Aqua Reward Credit Card - 3% cashback up to £100/year

grumbler

Was it posted that they seem to have changed their policy with regard to the extra payments to the card?

These payments used to not affect the DD amount that, if paying in full, remained the statement amount regardless. However, my last DD payment was adjusted exactly by £250 that I paid a few days after the statement was produced.

212

Has anyone been able to pay with a credit card? There's a mastercard option but it wont take any of my cards!

grumbler

Do you mean pay Aqua with a credit card? No CCs accept CC payments.
Mastercard do debit cards as well nowadays.

212

Creation Finance do, but I guess that's because of their shopping/loan etc line, and they've never got round to blocking Credit Cards from paying a Card a/c!

On the aqua site it has "Make a payment...Debit/credit card payment", thought it was a long shot though!

Herbalus

grumbler wrote: »

Was it posted that they seem to have changed their policy with regard to the extra payments to the card?

These payments used to not affect the DD amount that, if paying in full, remained the statement amount regardless. However, my last DD payment was adjusted exactly by £250 that I paid a few days after the statement was produced.

I had experience that the DD amount was not changed by any manual payments, but also that this didn't happen for my last statement (payment due 2nd July). Don't know if it's indicative of policy change, a royal mess-up in collection of payments (see other posts about change of account numbers and DDs not taken), or because I paid before the DD was actioned.

In my particular situation the statement was 15th June for £4.28 and I paid £120 on 20th June. That included all spending between 15th - 20th June so no credit balance.

Uplink

grumbler wrote: »

Was it posted that they seem to have changed their policy with regard to the extra payments to the card?

These payments used to not affect the DD amount that, if paying in full, remained the statement amount regardless. However, my last DD payment was adjusted exactly by £250 that I paid a few days after the statement was produced.

They haven't answered my online inquiry about missed collection of my DD. You'd think they'd write back to a "Missed Payment" inquiry to say "No sir, you didn't miss the payment. We really didn't take it.", but no... This seems consistent with the "they don't respond to messages" post from earlier.

Your theory seems consistent with my experience since the upgrade. I got a payment, that was higher than the statement balance, posted just next day after the statement was produced, and when the DD date came... nothing. I still have my money sitting in my bank account. Before the upgrade, they took the DD as stated on the statement without fail.

I'm not going to get on the phone with them unless they slap me with a charge for "missing the payment", to tell them how to take a payment in the first place. I've checked my DD authorisation on their website, and it's all proper - no bad data there.

I haven't received any notice about this change - if it is indeed a change, and not a screwup. My Terms and Conditions state (as far as I remember) that the DD will be taken regardless of any payments I may have made between statement and DD. Yet there's nothing in there that says that if they fail to implement that clause anything bad will happen. I don't see anyone claim that Aqua is in breach of contract if they adjust the DD because of other payments, as long as the statement is considered paid on the due date

Edit: Well... it just crossed my mind that if you rely on that DD to be taken, and it isn't, and you go over the limit because of that, you may be able to beat Aqua up with a wet whip. Any lawyers in the house available to comment on this?

grumbler

Uplink wrote: »

I'm not going to get on the phone with them unless they slap me with a charge for "missing the payment",

They can't do this if you did make a payment after the statement was produced.

My Terms and Conditions state (as far as I remember) that the DD will be taken regardless of any payments I may have made between statement and DD.

I don't see anything like this in my T&C and I believe that generally DD payments are not a part of the T&C. It's usually just a published policy or empirical experience.

Uplink

grumbler wrote: »

I don't see anything like this in my T&C and I believe that generally DD payments are not a part of the T&C. It's usually just a published policy or empirical experience.

I'll have a look when I get home. If it's not in the terms, it's on the statement itself. I remember seeing this somewhere - and I placed a mental pin in it.

IsaCream_Man

Blue_Max wrote: »

Current exchange rates you can expect with Aqua are shown at
https://www.mastercard.com/global/currencyconversion/index.html

That looks a very useful tool, which makes me wonder if you can use it to calculate the likely cost of something you buy online using the local currency rather than sterling.

For example, I want to book concert tickets now for a trip to Singapore next December. If I was offered an opportunity to pay online in either SGD or GBP, would this tool show the conversion rate I'd expect to find applied using my Aqua card here in the UK to book this concert?

I've seen many comments elsewhere on the use of credit cards when you are abroad and making sure you always pay in the local currency to avoid that DCC (Dynamic Currency Conversion) 'trick' - but never anything about what happens if you buy something here in the UK in the local currency rather than sterling (unless I've been missing it).

reclusive46

IsaCream_Man wrote: »

That looks a very useful tool, which makes me wonder if you can use it to calculate the likely cost of something you buy online using the local currency rather than sterling.

For example, I want to book concert tickets now for a trip to Singapore next December. If I was offered an opportunity to pay online in either SGD or GBP, would this tool show the conversion rate I'd expect to find applied using my Aqua card here in the UK to book this concert?

I've seen many comments elsewhere on the use of credit cards when you are abroad and making sure you always pay in the local currency to avoid that DCC (Dynamic Currency Conversion) 'trick' - but never anything about what happens if you buy something here in the UK in the local currency rather than sterling (unless I've been missing it).

The same rule normally applies, better to choose the currency of the site your paying on.