Why can't Halifax balance transfer to American Express?

colino

I recently successfully applied for a Halifax CC to take advantage of their 22 month 0% balance transfer rate. I activated the card on Saturday and with their rep. attempted to do the BT with my AE card. After several "hang ons" and "I'll go and ask", (fills you full of confidence) he stated that it could not be done!
Being the easter weekend and already spent 15 minutes going round in circles with him. I called it a day.
Today, with a bit more time on my hands I tried to call Halifax and not enjoying their very lengthy delays on phone, I accessed their website instead.
At the point of actually accessing "my accounts" the thing froze, apologised for being unavailable for, "essential maintenence" and that was that.

Does anyone know why Halifax are unable to do a BT with American Express nowadays? I'm sure I've done a BT with AE in the past and despite a 15 digit number, don't recall any problems.
Or is it a case of an attractive, but unusable promotion rate and I should just send the Halifax card back and tear up the agreement?
Many thanks.

Plxply

It's almost always because of the 13-15 digit card number, almost all systems are (erroneously) programmed to only accept 16 digit numbers.

colino

After posting this, bumped into old friend who trains "contact centre" staff and he said, quite unabashed, if you need anything other than whats on the first menu screen, don't call outside of normal office hours as the casual/temp/new staff wont be up for it! Good to see that the financial services sector continues to strive for excellence.

opinions4u

colino wrote: »

After posting this, bumped into old friend who trains "contact centre" staff and he said, quite unabashed, if you need anything other than whats on the first menu screen, don't call outside of normal office hours as the casual/temp/new staff wont be up for it! Good to see that the financial services sector continues to strive for excellence.

Of course one of the ways they can afford to give you 22 months of interest free credit is by not paying what they would need to pay to get the excellence that you would prefer.

colino

opinions4u I despise current "contact centres", I was involved in the first rush of them when they were seen by companies as a genuine value add benefit and as an excuse for increasing the cost of products as they added an additional tier of service to customers. They very quickly degenerated, here faster than elsewhere in the world, as a cheapskate way of providing customer contact.
Unfortunately all industries in the UK seem to use this lowest common denominator approach and don't even have the sense to make greater investments in the sales and marketing end of the centres. All very well having a dumbed down approach in a technical support centre where most first level calls can very adequately and correctly be resolved by telling the customer where the on/off switch is, but potentially losing hundreds/thousands of pounds trying to de-skill what are sales departments is crazy.

Rupert_Bear

My experience with call centre staff is how quick can they get you off the phone. All brilliant on lip service but most of them are concerned with their AHT because this can affect any bonus that may be in the pipeline.

Fruit_and_Nut_Case

It's not just Halifax. I've recently had virtually the same problem with Nationwide.

LewisMeau500

same with my dad and barclaycard, they could not do an amex balance transfer

krichards

It maybe Halifax being confused, because I did a BT with them before Easter to Amex and the payment was done the next day, and was showing within 3 days later as credited to the Amex.

Got a letter yesterday from Halifax, dated the day that the transfer was processed, to say they couldn't do the BT because the other card issuer didn't accept faster payments (which isn't true as Amex use Lloyds for their collection bank).

Didn't bother calling them because as I said, the payment was sent to Amex and credited within a couple of days and it has been debited to the Halifax card, so all's well.

I also asked the CSR when I made the BT over the phone whether they were able to do Amex BTs and was told that she had done plenty, all without any issue. I think they're maybe confused because though the faster payment goes to Amex through their Lloyds account, they don't reconcile it within the time scale you'd expect. When I did my BT on a Tuesday, I was told it would reach Amex by the end of next working day (Wednesday), but it took two more working days (Friday) to actually show as credited, but another working day (Monday) to actually show on the Amex account as paid.