Amazon tells folks it will stop accepting UK Visa credit cards via weird empty email Amazon has confirmed it will no longer accept payment via Visa credit cards issued in the United Kingdom after several Reg readers wrote in complaining of a cryptic message they'd been sent this morning. The online sales giant has indicated the move was "due to the high fees Visa charges for processing credit card transactions …
(Mine was blank)
Presumably about half their revenues come through Visa so I can believe that even a tiny reduction in the charges means quite a lot to Amazon.
However, I am really surprised Amazon chose to take this public. They obviously have really fallen out with Visa and want to put enormous pressure on them (knowing that when Visa cave they will end up having to give all their other big customers some further discount as well due to the publicity).
But I would have thought Amazon risked impact on their Christmas business due to people misunderstanding that their cards will not work now, or that if they use a Visa card they will have to pay in full in January, or something. Even 2% of people misunderstanding the message could do more damage to Amazon's Christmas revenues than they will win from Visa.
I had better order some popcorn to watch this play out. Although I do business with both of them, I can't really work out which one I want to lose more! I wonder if Amazon sell popcorn...
There's no way on earth Amazon will be getting either (A) a running history of my transactions with what is basically their competition or (B) access to my credit account. I'm also not inclined to obtain another card.
I generally check with other retailers before purchasing anything of substantial value so the easiest option for me is to stop using Amazon*.
Prime video has some serious competition so I don't think I'd miss anything interesting in the long term either.
* Next day delivery is nice but rarely a must have and hardly exclusive.
Actually their card is excellent. I took one out a couple of months ago, set it as the default payment on Amazon and also linked it to my Google Pay. It has become my daily "go to" card.
It offers me an SMS if I spend over a certain amount (which I've chosen) and has the best website of all my cards, with all transactions so far appearing on the account within seconds of using it.
And to address what another poster said, I doubt Amazon can see all your transactions because, I called them to query something and because it was card-related, they transferred me to New Day who are the actual card issuer. They're also very helpful.
Some of us would require more than "I doubt" when dealing with companies that hoover up data into massive databases of information on people that has previously only existed when countries national security apparatus had reason to suspect that you were a spy.
The difference being that the national security apparatus only used it in a limited number of cases for a specific purpose, and while they might have kept the information, generally the only time you'd be aware of it was if you were requesting some form of top secret security clearance, which is to say that nobody ever had any real reason to care.
These days companies gather far more information than security services ever aspired to obtaining. They probably know more about every part of your life than you can readily recall. It's also likely that they will sell this information or any part of it to anybody interested in purchasing it either now or in the future with unknown and unknowable consequences.
This being the case, "I doubt" what a corporation can do is not good enough for those of us who wish to maintain a level of privacy in vague approximation to that which existed when we grew up.
"Some of us would require more than "I doubt" when dealing with companies that hoover up data into massive databases of information on people that has previously only existed when countries national security apparatus had reason to suspect that you were a spy."
If true, then why are you people using credit cards in the first place??! Your credit card company has more information on you, thanks to you people flicking that credit card out for £5 lattes, than Amazon will have in decades.
Never you mind Google with your web searches, Gmail, collaboration systems, ad tracking and worse, embedded cellphone telemetry.
You won't complain about them but will complain about Amazon, plus even the HINT of government data collection.
> Your credit card company has more information on you, thanks to you people flicking that credit card out for £5 lattes, than Amazon will have in decades.
Err, no. Not by a long shot.
The data that banks and credit card companies collect has been very well-regulated for decades. Whereas the likes of Amazon, Google and "Meta" collect unregulated gigabytes of data about you all the time, and abuse that data to model and manipulate you.
I agree with the OP: Credit card data is far more dangerous in the hands of Amazon than it is in the hands of Mastercard or Visa, who are only allowed to use it to compute a credit score.
Hopefully Amazon would be subject to the same regulation, but I trust them a lot less than I would trust a labrador with my lunch.
'Err, no. Not by a long shot."
You DO realize how much information is indeed given by" just" your credit card transaction, right??
With every transaction your credit card company knows:
- your preferred shopping source (the merchant)
- your location AND the exact time you were at this location, therefore,
- your movement history (vacation? We know where you were. Visiting family? We know that, too)
- an average estimate, based upon your previous purchase histories, of what you often purchase (a purchase at the petrol station was for petrol, the weekly purchase at Aldi's was for your groceries)
- for many individuals, joined up with the CC's bonus plan, exact topics such as travel plans as you redeem credit card bonus points for travel ticket value exchange
- both some of your likes and dislikes, as they process your refund returns
- your current credit rating (discount APR, standard, or higher?)
