Halifax Reward current account

PRAISETHESUN

VXman said:

PRAISETHESUN said:

VXman said:

Not used my reward account in ages (year or more?) other than to fund a monthly saver. Doesn't seem worth keeping £5000 in it for £5 per month.

You should elect for the £500 debit card spend instead next time yours comes up for renewal. Plenty of ways to artificially generate some debit card transactions if you wouldn't spend that much normally. Also means you can put the £5k in an account that pays decent interest!

How can you generate £500 debit card transactions 'artificially'? Even if you can that is just £5 per month but you have to pay £3 per month to qualify? Re: savings. I have instant access at Ulster bank giving me 5.2% and chase 5.1%. I don't see Halifax doing anything better than that.

I already have chase giving me 1% cashback on debit card spending and 19 months if 0% interest credit card. I really struggle to see any benefits worth bothering for in the Halifax account.

See the comments above. Usually it's paying into a savings account that accepts debit card transactions, so you effectively pay yourself and can then transfer the money back to where it came from, but still qualify for the reward.

Plenty of good options discussed here in the thread maintained by @Bridlington1

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6445857/savings-investment-dds-and-debit-card-deposits-an-updated-list/p1

It's something additional to have on top of your benefits with Chase, and for me it generates £180 per year for fairly minimal effort so it's nothing to scoff at!

knack92

I usually use credit card payment to cover the £500 spend but it was lower this month and I forgot to do an additional payment. 

Would today be too late because it won't clear in time?

WillPS

knack92 said:

I usually use credit card payment to cover the £500 spend but it was lower this month and I forgot to do an additional payment. 

Would today be too late because it won't clear in time?

It's definitely too late now either way, but the answer is yes - it takes at least 1 working day to get a Visa debit payment to settle. Even if the last day of the month and the next day both fall on working days, and you use a transaction which completes immediately/very quickly, it'll still show as the next month.

I always advocate getting everything done on the 1st or as near as possible to it, including having a brief check of the tracker to see if any Reward Extras need to be renewed before the next 1st of the month comes about.

My wife and I have just done this, securing our £30 worth of Halifax fivers in August.

General_Grant

WillPS said:

knack92 said:

I usually use credit card payment to cover the £500 spend but it was lower this month and I forgot to do an additional payment. 

Would today be too late because it won't clear in time?

It's definitely too late now either way, but the answer is yes - it takes at least 1 working day to get a Visa debit payment to settle. Even if the last day of the month and the next day both fall on working days, and you use a transaction which completes immediately/very quickly, it'll still show as the next month.

I always advocate getting everything done on the 1st or as near as possible to it, including having a brief check of the tracker to see if any Reward Extras need to be renewed before the next 1st of the month comes about.

My wife and I have just done this, securing our £30 worth of Halifax fivers in August.

Getting things done on the 1st (or even 2nd) working day of the month may well mean that the tracker (which you check for renewals coming up) doesn't acknowledge the debits/credits appropriately regarding achievement of the reward (even though the actual system does take them into account).  So, for the Halifax Reward account it may be better to leave things till a little later in the month.

WillPS

General_Grant said:

WillPS said:

knack92 said:

I usually use credit card payment to cover the £500 spend but it was lower this month and I forgot to do an additional payment. 

Would today be too late because it won't clear in time?

It's definitely too late now either way, but the answer is yes - it takes at least 1 working day to get a Visa debit payment to settle. Even if the last day of the month and the next day both fall on working days, and you use a transaction which completes immediately/very quickly, it'll still show as the next month.

I always advocate getting everything done on the 1st or as near as possible to it, including having a brief check of the tracker to see if any Reward Extras need to be renewed before the next 1st of the month comes about.

My wife and I have just done this, securing our £30 worth of Halifax fivers in August.

Getting things done on the 1st (or even 2nd) working day of the month may well mean that the tracker (which you check for renewals coming up) doesn't acknowledge the debits/credits appropriately regarding achievement of the reward (even though the actual system does take them into account).  So, for the Halifax Reward account it may be better to leave things till a little later in the month.

They definitely won't show - but that's irrelevant, because the tracker:

• frequently stops working for extended periods
• has a lag of several working days even when it works
• occasionally incorrectly claims that you're not on track, even when all the conditions have long ago been met

Luckily, as we've comprehensively proven upthread, the tracker is not the last word on whether you will or won't get your reward; so I choose to completely ignore it (other than to see if any reward extras need renewing).

ThePirates

Well !!!!!! off with Halifax, I made a £510 Debit Card transaction on Friday 28th but Halifax say the shop didn't ask for it until today, the 1st, so it's doesn't count for my reward 😞

ForumUser7

ThePirates said:

Well !!!!!! off with Halifax, I made a £510 Debit Card transaction on Friday 28th but Halifax say the shop didn't ask for it until today, the 1st, so it's doesn't count for my reward 😞

It's because it won't have cleared until the next working day (today, 1st July) at the earliest. (https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/80864240/#Comment_80864240)

WillPS

ThePirates said:

Well !!!!!! off with Halifax, I made a £510 Debit Card transaction on Friday 28th but Halifax say the shop didn't ask for it until today, the 1st, so it's doesn't count for my reward 😞

It'll count for this month instead. Sorry if I sound like a broken record, but the only sensible strategy for getting the box ticked is to do it very early in the month, preferably the 1st. Even if the last two days of June were both working days you'd have been massively rolling the dice.

ThePirates

I'd only just received the card...
Never mind, July is in the bag!

BlueonBlue

If you click on the debit card transaction made on the 28th online in your statement, a drop down menu will appear showing the transaction date ie. friday 28th and below that it will show the .....account debited day and date .
This may possibly be on Sat 29th june ? 

Same thing has happened with myself with a fri 28th £500 debit card transaction .....which was debited on Sat 29th .

If your transaction is debited sat 29th june put in a ph call complaint and dont let them politely fob you off until they have paid out .
It may take awhile on the ph to do this so if your bothered chasing it you need to allow time for that ph call.