Paying council tax bill at post office using American express

WillPS

retiredbanker1 said:

WillPS said:

ns1993 said:

WillPS said:

info_maniac said:

Has anyone been successful in paying council tax bill at post office using American express?

No.

The only potential way to get a council tax bill settled my Amex is if your council accepts PayPoint payments - in which case, unless something's changed, a Co-op food store (run by the Co-op Group and not another society) will accept Amex payment to settle a PayPoint bill.

Last time I checked not many councils do accept PayPoint, but some do. If yours, like mine, only accepts Post Office/PayZone, you're out of luck.

Some Tesco Express stores have PayZone, so will accept Amex to settle the bill

Does this actually work? If Tesco put the card payment through on their own tills, it probably will. If the customer is asked to put their card in a device connected to the PayZone terminal, I expect it probably won't.

I have a workaround which works for me at SPAR using credit cards (I get cashback rewards) - you buy anything such as a pint of milk - when you go to the till the milk gets put through first the I ask for my gas and leccy top-ups and hey presto I get cashback that I would not have got just by buying the top-ups.
I do have a council payment card (not used as I pay online) but I am wondering if this would work for the OP?

Yes, so long as you pay on the same till/payment pad you'd use for groceries your credit card issuer will know no different. I presume your Spar doesn't take Amex however?

ns1993

WillPS said:

ns1993 said:

WillPS said:

info_maniac said:

Has anyone been successful in paying council tax bill at post office using American express?

No.

The only potential way to get a council tax bill settled my Amex is if your council accepts PayPoint payments - in which case, unless something's changed, a Co-op food store (run by the Co-op Group and not another society) will accept Amex payment to settle a PayPoint bill.

Last time I checked not many councils do accept PayPoint, but some do. If yours, like mine, only accepts Post Office/PayZone, you're out of luck.

Some Tesco Express stores have PayZone, so will accept Amex to settle the bill

Does this actually work? If Tesco put the card payment through on their own tills, it probably will. If the customer is asked to put their card in a device connected to the PayZone terminal, I expect it probably won't.

The Tesco stores by me process the bill side via a PayZone device, and a generic "Bill Payment" SKU on their till, so the payment is made directly to Tesco. They then keep a duplicate receipt to match up in the till at the end of the day. I've used this several times for British Gas bills, Council Tax would be no different.

info_maniac

Ok, so today after days of running around I finally managed to "pay" my council tax bill using my Amex card. The payment is not yet reflecting in my online CT account, but I am expecting it to be visible soon.

- The PDF copy of the CT bill I downloaded from my online CT account was just a system generated duplicate copy and did not have bar code to be scanned at payzone or post office.
- I had to locate my "original" paper bill which had the payzone bar code at the back.
- Took this paper bill to nearest post office (corner store) and was sent back that their machine did not accept Amex.
- Went to other local convenience stores (found from the payzone store locator website), but none of them accepted Amex.
- Went to the post office in town centre in a big WH Smith store and even though the staff mentioned that they accepted Amex I wasn't able to complete the payment using my card. The payment terminal simply would not complete the transaction and display an error after I entered my PIN.
- I also tried to use the new post office self service machine, scanned the CT bill barcode myself, entered the amount to pay, and on the next page was presented with payment options - cash, debit card, credit card. But, sadly the credit card option was greyed out. Which meant that paying CT bill with a "credit card" is not allowed at the post office.
- I then did a wider search on the payzone store locator portal by entering the name of the town instead of my post code and was now presented with many more stores, took down details of Nisa local, Spar, Tesco Express etc and went out for a final try.
- And, bingo - the very first store I visited which (a Nisa local) was able to scan my CT bill barcode on their portable payzone terminal, they then asked me to pay using the card on the regular POS terminal. I was given a till receipt which mentioned the amount paid with "payzone" mentioned in the item description. I was also given another receipt from the handheld payzone terminal. This receipt had my CT bill barcode number on it and also the name of the borough council.


- My online british gas bills also did not have any payment barcode on it. I have today contacted british gas support on chat and asked for bills with barcode. They knew what I was talking about. They told me that they will enable "paper billing" for me and re-generate my bills, the new bills will have bar code for payment on them. I will have to wait a few days for the new bills. Once the bills with the barcode are available, I will go back to Nisa local and try and pay the bills using my Amex card.

daivid

info_maniac said:

Ok, so today after days of running around I finally managed to "pay" my council tax bill using my Amex card. The payment is not yet reflecting in my online CT account, but I am expecting it to be visible soon…

..- And, bingo - the very first store I visited which (a Nisa local) was able to scan my CT bill barcode on their portable payzone terminal, they then asked me to pay using the card on the regular POS terminal. I was given a till receipt which mentioned the amount paid with "payzone" mentioned in the item description. I was also given another receipt from the handheld payzone terminal. This receipt had my CT bill barcode number on it and also the name of the borough council…

Please update to confirm if this transaction generates cashback, the payment type may be exempted from AMEX's cashback offer.

WillPS

info_maniac said:

Ok, so today after days of running around I finally managed to "pay" my council tax bill using my Amex card. The payment is not yet reflecting in my online CT account, but I am expecting it to be visible soon.

