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Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

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Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#431

Post by AnssiH »

zh3 wrote: post #419
whylo wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've just checked my copy of the email and you're right, the text/plain part only has my name in. The text/html part has the full message though.

That's interesting, mine definitely only has plain text (no text/html, checked via view source etc). Maybe it's a preference I ticked somewhere back in the mists of time.

I also used to tick that preference when a choice was provided, but have stopped doing so after encountering too many cases of text/plain versions being broken one way or another. Not that common, but still too much of a hassle.

Sometimes they are "empty" like here, or contain placeholders in place of the actual data, or just break random features (e.g. eBay prevented other users from sending me photos).

Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#432

Post by throwaway2037 »

wayoutthere wrote: post #403
nicky0 wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is it's now just another country on an equal footing with the rest. Unlike the EU members which have to ask the Commission for permission to scratch their ass.

But they’re not on equal footing with the global superpowers — the EU has significant leverage by representing nearly a billion people. The UK had an outsized voice in EU politics, where now it’s just a small fish in an ocean of sharks. The UK is basically Mexico now. You saw how well their trade negotiations with the EU went; expect the US and China to walk all over them too.

Zero trolling here. You wrote: > My rule of thumb is about 500M. (Google says 445M.) Where is the other 500M?

Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#433

Post by tialaramex »

ricardobayes wrote: post #413
heurisko wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Never owned a credit card, don't have the slightest wish to do so. I own a credit card, as you get additional consumer protections using a credit card rather than a debit card in the UK. Pay it off in full every month. No problem.

It is an insurance policy then. Have you calculated how much this insurance cost you? Credit card fees, the inevitable 'forgot to pay it off' etc.

There is no "inevitable forgot to pay it off". Last century when I was old enough I got a credit card and the bank set it to automatically pay off every month. The bank says to itself, full balance of this account this month is say £462.83 and must be paid on or before the 7th of December, then it sets a transfer to occur from my checking account for the amount £462.83 on the 7th of December. No "forgetting" possible.

Indeed if say an IT problem occurs and they can't do that transfer under UK law they eat the fees incurred. "The customer must be made whole".

As to fees, the merchant doesn't have to accept cards, as we see with Amazon, if they don't like the fees. Why should ordinary consumers care? When we were part of the EU the cards couldn't charge excessive fees, now Brexit allowed them to unlock this potential source of profit.

Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#434

Post by PeterisP »

fredoralive wrote: post #71
jdiez17 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what's not to like? Well, the predatory business model, for one. The reason your credit card company can offer you "better consumer protection" and other benefits is because they count on a percentage of people not paying off their debt in time (and thus making more money out of them). Also, I personally wouldn't want "better consumer protection" to be mediated by a private company. That should just be the default.

In a UK context, the "better consumer protection" comes from the Consumer Credit Act 1974, not the banks goodwill. (Although the time my debit card did get stolen somehow, my bank did refund out of goodwill presmably becuase they didn't want to lose a customer).

" the time my debit card did get stolen somehow, my bank did refund out of goodwill" - IMHO not, depending on when that happened, the bank would not have a choice because of EU payment service directive which extends similar (but not exactly the same) protections to all payment instruments including debit cards.

Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#435

Post by Carstairs »

Teandw wrote: post #379
PeterisP wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brexit is the gift that keeps on giving!

This is only affecting Amazon in this instance as it's caused by Amazon's tax avoidance schemes. If they weren't deep into tax avoidance schemes, this wouldn't have affected them. Not really due to Brexit. Nice attempt at pushing your agenda though.

Yeah this is almost hilarious. One of the largest retailers in the world unable to continue with a tax avoidance scheme but clearly the bad thing here is brexit!

Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#436

Post by smaryjerry »

GoodbyeMrChips wrote: post #422
ricardobayes wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an insurance policy then. Have you calculated how much this insurance cost you? Credit card fees, the inevitable 'forgot to pay it off' etc.

In the UK, credit cards are free (some specialist cards aside), including an automatic direct debit so you never forget to pay it off, so you never get charged interest. Never paid a penny in fees or interest in over 15 years.... and an annual statement of fees (issued by law) informs me of this fact each year.

Same in the US. Credit cards are so convenient and free and come with rewards. Of course most people don’t realize until they are older that all that ‘money back rewards’ was essentially paid by themselves originally, by the vendor paying the credit card company a fee on every transaction. The issue is that credit card companies build in requirements to be endorsed that they don’t charge different prices for cash only transactions often.

Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#437

Post by AnssiH »

stevesimmons wrote: post #250
cameronh90 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I didn't even know you could use a debit card," Is there ever a situation that you can use a credit card but not a debit card? There are occasionally places that only accept debit cards, but I think the only time I've had a debit card refused was when hiring a car.

The reason for that is the car rental company does a "pre-auth" that ties up some of your credit limit (reduces your "open to buy" amount), in case you damage the car or don't return it with a full tank of petrol. Hotels will sometimes do the same for a room night plus potential minibar charges. The pre-auth gets released when you make the payment at the end of the car rental period.

"Pre-auth" works the same way for VISA/MC debit and VISA/MC credit.

The amount is (temporarily) deducted from my available balance when I use a debit card, just like it is deducted from the credit limit when I use a credit card.

Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#438

Post by ComputerGuru »

simfree wrote: post #399
ComputerGuru wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Amazon branded credit card is a MasterCard in the UK. So Visa raises its rates to match MC, but AMZ has a special relationship with the latter.

Note that this special relationship only likely applies to transactions that use the Amazon MasterCard on Amazon.com, and MasterCards issued by other companies still impose full rates. Costco ran into this with American Express, though in retrospect the move to Visa seems like a worse move (more non-Costco Visa cards in circulation).

> only likely applies

I just want to stress that we both can only speculate.

Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#439

Post by goodcanadian »

cutler wrote: post #417
PeterisP wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brexit is the gift that keeps on giving!

Amen. The great British public still have their heads in the sand in the wake of lorry driver shortages, nursing staff shortages and doctor shortages. You have to laugh or tear your hair out when the Home Office offers a 3-month reprieve hoping to lure exiled EU workers back to the UK.

Polls have shown that a majority of "the great British public" now believe Brexit was a mistake, so I don't think it is fair to say they "still have their heads in the sand."

Re: Amazon to stop accepting UK Visa credit cards

#440

Post by r00fus »

goodcanadian wrote: post #439
cutler wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen. The great British public still have their heads in the sand in the wake of lorry driver shortages, nursing staff shortages and doctor shortages. You have to laugh or tear your hair out when the Home Office offers a 3-month reprieve hoping to lure exiled EU workers back to the UK.

Polls have shown that a majority of "the great British public" now believe Brexit was a mistake, so I don't think it is fair to say they "still have their heads in the sand."

Until the Tories and nationalists that pushed Brexit face consequences, you can still argue the public has their head in the sand.
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