Visa Electron
Not really sure where this goes so i think i'll put it here.
Has anyone else been sent one of those crappy visa electron cards from Halifax bank. Well i have and its really pissed me off cause when i got the card a letter thing came with it and it said that you can use it in all shops and use it on all internet sites to pay for CDs, train tickets ets...yet when it came to buying these things on the net i had to use my dad credit card coz i cunt use my dam card and i cant use it any shops and its really pissed me off. So i went down to the bank to ask for a notmal card and they wunt give me one so im changing banks.
Re: Visa Electron
More and more places are accepting Electron and Solo but as already said until you are a bit older you'll have a job getting your bank to give you anything else.
Re: Visa Electron
Solo is more widely acceped than Visa Electron. You should change to a bank which will give you a Solo card, such as HSBC or NatWest.
On the Halifax issue, does this mean that as Solo has been replaced with Visa Electron, Switch will be replaced with Visa Delta? Banks usually adopt the following policies for issuing cards:
Halifax and Bank of Scotland were seperate companies. They merged to form HBOS unfortunately Halifax were in the Switch stable and Bank of Scotland were in the Visa one. They had three options,
1. Stay with two payment systems
2. Switch exclusively to Switch
3. Move exclusively to Visa
they have decided to follow option three so the Halifax customers have had new cards issued to them (including me). However it's not all been one way. Bank of Scotland customers have had their internet banking system closed down and have now been migrated to the Halifax one.
All of their (HBOS) customers therefore have had some change either to their payment cards or Internet Banking.
I do however believe that acceptance by online and offline merchants of Visa Electon cards is being expanded.
The major hurdle being that the banks have to positively verify the transaction before it proceeds and I am led to understand that the amount of verification for Visa Electron traffic is greater - I think all of these transactions are routed through Visa International in the US at the moment. The switch process I think is done wholly within the UK. (if this is wrong I'd like to be corrected)
So either move accounts to a Switch bank or wait and hope that Visa Electron is accepted by your retailer as soon as possible.
A quick e-mail to HBOS indicating where you could use Solo before and where Electron isn't available might help too.
In internet banking
Click Contact Us (left hand side menu)
then
General FAQ's in the pop-up
then
Can I e-mail you?
from the presented list.
Re: Visa Electron
Can you believe that Boots doesn't accept Visa Electron or Solo? I mean how manyy pll have probably waited ten minutes in their queues then have the woman say this? It is pathetic & even though American Express is the biggest one, they don't even take that and a coupke of petrol stations that I have been in don't either.
It all goes down the same wire doesn't it- and I thought with Solo you gotta have the money in the bank anyway, so what the problem?
Re: Visa Electron
Ive changed to HSBC bow cause they let me have a solo card which is more widely accepted than a visa electron. And i get a cheque book but i dont think i'll use that cause if i got a card then whats the point.
Re: Visa Electron
Although i could use my abbey visa electron for most things i bought, it did piss me off mucho, so a month ago i went along to the bank and asked if i could have just a visa debit card, they checked my account n stuff and a week later i got a new card. Mucho better now ive got a card that aint a pain in the arse esp when it comes to buying stuff online.
Ugh, they're rubbish
I used to have Visa Electron, and I couldn't use it anywhere. We don't accept it either at Wickes (where I work) and it causes a lotta problems, people always complain - or LIE and tell me that they've used it here before....fookin' liars, the computers won't let us! HAHA.
Re: Visa Electron
I received a Visa Electron card from Halifax the other day to use stead of my Solo. Yesterday I went to town. I closed that account. Solo is much better. Get an account at HSBC. I've had a solo account with them for 2 or so years and they are brilliant.
Cards
I've never had Visa Electron, and Frankly i think it's crap!! It cannot be manually entered if it fails to swipe, so if you break the magnetic strip you're screwed until your bank replaces it! American Express is becoming less popular in the UK because of its HUGE commission fee. Ryanair are in the process of removing American Express from it's accepted payment method due to the fact they're charged twice as much to process the card as they are with Mastercard/Visa. In terms of Cards I have, I have Switch (soon to be Maestro) Mastercard(s) from HSBC and Bank of America, I also have Visa from Ryanair and Allied Irish. At the end of the day a debit card is a debit card, but Solo is much more widely accepted than Visa Electron!
(used to work there!)
bastards
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