Partial payments on a credit card when you have a Direct Debit setup

eagle

Money Savers,

Hoping this would be a good place to post this, but potentially spans many topics.

I have several mobile phone contracts ruinning in parallel for the time being. I pay all my mobile accounts via direct debit every month. I save a certain amount by paying by direct debit. However, I was wondeirng if I could pay off a proportion via my Amex card (to get some points/cashback, etc) a little bit before the DD is taken from my bank account so that the DD amount is reduced and that I am not penalised for paying by card.

Does anyone know which companies allow this and if it can be done?

Numeric example:
Bill for £25 phone bill is produced
I pay £23 (for example) on my Amex as soon as the bill is produced
I then wait until the DD date and expect £2 to leave my account
I receive no additional fees for paying by card

Any advice greatfully appreciated.

Ebe_Scrooge

It sounds feasible, the only thing to check is whether you'll be charged a fee for paying by credit card - a lot of places will pass on the fee they get charged by the credit card company. You should be able to easily check this by either phoning them up or looking online.


Just picking one phone company completely at random :


http://vodafone.intelliresponse.com/index.jsp?id=1907&question=Paying+your+bill&requestType=NormalRequest&source=100


"Payment processing fees apply to credit card and post office payments"

p00hsticks

I've no epxerience of mobile phone billing ,but you might also want to confirm the phone company's policy on how they treat payments received between them producing the bill and taking the direct debit.

After all, the bill acts as the official notification to you of how much the company intends to take by direct debit and when, so I imagine that it's possible that they could go ahead and take that amount anyway, regardless of any payments you make in the interim.

Candyapple

I just tried to pay my '3' bill with a card and they don't accept Amex, only Visa/MC.

Also, you get £5 discount by paying by DD with them, I'm fairly sure most other mobile providers offer a similar discount to encourage paying by DD - not sure if they would remove the 'discount' if you paid say half card and half DD every month due to abusing their offer, but it's something else to think about.

Also, on the payments page of '3' it stated:

Any payments made by card will be reflected on your next bill, note that the amount of your direct debit or recurring card payment will remain unchanged.

So even if I did pay partial balance by card, the DD amount taken would still be the same so there would be no point.

eagle

Guys,

Really appreciate your responses here so far.

I acknowledged the additional fees for paying by card in my OP:

eagle wrote: »

I receive no additional fees for paying by card

What I was asking and maybe didn't phrase very well is can I pay the partial amount by card and then still let the direct debit go through at the reduced amount without anyadditional card fees.

I have managed to use pay.com cards to pay off £25 from the balance of a vodafone bill. I then got that credited to the bill and the DD was automatically adjusted. I'm not sure if this will work though with a credit card (and an Amex one at that), rather than a prepaid card like pay.com.

EE is the other provider I'd like to see if this would work with.

Candyapple wrote: »

I just tried to pay my '3' bill with a card and they don't accept Amex, only Visa/MC.

Also, you get £5 discount by paying by DD with them, I'm fairly sure most other mobile providers offer a similar discount to encourage paying by DD - not sure if they would remove the 'discount' if you paid say half card and half DD every month due to abusing their offer, but it's something else to think about.

Also, on the payments page of '3' it stated:

So even if I did pay partial balance by card, the DD amount taken would still be the same so there would be no point.

Many thanks for this Candyapple - it rules out doing this with my Three account then...

Ebe_Scrooge

eagle wrote: »

EE is the other provider I'd like to see if this would work with

From their webpage :
http://ee.co.uk/help/accounts-billing-and-topping-up/billing-and-payment/view-and-pay-your-bill/paying-by-credit-or-debit-card




"Direct Debit is the easiest, cheapest and most convenient way to pay your bill. You avoid a £3.50 'Separate Payment Handling Charge' on your account each month and your payments will always be on time.
But if you want to pay by debit or credit card, the best way is through My Account"

eagle

Ebe_Scrooge wrote: »

Just picking one phone company completely at random :

http://vodafone.intelliresponse.com/index.jsp?id=1907&question=Paying+your+bill&requestType=NormalRequest&source=100

"Payment processing fees apply to credit card and post office payments"

Hmmm, just looking at this link again - it doesn't seem to be referring to Vodafone UK. Am I missing something?

cornish123

meh, cancel the direct debit with your bank, pay the full balance with a card and then setup a new direct debit, used to do this with a three account to make payments by card and still keep the direct debit discount

eagle

cornish123 wrote: »

meh, cancel the direct debit with your bank, pay the full balance with a card and then setup a new direct debit, used to do this with a three account to make payments by card and still keep the direct debit discount

Sounds evil and very cunning!

Nebulous2

Not really what you are asking - but I have several phone accounts. I pay them all from my Santander 1 2 3 account and get 3% cashback. Does your Amex beat that?

eagle

Nebulous2 wrote: »

Not really what you are asking - but I have several phone accounts. I pay them all from my Santander 1 2 3 account and get 3% cashback. Does your Amex beat that?

Yes it does beat your Santander card. To me Amex does better rewards than plain simple cashback, if you know where to use them.