Tesco treating *all* Curve activity as cash advances

  • scragend's Avatar
    Thanks Tesco for responding to my written complaint by sending me a letter which is just a word for word copy of the generic message on this thread. That's nothing I didn't already know and does not address the specific points in my complaint. But whatever...

    No signs of any refunds yet. Since all this started I've had my statement with a nice chunk of interest added to it. I'm on a 0% purchase rate so you better had be refunding this interest as well as the transaction fees. It has been stated upthread that the interest will be refunded, but a lot of Tesco's comments have only referred to refunding "the fees". It's also interesting (no pun intended) that I was charged interest in the first place - as soon as I realised what was happening with the Curve transactions I made a payment to my credit card to cover the cost of the transactions and the fees. Shouldn't that payment have been allocated to the highest interest rate-bearing transactions first? The statement has allocated it to the 0% purchases balance and not to the "cash transactions" (which are all Curve). I have no confidence at all in Tesco anymore after the way they have handled this whole affair - you've basically dropped the ball and have tried to blame your customers for "being confused".
  • RossM's Avatar
    Former Community Manager
    Hi , we will be waiving any interest which is relative to Curve transactions. However, if you don't regularly pay your account in full, interest will be charged on all other items on your statement as normal. As payments are made in arrears each month, any payments made will go to items on your most recent statement and once this has been settled anything subsequent will be credited to the items with the highest rate of interest since the last statement date.
  • WillPS's Avatar
    Window shopper
    Lots of promises and very little action going on regarding these fees. I've escalated my complaint to the financial ombudsmen in the meantime. I would encourage others to do the same.
  • ScottW's Avatar
    Employee
    I'm sorry to hear that you've had to escalate your complaint . We've begun to refund customers who were affected by the charges, you should see the refunds appear in your recent transactions over the next few days.
  • WillPS's Avatar
    Window shopper
    Well not really. If you actually cared you'd have responded with something other than "we're not upholding your complaint because we acted fairly". You could have, for example, provided me with a copy of one of these letters you have supposedly sent me (with my name and address on, of course). Or you could have extended some good will of some kind. And I don't mean good will in the form of stopping charges going forward and a vague promise that previous charges will be stopped, and then pretend like you're doing us all a massive favour with that. You've had ample opportunity to put things right for me and have made no attempt to do so. So yeah, you can keep your apology. "Premium" Credit Card. LOL.
  • alextw's Avatar
    wrote:
    I have no confidence at all in Tesco anymore after the way they have handled this whole affair - you've basically dropped the ball and have tried to blame your customers for "being confused".This. This summarizes perfectly the attitude, professionalism and competence of Tesco (Bank). I also just got a Tesco Bank and a Curve card and was planning to only carry my Curve card, proxying to all my credit and debit cards (becase -surprise, surprise- that's what Curve is for). What Tesco could learn is that despite "pausing" fees for Curve, virtually none of the people here will be able to trust Tesco again in the future. I certainly can't. I came to this thread linked from other finance forums. The issue is now fairly widely known. Well done. Shining example of greed backfiring.
  • m4a02's Avatar
    wrote:
    I’m really sorry for the lack of updates over the last few days. We’ve been taking all of your comments and questions on board and we wanted to make sure that we were doing the right thing for our customers in this situation. All of our credit card customers were notified in April that we were making changes to our credit card fees and specifically how non-purchase transactions, like topping up a pre-paid card or buying foreign currency outside of Tesco Bank, were now going to be treated as cash transactions. Curve customers using a Tesco Bank Credit Card to fund their account were charged this fee as the card operates in the manner of a prepaid card, where two consecutive transactions take place with the Tesco Bank Credit Card funding an e-money account held by Curve that then immediately passes payment through to the merchant. We recognise that the application of this fee when a Tesco Bank credit card is used to fund Curve accounts has created some confusion for customers. We apologise to customers for this confusion. As a result, we have chosen to pause the charging of this fee in relation to Curve customers while we review this matter. Any customer who has been charged to date will be refunded, and should we make any future changes we will let our customers know.https://blog.imaginecurve.com/introd...on-processing/ https://blog.imaginecurve.com/our-ce...ng-technology/ Following the above recent changes to the way Curve transactions are processed, the merchant category code will now be passed onto yourselves and you will be able to differentiate between standard purchases and cash withdrawals. I spoke with one of your customer advisors who advised that this means the cash transaction charges will only apply to cash withdrawals, and not to purchases of goods or services. Could you please confirm Tesco's current position with regards to purchases via Curve, whether any cash transaction charges apply, and from what date any changes may be effective?Thank you
  • KeiganM's Avatar
    Your Community Expert
    Tesco Bank will be charging these cash transaction fees in line with Curve’s change in how they process payments. This change has come from Curve and will be the same across all credit card providers, where cash fees apply.
  • m4a02's Avatar
    wrote:
    Tesco Bank will be charging these cash transaction fees in line with Curve’s change in how they process payments. This change has come from Curve and will be the same across all credit card providers, where cash fees apply. Thank you I understand cash transaction fees will apply, in accordance with your terms and conditions, to cash withdrawals and gambling transactions etc. Could you please clarify whether or not you will now be applying cash transaction charges to purchases of goods and services made via curve, which would not otherwise incur such charges if the purchase had not had been made via curve?Thank you
  • alextw's Avatar
    Short answer is they can't any more. Each transaction has an associated MCC code which identifies the type of transaction (purchase for travel, purchase for other category, money services, cash withdrawal, etc etc - there are hundreds of them). Withdrawing cash and topping up prepaid cards have different MCC codes (if I recall, there are only about 3 MCC codes that fall under "cash advance" territory). If you pay using the actual credit card, the merhant sends the MCC code to your card issuer, who can then apply fees to their will based on what's stipulated in your CC contract and the transaction type identified by the MCC code. If you use Curve, then the merchant sends the MCC to Curve, and then Curve is responsible to tell the card issuer "some" MCC. Until recently, Curve was always passing the same MCC code, which was not a cash advance MCC code but not a purchase one either (it was a generic "other" type to save you the jargon), regardless of the type of purchase you made with the merchant. Tesco got greedy and upset about this not being able to "easily" distinguish cash advances from purchases, so they wanted to charge everyone using Curve, despite the fact that the MCC code was not a cash advance one. Legally that's problematic, but because the said transaction type is neither purchase, cash advance, money transfer or any other specifically mentioned in the contract you signed with Tesco, they took advantage of the grey area, got greedy, and introduced fees ... and is why I'll never trust or like Tesco despite having reversed their decision. What changed recently is that Curve will pass on to the card issuer the MCC passed on by the merchant. So Tesco will now receive different MCC codes, the original ones, pertaining to the transaction you made, including cash advances, and thus has no longer any legal instruments (*) to apply fees for transactions that are purchases since now said transactions are clearly identified as such and covered by your contract with tesco. (*) famous last words? challenge banks on greed? that's one challenge they're happy to take on I think