AMEX Cashback £3000 Spend Requirement

DullGreyGuy

Birdman2015 said:

bagand96 said:

Council Tax? Some councils take Amex.  If you're with Octopus Energy you can add funds to your account with credit card and they take Amex.  Best thing with that route is once you're in credit you can request a refund, and they refund direct to your bank account. Other energy companies may be the same.

The Octopus route backfired a little as I deposited £1000 and requested a £700 refund which they did. Unfortunately they refunded it to AMEX 🙄

AML would say refunding to source is best practice so per your opening post, you can't buy then ask for a refund for it to count. 

Grumpy_chap

Birdman2015 said:

The Octopus route backfired a little as I deposited £1000 and requested a £700 refund which they did. Unfortunately they refunded it to AMEX 🙄

Which seems correct as the retailer would incur fees for the amount paid by card and the refund to card reduces that fee back down.  Otherwise the retailer would be left out of pocket.

The option to pay an energy bill upfront would still be available though if you left the residual £700 as a credit balance in your energy account and the sum reduced over time as you use heating etc.

[Deleted User]

Grumpy_chap said:

Birdman2015 said:

The Octopus route backfired a little as I deposited £1000 and requested a £700 refund which they did. Unfortunately they refunded it to AMEX 🙄

Which seems correct as the retailer would incur fees for the amount paid by card and the refund to card reduces that fee back down.  Otherwise the retailer would be left out of pocket.

The option to pay an energy bill upfront would still be available though if you left the residual £700 as a credit balance in your energy account and the sum reduced over time as you use heating etc.

I doubt this is their concern; it's likely that any Co-op taking Amex for Paypoint transactions are being left out of pocket too.

You can also credit any existing service (e.g. ISP) that takes Amex (or via PayPal) then either let the credit run down and reduce the monthly Direct Debit payment on the account to a bare minimum if they still require a monthly payment.

WillPS

Grumpy_chap said:

Birdman2015 said:

The Octopus route backfired a little as I deposited £1000 and requested a £700 refund which they did. Unfortunately they refunded it to AMEX 🙄

Which seems correct as the retailer would incur fees for the amount paid by card and the refund to card reduces that fee back down.  Otherwise the retailer would be left out of pocket.

The option to pay an energy bill upfront would still be available though if you left the residual £700 as a credit balance in your energy account and the sum reduced over time as you use heating etc.

In my experience, merchants are normally still on the hook for payment fees even when a transaction is refunded (although cancelling a hold is normally free). In fact, in some instances they'll have to pay an additional fee for the refund.

It's just best practice from an AML standpoint to return funds to the same place they were taken from wherever that is possible.

WillPS

[Deleted User] said:

Grumpy_chap said:

Birdman2015 said:

The Octopus route backfired a little as I deposited £1000 and requested a £700 refund which they did. Unfortunately they refunded it to AMEX 🙄

Which seems correct as the retailer would incur fees for the amount paid by card and the refund to card reduces that fee back down.  Otherwise the retailer would be left out of pocket.

The option to pay an energy bill upfront would still be available though if you left the residual £700 as a credit balance in your energy account and the sum reduced over time as you use heating etc.

I doubt this is their concern; it's likely that any Co-op taking Amex for Paypoint transactions are being left out of pocket too.

Source for this?

PayPoint pay a commission % to merchants. One presumes the Co-op Group have negotiated a decent deal, especially since (unlike most PayPoint merchants) they're not using any of their POS equipment

Similarly one presumes the Co-op have a relatively favourable transaction % arranged with their acquiring bank, even for Amex. There are few merchants out there who'll have better scale than they do.

Given the Co-op have total control of their POS equipment I'd expect they'd have blocked off this route if it wasn't in their interest to allow it. It's been there for a long old while...