booking a holiday with thomas cook using a pre pay mastercard

piglet74

Hi

I am going to book a holiday at the end of the month with thomas cook,

I was wondering if I paid for some of the holiday on a pre pay mastercard would I be protected if anything was to happen to the travel agent? (S75 I think its called)

Tia

bagand96

Prepaid cards don't include Section 75 protection, because you aren't borrowing money, see Martin's article: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/prepaid-cards#problems

If you are booking a Package holiday with Thomas Cook then you'll get ATOL protection regardless of how you pay.

piglet74

Thanks very much for that,

I plan to pay the holiday off in 4 payments (deposit, then 3 payments on payday from feb to april)

Would I be better putting the money away in my savings account and paying it off at the last minute, or cause I am protected does it not matter

(Can't imagine TC going bust, tho they did run into trouble a few years ago, so u never know!)

piglet74

bagand96 wrote: »

Prepaid cards don't include Section 75 protection, because you aren't borrowing money, see Martin's article: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/prepaid-cards#problems

If you are booking a Package holiday with Thomas Cook then you'll get ATOL protection regardless of how you pay.

Read this like and it is a cashplus card I have so I am protected between £100 and £3k .

Roger1

Some outlets wrongly treat prepaid cashcards as credit cards. It's a question of their having the right software to distinguish between the three different types of card - credit, debit and prepaid.

My local council wanted 2% extra to pay our Council Tax using a cashcard and HMRC wanted 1.4% extra to pay income tax. HMRC now have a note about this on their payment page operated by Santander. OTOH our local window installers were happy to take the cashcard. They would have wanted 2%-ish for a credit card.

It may be worth checking with Thomas Cook how they treat prepaid cashcards.