Paying over £100 on a credit card

graham17_2

Hi,

Hopefully this is an easy question :-)

I'm just wondering about the protection with a credit card when you pay £100 or more on the credit card, then the rest on the debit card. I have heard about you then being fully covered for the whole amount by the credit card company (in the way they cover you on section 75), but not sure exactly how it applies, particularly when booking for a group.

Basically my situation is this:

I'm booking quad biking for my brother's stag do. I've paid the deposit on my credit card (used AMEX for cashback - but pretty sure it doesn't matter which type of card), which came to approx £160. I paid a 2% card fee on this. This was booked for a group of 9 people.

The final balance is obviously a lot more, and thus the fee would be considerably higher for using a credit card. As the quad biking is quite expensive, and I'd already told everyone the total cost, I want to avoid passing on the card fee. But if I do have to pay it for the final balance, I would opt of of footing that charge myself! :-)

So I can pay the remaining balance by debit card if I like, which the company has said will not incur a fee at all. So I'd prefer to do this, and I'll happily swallow the card fee for the deposit.

If I do this, will I be covered under the rule of paying £100 or more on the credit card? I'm not sure how the ruling applies to a group booking, as my share is obviously les than £100 on it's own (it was all paid as one booking though of course).

In the end, I'd rather be fully covered under section 75 and if that means having to use my credit card for all of it, then so be it. But I would prefer to pay the remaining balance on my debit card if I'll still get the full protection from the credit card company for the whole balance.

Thanks in advance,

Graham.

lisyloo

It's £100 or more for the transaction not on the card.
So you can pay £1 on the card.

Whether they would consider it 9 transactions if a different matter and I don't know.

graham17_2

So you mean as long as the whole transaction is worth £100 or more, you could put £1 on the credit card and the rest on the debit card and it'd all be covered by the credit card?

Yep, it's the 9 seperate people I'm mostly not sure about. If you take them as individual transactions, they'd be worth less than £100.

Does anyone know in this situation if I'd be covered, or not?

Thanks,

Graham.

meer53

To be covered under section 75 CCA, you need to spend more than £100 on your card, you need to be careful with this scenario though. If you were to make a claim for whatever reason, as the booking covers other people, you may only be looking at a claim for your portion of the full amount. This is because there is no debtor/creditor relationship for the other people on the booking, just you as the cardholder. As your share is less than £100 you will probably find that your claim will be rejected. Even if you pay the full amount on a credit card, you may not be covered, call your card issuer to see what they say. Where i work, we would reject any CCA claim given the information you have here.

YorkshireBoy

meer53 wrote: »

To be covered under section 75 CCA, you need to spend more than £100 on your card...

No you don't.

The purchase price needs to be more than £100 and less than £30,000 but so long as you put a deposit (can be as little as 1p technically...and if the supplier will take it).

See:

For section 75 to apply...the cash price of the goods or services must be more than £100 and not more than £30,000...And this applies even if all they paid by credit card was the deposit.

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/ombudsman-news/31/creditcards-31.htm

And from this very website:

The law’s very specific, you get the protection for the whole thing even if you only pay for a part of it on the card, provided what you pay for costs more than £100 (and less than £30,000).

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/section75-protect-your-purchases#deposit

graham17_2

Hi,

Thanks for all for this.

So yorkshireboy, on that basis, would I still have a problem due to the amount for an individual person being less than £100, despite the overall transaction being more than that?

If I wouldn't be covered anyway, I guess there's no point in using my credit card at all here and just use my debit card for the rest to avoid the charge...

Any further input?

Thanks again,

Graham.

lisyloo

I think probably you'd get rejected as legally they are only obliged for YOUR personal contract and not the group.
However some card companies are more generous and do sometimes cover claims in addition to just statutory rights.
So you will not get a black and white answer because it depends on whether your card company want to honour your claim and none of us can answer that.
I'd personally put a £1 on it as you have very little to lose.

graham17_2

Hi,

Thanks for that.

Cool - will go with that then. I'll put the rest on the debit card to save the fee and hopefully wouldn't need to put in a claim anyway!

Thanks again,

Graham.