Pay as you go credit cards

Tori_Bellatrix

justsaawwah wrote:

I have just applied for a cashplus gold mastercard..i know it has a monthly fee ect but my main reason for wanting it is online food shopping amongst other things
I do have a solo debit card,but that isnt accepted everywhere and due to poor health the online shopping is ideal for me.
Cant wait for it to arrive

I have one of those and to be honest, I think it's great! The monthly fee is a bit of a pain but I can live with that for now ... I've started using mine in the last month and had no problems at all .... Everything you purchase is updated immediately so you can log on and see exactly what you have left to spend ..

justsaawwah

:T for that
Saw so much 'bad press' about them,but after reading alot of the posts here it seems that for many they are great..will let you know how i get on with mine
oooh..i can browse the aisles at tescos,without stress from the kids..all without leaving the house lol
Sarah

khurammm

I think the best prepaid card available is the Club 18-30 Maestro card. It offers the best rates eg ATM withdrawl fee is just £1 and no foreign or local transaction fee and no monthly fee. Just small amount of fee when you top it up through the net or at any pay point. Its chip n pin and you get special discounts if you plan your holidays through them.
The best part is that you can choose your own picture to be on the card.
https://www.club18-30.com/card

sarah1975uk

Zebedee69 wrote:

Why dont you use a debit card??????

If you have a Visa Electron (Not Accepted Everywhere Online) then ask for a Visa Card Instead. Thats what I did, cant see the point of paying to use your own card...???

Solo is the same as electron and is more widely accepted than electron especially useful for those who cant get a regular swich/debit card facility with their banks, i bank with nat west and i know they use Solo...hope this helps!:o

justsaawwah

not everyone can get a visa(delta) debit card
Before i had a huge income drop,which is one of the reasons why i got into debt, i banked with llyods tsb and had a visa electron and was upgraded and issued with a visa delta,but this was because my credit score was good
Most people(not all) have an electron or solo card because they have poor credit,mysef included..so its not a case of simply asking your bank to issue one,wish it was

jembie

I am a bit disappointed suddenly.
I have had the cashplus card for a year and it was my saviour but since Christmas I am not using it so I decided to go on the flexi account where you just pay £1 each time you use it.
I signed up to Blockbuster recently on a free trial dvd rental. I never intended to move on after the trial and I noticed that they took 11p from my card at the beginning and because of that Cashplus took a £1 transaction fee.
I also used my card to sign up for another free trial and I have had a £1 fee for that too although it hasn't actually tried to take any money. If you can understand that.

There is nothing on my card now and I am going to leave that as it is so I can't be robbed by any more companies.

jago25_98

I use EggMoney Mastercard.

I charge it with credit and it pays me 4% on that credit. Thing is, I needed a credit rating to get it as it came with £1500 credit.

slowhand_2

hi, i am new to the forum and i have been reading some of your posts regarding pre paid debit cards. I have just received my splash plastic, now 360money, but i am having problems when i take it my nearest paypoint to top up. The receipt always states transaction void unable to connect and error code 2055. 360money say it must be the paypoint and paypoint say it must be the card. I can top the card up via e-voucher and then visiting 360money to put voucher number in on the website, but to be honest it would be much easier if i could just top up at the paypoint. Has anybody else had a similar problem or should i inform 360money again and ask for a new card. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.:

cantosis

I have the quidity card, I brought it as I do online gambling and I didn`t like seeing the transactions on my bank statement, I figured it would not look good if I ever wanted to get a loan or something.

This card used to be good, as when I put money onto it from a paypoint I would not get charged but now they have put a charge onto it, for example today I paid £160 0nto it but I only have £155 to spend, plus there is another charge, for example I brought a dvd for £9.99 but the card has £10.89.

I am going to think about just using my credit card in the future as these sorts of charges are quitr high.

I still think prepaid cards are good for people who cant get any sort of card(because of poor credit) or even for a parent to give to a child to use.

robertoE3

This is a factual account of my experience with the card and I would be quite happy to discuss this in private or public and provide documentary evidence of what is fair comment about the card, if any person acting for club 18-30 were to object to the posting.

Firstly, this is a maestro card, not a visa or mastercard which is heavily marketed on the basis of its convenience factor and usefulness abroad. Where infact it is anything but if you encounter certain problems, their utterly lacking service means you d be a lot better of bringing boring, dependable, physical cash. You get the same rate of return on cash in your wallet as you do, depositing cash with them afterall. Yes, that's right positive balances on this card earn the princely sum of 0%, or an annualised negative rate of -15% if you withdraw the minimum on each withdrawal before load costs.

My experience is as follows, I signed up and paid for the card with an Egg credit card, (which has a credit limit of 10k) and paid £8.95. In due course the card arrived. Upon reading the terms, I noticed that withdrawls are £1.50 on any amount and calls to customer service are 80p a minute. Wow, what a convenient way to give my money away to the needy shareholders of Club 18-30!

The card costs £14.95 for a custom design, how much more does it cost to laminate a card with a digital image. I would believe somewhat in the order of zero, considering the raw material and production costs of the normal card.

It is unclear whether it is £2 they then charge for withdrawls abroad and £1.50 in the Uk; or whether the higher rate is just for the custom cards. There are also many other charge points, which would normally be free with a credit card.

You receive no interest on the card balance and the card expires after a year, thereby you need to get a new card from them annually, pay for it and lend them money in the meantime which you cannot access.


I activated the card and then the problems began.

I attempted to use the same egg credit card as I used to purchase the card to load funds, (to load £20 it costs 4.25% of the amount). So if I load £20 and withdraw £10 in the Uk, 19.25 % of my money will have gone in charges at that stage. Wow, what value !

Not only did their system fail to allow me to load money from the egg credit card I used to buy the 18-30 card with, (I checked with egg and the card is not suffering from any block and has £8,000 spendable credit on it), the system then proceeded to reject three other credit cards I have, with the response that my anti fraud score was not sufficient. Why was my fraud score good enough to purchase the card but insufficient to load the card ?

So then to customer services, guess what ?

I call on a saturday morning on a 8p rate number to discover there is no one in the office and am given advice to read the website. So for 8 p a minute you get a telephone recording.

I guess the 80p a minute service on the alternative number may or may not of been open, but I find it difficult to countenance paying the equivalent of £48 per hour to discuss the failure of their payment systems.

My advice, do not get a card such as this.

I have another rant about Lloyds TSB platinum card services but I ll keep that for another time!