Metropol

You don't get as many bonus points as you used to with the credit card (I bought a TV off my points back when you could double on electrical).

WillPS wrote: Fri 10 Jan, 2020 10.00I just hope they don't kill my much nicer looking "Premium" one off yet (closed to new applicants in 2018).

I totally agree that the Tesco Premium C/c is one of the best things about Tesco, and is even better now they reduced the annual fee as well as the spend amount to qualify for the clubcard point bonus - it's pretty easy to top up Tesco spend with gift cards (even if the 150 points for £50 gravy train has ended, it's still not a bad return!)

Their customer service is pretty poor though - there is no way to track the Tesco spend meaning you have to do it yourself by downloading statements and adding up, and they changed how financial-category transactions were processed with absolutely notice leading to me incurring interest charges.

cdd wrote: Fri 10 Jan, 2020 11.24

WillPS wrote: Fri 10 Jan, 2020 10.00I just hope they don't kill my much nicer looking "Premium" one off yet (closed to new applicants in 2018).

I totally agree that the Tesco Premium C/c is one of the best things about Tesco, and is even better now they reduced the annual fee as well as the spend amount to qualify for the clubcard point bonus - it's pretty easy to top up Tesco spend with gift cards (even if the 150 points for £50 gravy train has ended, it's still not a bad return!)

Their customer service is pretty poor though - there is no way to track the Tesco spend meaning you have to do it yourself by downloading statements and adding up, and they changed how financial-category transactions were processed with absolutely notice leading to me incurring interest charges.

Yepp, all that you said. I particularly miss the Christmas magazine with the extra points voucher; you could really go to town on that.

The inability to track spend is a joke. I've taken to buying Tesco gift cards in £100 increments, then just counting those receipts.

As for the Curve thing... yeah well the way that was dropped just highlights what a joke the service is on that card. I was quite vocal about it over on their customer forums, for what good it did.

WillPS wrote: Fri 10 Jan, 2020 10.00 I just hope they don't kill my much nicer looking "Premium" one off yet (closed to new applicants in 2018).

The premium offering used to be Tesco Finest branded - posts on their forums suggest that they've been duly renewing them even though they've been long discontinued. The artwork on this page shows them with the pre-2005 Finest logo and post-2010 Tesco Bank one.

My Aunt still had one of the old chargecards a few years back.

Pete wrote: Fri 10 Jan, 2020 22.44 My Aunt still had one of the old chargecards a few years back.

I think my mum might still have an M&S chargecard, which stopped making sense about 15 years ago.

On a tangent, I love how shit the M&S debit card looks. It's kind of like one of those 'Britain is great' wraparound front pages the Sun occasionally do.

thegeek wrote: Fri 10 Jan, 2020 22.36

WillPS wrote: Fri 10 Jan, 2020 10.00 I just hope they don't kill my much nicer looking "Premium" one off yet (closed to new applicants in 2018).

The premium offering used to be Tesco Finest branded - posts on their forums suggest that they've been duly renewing them even though they've been long discontinued. The artwork on this page shows them with the pre-2005 Finest logo and post-2010 Tesco Bank one.

That's a different product actually - the Finest Mastercard World product was a rouse Tesco Bank came up with in the days before the EU cap came in, when different types of Mastercard would attract a different interchange rate (the % Visa, Mastercard etc. can indirectly charge the merchant, some of which is shared with the card issuer).

A cunning plan - except it turned out that whatever gain Tesco Bank made from being able to collect higher fees from merchants was quickly negated by the extra fees Tesco Stores had to pay for processing them; and naturally Tesco Bank Credit Card customers tend to spend a lot in Tesco Stores.

You can read a little about it here: https://www.headforpoints.com/2013/06/0 ... astercard/

It was offered from the mid 00s to 2013, going by the date of that article. They are still renewed and you do see them out and about occasionally - normally with the globe design (I can't be the only person to judge people based on the design of their payment card, can I?) . To all intents and purposes they function exactly the same as the standard cards now, design aside.

The Tesco Premium Credit Card was introduced in 2017. The key features of that card were a fairly generous earning rate along with a bonus dump of points if you spend £5k at Tesco inside the year. Unfortunately they also packed in a load of travel 'perks' that nobody really wanted - insurance, some weak voucher to use at BA, a fairly useless promo on forex at Tesco Bank Travel Money etc, which meant the card hit the market with a whopping £150 annual fee which made it pretty tricky to justify.

To try and gain some traction they offered a load of sign up incentives ranging from 5000 Clubcard points to £100 cashback. Of course, this led to people taking the card for a year then dropping it like a hot stone.

The card was closed off to new applicants in 2018, Thankfully they have subsequently removed all the travel bloat and dropped the annual fee to a far more acceptable £36.

thegeek wrote: Sat 11 Jan, 2020 06.41

Pete wrote: Fri 10 Jan, 2020 22.44 My Aunt still had one of the old chargecards a few years back.

I think my mum might still have an M&S chargecard, which stopped making sense about 15 years ago.

On a tangent, I love how shit the M&S debit card looks. It's kind of like one of those 'Britain is great' wraparound front pages the Sun occasionally do.

It really is awful isn't it? It reminds me of the sort of collages you had to do in year 7 art.

I had an Egg MasterCard World card, which I used for work expenses back in the day. It was brilliant, generous introductory and ongoing cashback, good travel insurance, missed event ticket cover, extended warranties for electricals and white goods and no fee.

The Egg product became Barclaycard MasterCard World when the accounts were sold by Citigroup, then dropped for a two card Barclaycard thing where you got a MasterCard (0.5% cashback) and an AMEX (1% cashback) on the same account. It was confusing. Now it's a straightforward 0.5% cashback VISA card.

MasterCard World was fun while it lasted:

WillPS wrote: Sat 11 Jan, 2020 10.20 That's a different product actually

I could have been clearer that I knew the difference between their premium offering and their Premium offering, but then you wouldn't have given such an excellent potted history of their products!

The design of the Platinum card does appear to date from at least 2004, judging by the Internet Archive:

Serious nostalgic flashback with that font and the cartoon people they used to use on marketing material.

scottishtv wrote: Sat 11 Jan, 2020 15.55 I had an Egg MasterCard World card, which I used for work expenses back in the day. It was brilliant, generous introductory and ongoing cashback, good travel insurance, missed event ticket cover, extended warranties for electricals and white goods and no fee.

The Egg product became Barclaycard MasterCard World when the accounts were sold by Citigroup, then dropped for a two card Barclaycard thing where you got a MasterCard (0.5% cashback) and an AMEX (1% cashback) on the same account. It was confusing. Now it's a straightforward 0.5% cashback VISA card.

MasterCard World was fun while it lasted:

The sad thing is that 0.5% cashback card is more or less the best still out there for straightforward UK spend non-Amex cashback. I expect it'll be curtailed before too long - probably to the same 0.25% rate they offer new customers.

Even the Amex products are weakening.

Philip wrote: Sat 11 Jan, 2020 23.33 Serious nostalgic flashback with that font and the cartoon people they used to use on marketing material.

Aye, they had something similar for Tesco.net too IIRC?

thegeek wrote: Sat 11 Jan, 2020 20.31

WillPS wrote: Sat 11 Jan, 2020 10.20 That's a different product actually

I could have been clearer that I knew the difference between their premium offering and their Premium offering, but then you wouldn't have given such an excellent potted history of their products!

Glad to be of service, apologies for being picky.