Curve just screwed themselves over

penners324

Tesco T&Cs recognise Curve transactions as cash withdrawals hence the fees and interest.
You'll need to contact Tesco bank to dispute them.

Curve is a prepaid card, most prepaid cards are Mastercard.

flo999

My understanding is that Curve is a Mastercard debit card not a pre-paid card. i.e. You do not load funds onto it

Terry_Towelling

flo999 wrote: »

Has anyone had any success getting refunds from CC companies for purchases classed as cash transactions. I have only just noticed one made in Sept (Tesco 0% on purchases for 26 months - direct debit setup to pay minimum owing per month), that has been gaining interest since then. Seems very unfair.
Curve don't want to know. Compliant logged with Tesco

Your complaint probably lies with Curve, not Tesco. Curve processes the transaction to itself and then 'reprocesses' it to whichever underlying card product you choose. If Curve has 'reprocessed' the transaction as cash, or has profiled it in such a way as to meet Tesco's criteria of a 'cash' transaction (which will be described in Tesco's T&Cs) then you are probably 'stuffed' - barring any ex-gratia payment.

To be blunt, it is easy to view a gift card as a cash-equivalent and so I'm not surprised this has happened.

It may be interesting to buy the gift card with the Tesco card and see whether that appears as cash. If not, blame Curve.

Has it really been gaining interest ever since; payments are (usually) initially allocated to the portion of the balance that attracts the most interest. So, unless you bought stacks of gift cards, your payments since then should surely have covered off their part of the balance (plus a bit of trailing interest).

PS don't forget to check your statements every month - carefully.

stevenhp1987

Terry_Towelling wrote: »

Your complaint probably lies with Curve, not Tesco. Curve processes the transaction to itself and then 'reprocesses' it to whichever underlying card product you choose. If Curve has 'reprocessed' the transaction as cash, or has profiled it in such a way as to meet Tesco's criteria of a 'cash' transaction (which will be described in Tesco's T&Cs) then you are probably 'stuffed' - barring any ex-gratia payment.

To be blunt, it is easy to view a gift card as a cash-equivalent and so I'm not surprised this has happened.

It may be interesting to buy the gift card with the Tesco card and see whether that appears as cash. If not, blame Curve.

Has it really been gaining interest ever since; payments are (usually) initially allocated to the portion of the balance that attracts the most interest. So, unless you bought stacks of gift cards, your payments since then should surely have covered off their part of the balance (plus a bit of trailing interest).

PS don't forget to check your statements every month - carefully.

Tesco treat all Curve transactions as cash advances, regardless of whether you have taken cash out or simply shopped at Tesco.

Personally, I would refrain from using Curve with a Tesco card and lodge a formal complaint (against Tesco Bank) in the hopes they refund the fees, but I wouldn't count on it.

Tesco see Curve as a prepaid system which is sort of true as it's not a true PSP. The fact they don't treat similar systems (e.g. PayPal or Amazon Pay) the same though is interesting...