Bits: mystery Supercard charges, £120 LAN Madrid to Frankfurt business class deal

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• Concerto says:

  13 Jul13 July 07:16

  I am one of those few hfp readers who does need to fly Germany-Madrid from time to time and FRA is just an hour and a half train ride from here! I guess you might want to call it LATAM Airlines from now as that’s what they’ve rebranded themselves into, although I’m not sure if the planes have been repainted yet.

  Apparently you can continue to TFN (Tenerife) on this deal for €279 if you get the right dates. But there’s an overnight in MAD in both directions, which push the costs up, and onward flights are with Iberia Express.

• Andy S says:

  13 Jul13 July 07:23

  Cheeky baskets! I spent 11.50 Eur on 2nd July and was charged 9.51 Gbp “saving 63p”, since reading this article I checked my statement and see on the 10th I was charged 13p. Don’t think the euros changed much in that time.

  Glad I’ve not used the card any more yet – I won’t again. Time to write a scathing review on the google play store as well!

  • John says:

    13 Jul13 July 08:16

    Thanks for providing an example of the transaction amounts. Well, the euro did change significantly in that time though not for small amounts.

    2/7 interbank rate was 1.1913; €11.50 = £9.65
    10/7 interbank rate was 1.1722; €11.50 = £9.81
    (note both were non-working days so the interbank rate remained the same all day)

    I checked the Mastercard rates and the only days that make sense for your reported numbers are:

    30/6 Mastercard rate was 1.209502; €11.50 = £9.508
    1/7 Mastercard rate was 1.194125; €11.50 = £9.630, 12.2p difference rounded up to 13p?

    So it seems you still got “the rate on the day”. Sometimes with normal bank cards (including Amex) you can see the authorised amount converted to £ in your “pending transactions” yet it changes when it gets processed. From your single example this appears to be the case.

    However their handling of this is rather dodgy and so like you I doubt I will use the card again. I will be disputing any extra charges with the card provider.

    • AndyS says:

      13 Jul13 July 09:04

      Thanks for the insight, I don’t feel so bad now (and it is only 13p) but they should be more open about it, at the very least it should show in the app

• James says:

  13 Jul13 July 07:27

  Note that the Iberia A330/40 gets in to Madrid from LHR too late to connect to FRA same day

• jovanna says:

  13 Jul13 July 07:37

  Speaking of sharp practice, did anyone else receive an email from Curve at the weekend asking what function / benefit that you’d like to see from the Curve card?

  • Genghis says:

    13 Jul13 July 07:39

    Linking to Amex??

    • Andy S says:

      13 Jul13 July 08:16

      I thought curve already did! I would certainly get one once they make an android app.

      • Alan says:

        13 Jul13 July 08:20

        They withdrew Amex support months ago and I’m beginning to doubt if they’ll ever come up with an Android app!

        Very disappointing to hear of these charges with Supercard, it worked very well during the beta and this sort of thing is just totally unacceptable.

        • Frenske says:

          13 Jul13 July 08:39

          As far I understood, AmEx told Curve not to accept AmEx until they investigated it further.

        • Mr Dee says:

          13 Jul13 July 10:11

          Amex kicked Curve out because their system doesn’t work and no support for customers with problems.

          Curve is like a third party food delivery service serving a top end restaurant and delivers the food cold and when the customers keep phoning the restaurant to complain, the restaurant decides they have had enough of this Curve as they don’t answer the phone and are making us look bad.

        • Genghis says:

          13 Jul13 July 10:46

          Good analogy Mr Dee.

• John says:

  13 Jul13 July 07:45

  I used the card when GBPUSD interbank was 1.294.

  The app shows my purchase was converted at rate of 1.303.

  My IHG barclaycard was charged the amount in the app.

  The rate is now back up to 1.33. Let’s see what happens when the app updates from “pending”.

• Mark says:

  13 Jul13 July 07:45

  Sounds like was right not to bother replacing my Pilot Supercard with a launch one…..

  In practice I wasn’t using it much anyway – ultimately the Avios Rewards and Halifax Clarity Rewards made more sense for purchases (since I’m collecting the upgrade voucher on the former anyway), and the fee on cash withdrawals means I might as well go back to overseas cash withdrawals on the Clarity card.

  • Genghis says:

    13 Jul13 July 07:48

    And the £5 pcm reward on Clarity when spend / withdraw £300+

    • John says:

      13 Jul13 July 07:53

      You don’t get the £5 on withdrawals unless you found a way to get it charged as a Purchase. See T&Cs 11a.

      I tested this out for myself last month having read it on HFP (from you?). I withdrew £300+ overseas and made no other transactions. I didn’t get the £5.

      • Mark says:

        13 Jul13 July 07:58

        Correct. Putting it through Supercard does achieve that, although the ATM fee on the new Supercard more than offsets the benefit of having withdrawals treated as purchases. I tend to pay the cash advance off immediately so no/very low interest charges.

      • Genghis says:

        13 Jul13 July 08:37

        Thanks John – I wasn’t even aware of that myself. I only use Clarity for transaction abroad and don’t really aim for the £300 spend – the £5 just appears now and then.

      • Will says:

        13 Jul13 July 20:52

        Stick £200 through curve as an ATM withdrawal.

        If you have a supplementary cardholder with their own curve card that’s your £300 a month as cash

• rams1981 says:

  13 Jul13 July 07:53

  The supercard charges are a piss take given they don’t return you amounts when rates move in your favour. Where is the t and c saying they can charge you extra “if they need to”?

  I’ve had also had some pending transactions charge which didn’t actually go through unlike the pilot. New supercard has been poor so far.

• rams1981 says:

  13 Jul13 July 07:56

  They also don’t notify you of the extra charges or add them to the app for these supposed FX changes.

  Secondly charges which don’t clear and are rejected from merchant automatically disappear from app but when you’re still charged you have no record of it.

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