- The PDF copy of the CT bill I downloaded from my online CT account was just a system generated duplicate copy and did not have bar code to be scanned at payzone or post office.
- I had to locate my "original" paper bill which had the payzone bar code at the back.
- Took this paper bill to nearest post office (corner store) and was sent back that their machine did not accept Amex.
- Went to other local convenience stores (found from the payzone store locator website), but none of them accepted Amex.
- Went to the post office in town centre in a big WH Smith store and even though the staff mentioned that they accepted Amex I wasn't able to complete the payment using my card. The payment terminal simply would not complete the transaction and display an error after I entered my PIN.
- I also tried to use the new post office self service machine, scanned the CT bill barcode myself, entered the amount to pay, and on the next page was presented with payment options - cash, debit card, credit card. But, sadly the credit card option was greyed out. Which meant that paying CT bill with a "credit card" is not allowed at the post office.
- I then did a wider search on the payzone store locator portal by entering the name of the town instead of my post code and was now presented with many more stores, took down details of Nisa local, Spar, Tesco Express etc and went out for a final try.
- And, bingo - the very first store I visited which (a Nisa local) was able to scan my CT bill barcode on their portable payzone terminal, they then asked me to pay using the card on the regular POS terminal. I was given a till receipt which mentioned the amount paid with "payzone" mentioned in the item description. I was also given another receipt from the handheld payzone terminal. This receipt had my CT bill barcode number on it and also the name of the borough council.


- My online british gas bills also did not have any payment barcode on it. I have today contacted british gas support on chat and asked for bills with barcode. They knew what I was talking about. They told me that they will enable "paper billing" for me and re-generate my bills, the new bills will have bar code for payment on them. I will have to wait a few days for the new bills. Once the bills with the barcode are available, I will go back to Nisa local and try and pay the bills using my Amex card.

Good sleuthing and good result.

Remember that Nisa Local, Spar, Premier, Londis etc are just symbol fascias - each shop will be run differently so success in on branch of Nisa isn't to say it'll work in all. I'm fairly impressed your Nisa took Amex at all to be honest!

Tesco Express is an interesting one though as if it works there it should probably work in any (with a Payzone terminal) as the process will definitely be the same branch to branch.

info_maniac

daivid said:

Please update to confirm if this transaction generates cashback, the payment type may be exempted from AMEX's cashback offer.

I don't have the Amex cashback card, the card I have gives me Amex membership reward points.

The transactions I did for payzone bill payment are simply visible as "Nisa Local" in my Amex online account. I believe this is because I was asked to pay at the Nisa Local till rather than the payzone handheld terminal. I don't think Amex will have a way of finding out that the transaction was for payzone bill payment so can't exclude them from any rewards or cashback credit.

The transactions are still pending, but I am expecting that as soon as the transactions are confirmed I will see rewards points credited to my account. I will report back in a couple of days.

info_maniac

I now have the re-generated british gas bill with "Natwest gas payment slip - bank giro credit" at the bottom.

The "payment slip" has a barcode in the centre. There is no other barcode anywhere, so I guess this is the barcode which payzone store will use. I will try it and update back.


BTW, the "ways to pay" section of the bill reads:

Visit payzone.co.uk/consumers to

find your nearest Payzone outlet.

Post Office or bank: Take the

payment slip and pay by card,

cash or cheque at the Post Office

or bank. By cheque, make payable

to Post Office Ltd or at the bank

it's British Gas Trading Ltd.

Post: Send the enclosed payment

slip and a cheque made payable

to British Gas Trading Ltd, to

British Gas Trading, PO Box 344,

Sheffield, S98 1EH

Please allow 5 working days for

your cheque to clear on time.

Does this mean I can go to any bank and pay with my card (Amex credit card)?

info_maniac

WillPS said:

Good sleuthing and good result.

Remember that Nisa Local, Spar, Premier, Londis etc are just symbol fascias - each shop will be run differently so success in on branch of Nisa isn't to say it'll work in all. I'm fairly impressed your Nisa took Amex at all to be honest!

Tesco Express is an interesting one though as if it works there it should probably work in any (with a Payzone terminal) as the process will definitely be the same branch to branch.

Yes, agree. In fact, the Nisa Local I went to used to be the local Co-Op store for many years and has recently been re-branded as Nisa Local.

Regarding Tesco Express, I did visit a random Tesco Express store near me during the week and when I mentioned payzone bill payment they did not know anything about it.

The Tesco Express stores I see in payzone portal search results are on the other side of the town, the Tesco Express store I visited was not in the search results, so looks like not all Tesco Express stores do payzone bill payments.

Gerry1

My local council's website offers Council Tax payment by Visa and Mastercard but not Amex.  It makes no mention of Pay Point.

I considered using my Chase card, but CT payments aren't valid for the 1% cashback.

However, when I phoned the council out of curiosity they said this was possible and sent me a PP payment card linked to my CT account.

I tried it in a Londis store at a BP station and they happily accepted my BA Amex card.  I had to make two transactions because the monthly CT payment exceeded £200, but both went through and earned Avios.  😀

sausage_time

Great result!  I have just received my Pay Point card and will pay the next month at the Co-op with my Amex.

On a related note, does anyone know how to map the Pay Point card digits on the card onto a bar code?  I'd like to add my card to Google Pay.  My council don't print the bar codes on their invoices, so ideally I'd someone with a card and a bar code to say what card digits are significant.  There are two separate numbers on the card, one 19 digits long (which I don't recognise) and a shorter one under my name which is my CT account number preceded by a 9.