  8 May8 May 23:20

  Couldn’t you just use these to make a PayPal ‘purchase’ from yourself? As a PayPal vendor you would incur a 3.5% charge but that is less than the ‘merging’ charge. Then you just download the balance and pay off the original credit card.

  • sandgrounder says:

    9 May9 May 07:07

    Be very careful with Paypal. They are excellent at spotting manufactured spend, and the net is full of stories of suspended accounts and frozen balances.

    • Will says:

      9 May9 May 08:59

      Why would they mind as long as they get their commission?
      To fast forward I did actually start registering these on my pp account and there is a limit of 8 cards (credit/debit) per account. PayPal did phone me immediately once I hit the 8 card limit for fraud prevention.
      They also take a £1 charge from the card to verify its details which takes about 1 week to re appear on the card.

      • Rob says:

        9 May9 May 09:18

        Because Paypal will lose their license if they are not seen to be taking all steps to stop money laundering or similar criminal activity. And the way you spot that is from ‘suspicious’ activity.

        • Will says:

          9 May9 May 12:11

          Good point, I guess the motto as ever is don’t overdo things. I do often fund my business temporarily using my BA Amex through PayPal if I need to trigger a companion soon, but its small numbers relative to my monthly PayPal turnover so perhaps I’m just under the radar. Will certainly be careful in the future.

  • Andy says:

    9 May9 May 11:11

    You need a physical card to use this. I have an izettle account and also £60 worth of comp fees, so would be interested in how I could get my 3V visa money onto a card to then pay myself

    • Benge says:

      9 May9 May 12:21

      You can take Visa payments by sending a SMS to another phone and entering the card details there. I have tested it and it worked for me.

      • Andy says:

        9 May9 May 16:51

        I have the chip and pin reader which doesn’t work that way, it accepts Visa cards and you physically have to have it and enter your pin on the reader,but,,,, my wife has the old type reader that uses the text to pay with Visa, and she has £50 of free comp fees and it just worked, woohoo. I am off to load up on more of the 3V cards tomorrow morning. Thanks

• swiss-in-cumbria says:

  9 May9 May 14:26

  Also works fine for Co-operative Energy, in case someone uses them.

• swiss-in-cumbria says:

  9 May9 May 15:07

  Not working:
  T-Mobile

• Steve says:

  9 May9 May 17:06

  If anyone is likely to use them, Chili Sauce, which is a stag/hen do company, also take the 3V cards

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