Should I go on?
Somehow Amazon has wondrous information on you but your BANK does not? How do you think the bank makes various offers to you of new credit cards, bonus offers, discounts and new "products" if they aren't doing accessory processing on the information you been providing to them? Remember Wells Fargo??
I am sorry my friend, but you are living in denial, believing that one Big Business has less interest in milking your data for every drop it's worth than another.
It may be true that the credit card companies do get this information, however Amazon are in a position to actually leverage it as they are also the shopping portal and are also a filter as to what they present to you on screen as, "suggestions," etc. - Visa aren't in much of a position to influence whether I go to Starbucks or Costa.
My current credit card is linked to my bank and I have all the protection but none of the usage fees and interest. As long as it's paid off in full every month I don't even have to pay a penny to have it in my purse... and I still get the statutory protections... and I don't see myself getting that from any other vendor because otherwise they'd never earn anything from my side of the transaction.
So if Amazon don't want my card... that's their choice. It's also my choice to shop somewhere else but still continue to data mine their site for price comparisons, reviews, etc.
“ My current credit card is linked to my bank and I have all the protection but none of the usage fees and interest. As long as it's paid off in full every month I don't even have to pay a penny to have it in my purse... and I still get the statutory protections... and I don't see myself getting that from any other vendor because otherwise they'd never earn anything from my side of the transaction.”
Care to name and shame your provider?
I have a number of credit and charge cards covering the main processors. Amex platinum & BA credit cards, Amex charge card (I’m hoarding points), visa credit card, Mastercard credit card, 3 x visa debit cards.
There where more but every now and then I have a cull of cards I no longer use.
They are all paid off by direct debit so I’ve not paid interest in ~20+ years.
I’ve paid for some Amex cards in the past while I’ve accumulated companion flights and lounge access which has been useful.
The best provider by far has been Amex, as a teenager I was lucky to have one for emergencies and whenever I lost it ( frequently) even on holiday, I’d get a replacement within a day, but typically whenever I could make it to their bureau.
I literally never leave home without it.
Well, it's with my bank, but it is through VISA credit.
A few people are talking about Amex now. I will need to re-negotiate my mortgage down the line anyway, by which time there will be a change in interest rates and hopefully that means savings accounts will start to return interest...
...so I might change bank to the same one as my mortgage provider if they do a deal where the savings/current account is linked to the interest charged on the mortgage... and then who knows what the state of play will be.
I do have a debit card on the account, again via Visa, and I could hook that up to Amazon and get around the situation, but I don't particularly want to. If someone gets into my Amazon account they could totally wreck my daily banking account and then it would be a nightmare to put right during which time bills aren't being paid, etc.
But I'm not going to mess around with my financial set up because of a fight between Amazon and Visa. Sorry Amazon... you lose this round.
Err, yes, that's a few kilobytes of data per day, at best.
And while they (Mastercard/Visa/My Bank) might know the different shops that I frequent and how much I spend, they don't get enough data to properly analyse the things that I buy.
TESCO, Chipping Soddington, 53.21 GBP, Friday 13 April, 18:36
This gives them a very approximate location, i.e. country and vicinity, but it doesn't give any details of what I bought (though it does for Tesco, if and only if I use a Clubcard) or the exact coordinates of where I was. And my credit rating is literally THEIR legitimate business.
Whereas (for most people) Amazon collects: Their exact GPS coordinates at all times (via the App on their phone), a picture of their face whenever they enter their own home (via Amazon Ring), potentially anything they say in their private home (via Amazon Echo/Alexa/Spot), every exact product they buy, every product they have hovered over while scrolling and might buy, every product they have reviewed and they way they form sentences in such reviews, any websites that they visit without clearing Amazon's tracking cookies in their browser, any other apps they use in their phone (via Android/Apple tracking APIs which cannot be cleared/disabled), etc etc.
And for those poor sods who are unlucky enough to work for Amazon or one of its many subsidiaries, partners and customer companies (e.g. Deliveroo) then they are surveilled every second of their waking (and probably sleeping too) lives.
Meanwhile Facebook, Google, Microsoft et al are all competing to collect even more data. And they all use this data (at great expense to the planet) to build yet more power and more influence over everyone's daily life.
