GREAT 'WHAT SHOPS DON'T WANT US TO KNOW" HUNT

wlf

lady_noluck wrote:

Oakley sunglasses have a 100% mark up. If the glasses are selling for £139.99 it means the cost price is £69.99. Not so much money saving but certainly room for a discount I think!

You will be extremely lucky if you can get a discount on oakley sunglasses. Oakley have a very strict pricing policy, the glasses must be sold at RRP. If they are discounted, the retailer will likely lose their supply contract.

BTW, 100% markup is fairly common in retail.

TimC

candys_kisses wrote:

Step 5
As soon as your withdrawn funds are back on your Barclaycard and you have a balance to spend, repeat steps 3 and 4. You can do this, depending upon how quickly the withdrawn funds are cleared back to your Barclaycard (average 3 days) up to 12 times a month. Below is a table of how many points/ how much shopping money you can earn, based on doing this 10 times per month:

Available Barclaycard Balance Total Deposited & Withdrawn Nectar points earned per Money available to spend at
each month month via Barclaycard Argos/ Sainsbury's etc.
£200 £2,000 1000 £5
£500 £5,000 2500 £12.50
£750 £7,500 3750 £18.75
£1,000 £10,000 5000 £25
£2,000 £20,000 10000 £50
£5,000 £50,000 25000 £125
£10,000 £100,000 50000 £250

I have been doing this for over one year and at the time of writing this guide, my credit limit stands at £3600. I am currently making between £80-90 per month.

Very interesting and I'm very tempted, thanks.
I had a look this evening, and do notice one potential flaw - according to the FAQs on withdrawals on the meccagames site:

What are Visa card restrictions on withdrawals?

Visa regulations stipulate that a total of £2499 (or non sterling equivalent) can be refunded within any 24 hour period. Should you wish to withdraw an amount that exceeds this, please contact customer services.

Have you experienced this problem, or not tried a withdrawal greater than £2499?

barmonkey

odowdchr wrote:

The same "Mcdonalds" bloke above is also a teetotaller and hates fizzy drinks because his teeth were rotted on copious amounts of cola from pubs...
You can ask for a glass of tap water in any pub and they can't charge you for it.
To my knowledge, he hasn't bought anything in a pub for years :beer:

they cant legaly charge you for tap water, but they can charge you for the service of providing it for you. dont think many places do that though.

jellyhead

when i was a student my local used to charge a service charge on a glass of tap water, it was still cheaper than buying mineral water/fizz though.

waterstar

candys_kisses wrote

"5 STEPS TO ROCKET YOUR NECTAR POINTS BALANCE

As a Nectar points collector, you are no doubt aware that for every 500 points you collect, you get £2.50 to spend at places like Argos and Sainsbury’s. "

Interesting post, I have 2 Questions (which are perhaps related)

1) Does this work with any other reward or cashback credit card or is it unique to Barclaycard and Nectar points?

2) I have a "cash back" credit card and have always found that when a credit is given by a "retailer" effectively this does not count as a "payment" and hence is offset against the spending total on which the cashback is calculated. This has included both "genuine credits" as in where an order has been cancelled and situations where a credit has been paid by a retailer to my credit card UNRELATED to a purchase, for example cashback payments relating to a mobile phone contract.

Many thanks.

mrak

vaderag wrote:

Same thing applies with watches - got a new watch for my birthday recently from a specialist watch shop, asked for a discount and the gave me ~15% discount

Oooh, good one you've got there. I work quite close to Haton Garden, and when buying my new watch, I took the liberty of asking the jeweller for a discount.. I got 10% off! Worth it when you're making purchases around the £100 mark...

mrak

HOLsale

CeeJay wrote:

Not a tip... more an 'Aren't we lucky'. I live in Spain and recently took a 4 month old microwave back as it was faulty. All the way into town I was anticipating the usual, "Not our problem... contact the manufacturer", as I had grown to expect this response in the UK.

Not so. The item was exchanged on the spot for a new one and I was given a further 12 month warranty. Would the UK retailers have responded like that I wonder?

well done for you!

i am not certain about other companies though i suspect most are the same. anyway, i used to work for samsung and if your microwave gets even one spot of rust in it (you can still use it safely, we have an old one we found rusty and checked it's ok) then as long as the serial number shows that it's less than 5 years old they'll replace it for you even without the receipt!

if however you do still have the receipt that's better because some places keep them in their back room for sometimes (catalogues are guilty of this) so you would then get 5 years from the date of purchase.

basically they don't want you to sue them just in case but from everything i've read it's safe to use. ours was too old to do this unfortunately but i helped at least a dozen customers get theirs replaced during my time working for them.

samsung asks that you actually remove the ratings plate off the back that has the sticker with the serial number. you then send the sticker stuck to a piece of paper (keep a photocopy for yourself) or, if you can remove it then the entire bit of metal (i've seen this!). you need to send it special delivery but basically you'll have your new microwave within 2-4 weeks for free!

so, if you've got a rusting machine by all means call the manufacturer and find out if they will replace it for you. samsung is by no means a particularly generous or helpful company when it comes to repairs so i suspect this is done my many manufacturers, worth a shot

Sparrowhawk_2

water star,

These types of transactions called (by banking depts that process them) "7995" or quasi-cash transactions. There are only two credit card issuers in the UK (that I am aware of) treat these tranasactions as 'normal retail transactions' for the purpose of collecting rewards or points;
Barclaycard and HSBC

Of course with HSBC you need to have a gold or premier card in order to accumulate points, however if you can get a reward card with HSBC, you will be better off than using your Barclaycard as (see Martin's Table) you get a 0.44% return on your spend rather than the 0.25% return gained on Barclaycard.

Be warned though - 7995 transactions are flagged by credit card companies and if you have too many may cause the issuer to freeze your account temporarily as these types of transactions are apparently popular with fraudsters.

I can vouch for this method of gathering points because I did very well out of it. That is until Barclaycard closed my account because they felt that I was "... running the account like a business and should be using a business barclaycard" - which of course offers no rewards.

Admittedly I was "spending" over 70k per month. (obviously using other gaming companies as a vehicle as well)

Hope this helps

N_R

I've got a legitimate business account with PC world, but I also work for another company. If your purchasing somehting, and providing it is sold in the business catologue, you can purcashe it at the business rate. Save a few £'s per in cartridge. Printer cable recently on the shelf for £10 paid £3. Just say you purchasing it on behlaf of your company, and want to pay for it at the till. your company would never know. Never asked for a VAT registration number. In fact could have made up the address.

jinks_2

OAKLEYS
If there are any members of the armed forces reading then contact Oakley UK direct and ask to be emailed the military price lists (email and tel # on the oakley.com website) there are special military discounts that are fairly well hidden.
These are the only Oakley discounts that I am aware of and some are as much as 50%.

MOBILES
Definitely haggle when your mobile phone contract is due for renewal (follow martins advice on this) I got a 'new customers only' contract and a phone worth £200 for free.

CARS
A friend of mine phoned 3 car dealers that were offering a discount. He managed to fight them off against each other for the same model and got a massive discount on a brand new car. In the end a pleasant lady told him that they get commission on each car sold (the lower the discount they give the more the commission!) and a bonus for monthly targets. She waived ALL her commission to give him an absolute bargain because otherwise he would have gone elsewhere and she would have one less sale towards her bonus!

SOFA
Does anybody have any experience with DFS. I have a sofa that is just over 2 years old (2 yr warrantee) and its knackered. We don't even use it that often as we both work. I'm not sure whether to write to them with a nice letter or try instore first. Are they helpful?