Post Office Credit Card vs Nationwide

Dopple

I'm in dispute with Nationwide regarding charges on my bank account.
I also have a Nationwide Credit Card and often use it to buy items online from America as they don't add a foreign transaction fee. If I bin Nationwide and have to
get another Credit Card does the Post Office card do exactly what the Nationwide does? Is it better or worse than the Nationwide card?

Cheers.

dzug

I believe the PO allow a longer period from statement to payment date - otherwise nothing discernible in it

It's Mastercard, not Visa, if that's relevant

jinkssick

Yeh your second best bet is PO.

martin.

The outright winner is the Post Office* card which has no foreign exchange loading anywhere in the world, and charges £2 or 2% for withdrawing cash from an ATM.

dzug

jinkssick wrote: »

Yeh your second best bet is PO.

martin.

The outright winner is the Post Office* card which has no foreign exchange loading anywhere in the world, and charges £2 or 2% for withdrawing cash from an ATM.

You've missed a point:

Only sterling amounts may be loaded or reloaded onto the Card. Depending on the currency of the Card these amounts may then be converted into US Dollars or euro at the rate of exchange selected by Post Office Ltd. at the date of loading or reloading funds; the exchange rate will be notified to the person loading the Card.

I'll bet that rate is nearer the PO cash rate of 5% (roughly) loading than the no loading used by Nationwide or the PO credit card.

And that's ignoring all the other fees on the card.

Not saying it's a bad product, but it's not the cheapest or the best.

jinkssick

Well he was asking about CC but of course the outright winner is the debit Nationwide card. Truly fantastic, do note though to let them know beforehand that you will be away as they may block the card thinking its fraud.

Biggles

dzug wrote: »

You've missed a point:

Only sterling amounts may be loaded or reloaded onto the Card. Depending on the currency of the Card these amounts may then be converted into US Dollars or euro at the rate of exchange selected by Post Office Ltd. at the date of loading or reloading funds; the exchange rate will be notified to the person loading the Card.

I'll bet that rate is nearer the PO cash rate of 5% (roughly) loading than the no loading used by Nationwide or the PO credit card.

And that's ignoring all the other fees on the card.

Not saying it's a bad product, but it's not the cheapest or the best.

Agreed that the PO prepay Travel Money Card is not good value, but the link did in fact lead to the PO Credit Card

Ding~dong_5

As I use credit cards abroad frequently, I recently decided to apply for a Post Office Platinum card thinking it would be a better option than the Nationwide card which has started to apply a 1% loading on their card for use outside Europe.

So I decided to conduct my own experiment and used 3 different cards on the 18 May in Seattle, Washington........ and here are the exchange rates that have been applied :

Nationwide Visa............ $ @ 1.53286
Post Office M/C............ $ @ 1.52303
Tesco Visa.................. $ @ 1.48436

As you can see the Tesco card (as expected) was the worst rate, but the Nationwide card still came out on top despite the new 1% loading. So as suggested by one of the previous posts it would appear the Post Office's exchange rate is not that favourable.

Obviously this is only one example in one country, but I will try them again somewhere else soon (when I can next afford to use 3 credit cards in one day !!)

Anyone else tried a comparison ?

Degenerate

Ding~dong wrote: »

As you can see the Tesco card (as expected) was the worst rate, but the Nationwide card still came out on top despite the new 1% loading. So as suggested by one of the previous posts it would appear the Post Office's exchange rate is not that favourable.

How much time passed between the Post Office and Nationwide transactions? Are you sure it couldn't have been caused by fluctuation during the day, or delays in the timing of the transactions being applied? (I've seen international transactions take a week to hit my bank account before - a week in which the pound plunged, so I was not very pleased.)

Ding~dong_5

Hi Degenerate,

Yep fair comment, I had considered that......... but there was no more than 2 hours between transactions, and both of them were applied to their respective accounts the same day.

Also I've just worked out the difference between the two and it's almost exactly 2/3rds of 1%...... which is a bit suspect. So if you included the 1% surcharge the Nationwide is meant to be levying that would tend to suggest the Post Office is loading their rate by between 1 1/2- 2% somewhere ?

Additionally I had used the Post Office card the previous day when a rate of 1.5137 was used........ and I know it doesn't necessarily apply, but that points to the rate improving against the $ at that time.

gt94sss2

Ding~dong wrote: »

As I use credit cards abroad frequently, I recently decided to apply for a Post Office Platinum card thinking it would be a better option than the Nationwide card which has started to apply a 1% loading on their card for use outside Europe.

Worth noting that Nationwide's fee is currently 0.84% - its only 1% from 1 July.

Regards
Sunil

hippey

It looks like the Tesco value included their loading, or was that charged on the next line?

The values actually change every minute, I have three transactions that were carried out in a retail outlet, they all differ a little, even though they were seconds apart.