In other words, I would not trust Amazon or any of the aforementioned tech monstrosities with one iota of well-labeled concise data of the kind that I trust my credit card company with.
And that's not to say that I am a fan of the credit card duopoly that is Mastercard/Visa. I just trust them an order of magnitude more than I trust Amazon, because they have been around for longer and as such, our laws and regulations are well-established to stop any funny business from them.
Never you mind Google with your web searches, Gmail, collaboration systems, ad tracking and worse, embedded cellphone telemetry.You won't complain about them but will complain about Amazon, plus even the HINT of government data collection.
I actually complain about all of them. I also take quite practical measures to avoid them as much as possible; relatively few of my web searches go through google.
I don't use Gmail; like a good half of people reading this I have my own domain name and adequate email available through that which doesn't get data mined for value by anybody but myself.
My collaboration system with my wife revolves around talking to her, or scribbled notes held to the fridge with a magnet.
Adtracking can do it's worst with adblock installed.
And finally embedded cellphone telemetry is welcome to get everything it can from my old Nokia.
"And to address what another poster said, I doubt Amazon can see all your transactions because, I called them to query something and because it was card-related, they transferred me to New Day who are the actual card issuer. They're also very helpful."
Exactly this, I have worked for a company which issued "its own" cards (Both visa and mastercard depending on the country) and in every case we did not get access to any transaction data unless it was a transaction on our platform.
The real benefit to us (and the customer) was a quicker and more seamless cash out process from our platform (which may or may not have had the side effect of circumventing some regulatory stuff in some countries, Though that was always a suspicion rather than a certainty) - that and near instant reconciliation compared to the normal Authorise then wait for funds process.
Actually their card is excellent.
Excellent in what way? How are other cards less excellent?
Apart from a few freebies that some cards may offer, I really don't see how one card can be any better than another as long as it lets you pay for stuff. If it does that then I suppose it's good ... but "excellent" sounds like laying it on a bit thick.
Unless I'm missing something?
"And to address what another poster said, I doubt Amazon can see all your transactions because, I called them to query something and because it was card-related, they transferred me to New Day who are the actual card issuer. They're also very helpful."
What's the bets that New Day use AWS to host their back end systems…
I'd like to think that AWS have impeccable morals and are scrupulously law abiding and never use any admin god-powers they have to casually search for any interesting info in any of their customers' hosted databases (umm, it's just data integrity checking, honest), but the other part of me is just waiting for the day when exactly such a scenario gets found out in public...
(In related news, my bank's app has recently been updated and now "helpfully" (read: pointlessly and uselessly) shows a Google map along with the address of where each card transaction was made (The address? Useful for checking transactions. A map? Pointless bling just because some unthinking web dev thought it would look kewl, or, worse, some Google Grima Wormtongue has been whispering unsweet nothings in the ears of bank techie-mangler suits to try to push such a 'feature'?).
Whoa there! That means that fscking Google now gets an eyeful of my everyday movements, completely without my consent, and even if it might be theoretically anonymous, there's probably sadly enough metadata that Google snarfs from elsewhere that it can put 2 + 2 together, grrr (obviously, if I had an Android phone, I'd be thoroughly fscked already). I wonder what chance there is of the ICO (or, perhaps more likely, noyb) taking action about this?)
Of course. My point was that I am surprised Amazon have taken this dispute to a public level by deciding not to take Visa, particularly in the run up to Christmas where it is likely to do them more harm than good. I would have expected them to do something in the quiet days of February.
Whilst I don't relish the idea of standing behind Amazon on anything. To me they're just a massive warehouse that I buy shit from occasionally because it's cheap and convenient, but I think organisations like Visa are notoriously difficult to negotiate with due to limited competition. I'm not surprised that an organisation the size of Amazon might swing it's dick around in public to smack Visa around.
A fuck nugget he may be, but nobody else has managed to set up a true rival to Amazon.
It's not like they started massive. He started in a tiny office by himself ffs.
In the beginning he was the competition, and now because the competition has essentially given up he has no real competition.
Also let's not pretend that any job in a warehouse outside Amazon is a well paid panacea. It ain't. Other firms just have fewer employees that make less noise.
This tends to be my thought. I don't like Amazon. I even loath them a bit. But in reality I can find and buy the stuff I need easily and at a sensible price. If it isn't right I can ( if only because of UK legal protections) return it easily.
