New Halifax Reward account. Has anyone figured out a way around £500 spending?

Mishomeister

I have signed up to the new Halifax Reward account, where you get £5 pm for paying in an x amount of money in to it every month, and then have to spend £500 on a debit card.

As I have a cashback credit card, I don't want to use debit card for any spending.

I though, if I was to deposit £500 every month with my Halifax card in to my Posr Office savings account, this will count.

However as no money was paid to me, I have rang Halifax, who said such transaction will not count.

I am therefore wondering if anyone managed to find a way around this £500 spending rule, eg pay money to their Paypal account or any other option?

surreysaver

In my experience, staff in call centres do not generally know what they're talking about (or maybe they're told to give specific answers to specific questions to discourage certain behaviour).   Try it and see.

Notepad_Phil

I know that other people have tried similar things to yourself and I thought they did get paid e.g. https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6172914/anyone-got-their-fiver-yet-from-new-halifax-reward-account/p1

PRAISETHESUN

Easiest way is to use your Halifax debit card to pay off your cashback CC. Otherwise it's been discussed in quite a good amount of detail in previous threads if you go searching the forums. The ones that spell out exactly what you need to do seem to get reported until they die, so you might need to go digging a bit. That said, I do similar to you in paying into an account in my own name that accepts debit card payments and it counted for last month's rewards so it'd give it a go regardless of what the Halifax rep says. I don't think the system is smart enough to distinguish where the money ends up, only that cleared debit card transactions meeting the £500 requirement have been made.

polymaff

Mishomeister said:

I have signed up to the new Halifax Reward account, where you get £5 pm for paying in an x amount of money in to it every month, and then have to spend £500 on a debit card.

And kept your account in credit throughout the month?  Also watched out for the account being demoted from Reward?

May be too late now for the missed payment but it is worth using the online Track My Reward feature rather than 'phoning in.

Mishomeister

polymaff said:

May be too late now for the missed payment but it is worth using the online Track My Reward feature rather than 'phoning in.

How do I find that Track My Reward thing? It is the firts time I hear about it

PRAISETHESUN

Mishomeister said:

polymaff said:

May be too late now for the missed payment but it is worth using the online Track My Reward feature rather than 'phoning in.

How do I find that Track My Reward thing? It is the firts time I hear about it

They make it hard to find, but when you log into your online banking on the left side on the dark blue menu you'll see a section called "My current account options". Expand that tab and select "Track your Rewards Extra". It should then take you to a page detailing what you've done to meet the current month's requirements:

Mishomeister

Now this is interesting. It appears that for some reason I was put ion a scheme where you need to keep 5k balance. This is niot soemthing I ever gone for, so will now need to argue with Halifax...

PRAISETHESUN

Mishomeister said:

Now this is interesting. It appears that for some reason I was put ion a scheme where you need to keep 5k balance. This is niot soemthing I ever gone for, so will now need to argue with Halifax...

You should've had a choice when you opened/upgraded your account. The choice you made gets locked in for 12 months - ie. you cant decide to spend £500 one month then keep a £5k balance the next, same as you can't change the "reward" they give you for this time. I'd definitely be getting in touch to clarify if you didn't get to choose.

polymaff

I wonder if you can get around this by downgrading then upgrading the account back to a Reward one? Maybe with 24hr inbetween.

Herbalus

The easiest way for me is to simply pay off your cash back credit card.