Compare to the hassles pre-Amazon. Finding what I want to buy rather than what the shops wanted me to buy was much harder. If anything went wrong just after I'd started to use the item there was a >50% chance I'd have to get in a big argument to get a refund, or even a repair (legal rights or no legal rights).
I’m fairly sure3veryone knows how to use wiki and Google, but anyway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Early_life
He did work at McDonald’s and his mum used to take him with her to night school when he was a baby.
His maternal grandfather was Lawrence Preston Gise, a regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Albuquerque.
Jeff’s father was Danish but his parents divorced when he was young and his Cuban emigrant step father adopted Jeff when he was 4.
But yes I’m sure he had a privileged upbringing and started things with a small million dollar loan from his papa (not sure if the Cuban or Danish one).
They'll be accepting it during the run-up to Christmas. So it's your last chance to use it folks. By the way, plenty of time to find a different card for February. Remind yourself of that each time you buy a gift in the coming weeks. Seems pretty well-timed to me.
Mastercard, Amex (and any others) will be looking over their shoulders at this move by Bezos Tat Sellers Inc.
AMZN clearly wants to elbow the competition out of their business. Then they'll move on the Banks and start offering all financial services.
Bezos Inc's plan will be to become the only place that people need to shop and if they really, really have to buy something elsewhere then it will be using Amazon's financial services.
What is his end game? You tell me? World ruler perhaps?
I'm gonna have to use a movie quote for this one, specifically from Hudson Hawk:
"I just want to be happy. And happiness comes from the achievement of goals. It's just that when you've made your first billion by the age of nineteen, it's hard to keep coming up with new ones. But now, finally, I've got myself a new goal... World domination!: - Darwin Mayflower
Yes, you're correct. I've seen a suggestion that this is due to the UK no longer being subject to EU regulations. While I'd like to believe it I really don't know.
What I do know is that two of my cards, from seperate banks, have recently been replaced before their expiry date. Both were Visa and have been replaced by MasterCard.
Just big business methods hitting the headlines.
Several years ago I had a bank issued Mastercard re-badged with Visa, I't didn't make any difference to me then and if it happens in the other direction in the near future I still won't be too bothered as both have near universal acceptance in the UK.
I think this is more about giving a severe poke to one of the few businesses that they can't just undercut to reduce costs (i.e. pay less than everyone else).
International financial regulations haven't changed much since January, my UK-bank issued credit cards are happily accepted in more places across Europe now than a few years ago (covid cash handling issue) and hardly apply to internal UK purchases using UK cards.
As for Visa I'd be surprised if UK Amazon purchases counted for more than a low single figure % of turnover and they don't care which sales outlet you use their card in.
You should know. For sure.
EU regulation (2015) caps credit card fees at 0.3%
Outside the EU, Visa have chanced it and whacked up their prices way beyond that limit, something the EU put in place to protect consumers.
Rather like phone companies reintroducing exorbitant roaming charges now that we don’t have EU price protection.
Good old Brexit.
Of course, the amusing twist here is that Visa have effectively priced themselves out of the market by getting a little too greedy. Nice job, Amazon. You are under no obligation to accept payment methods that charge exorbitant fees.
>Outside the EU, Visa have chanced it and whacked up their prices way beyond that limit, something the EU put in place to protect consumers.
If you had read the article you would know that Mastercard have done the same; yet not a word from Amazon about UK Mastercards...
This is all about Amazon's questionable business practice of treating the UK as a branch of its Luxembourg tax haven based HQ...
Perhaps HMRC should decide that Amazon Europe Core SARL and Amazon EU SARL are simply UK tax evasion vehicles and deem their entire turnover is subject to backdated UK tax.
I did read the article.
What the article fails to mention is that the scope of the increased charges are far greater for Visa Credit.
"Visa has announced similar changes to Mastercard, but with a larger scope. More specifically, the Visa changes will have significant impact on consumer card-not-present transactions, consumer refund transactions, and commercial transactions between the UK and the EEA."
World is a fairly large place. Amazon may be big in some countries, but I wouldn't keep my breath.
Their biggest advantage is the sheer range of goods they sell, but their services feel like something from bygone era (they are better in digital content and distribution, but even there they are nothing special).
So, if they venture into banking, I don't think bankers would lose too much sleep. Unless they are based in the US, perhaps. Sometimes got the impression they are taking their inspiration from Flintstones there.
not that I wish amazon success, but as to banks not losing sleep over it, I wouldn't be too sure. Banks didn't lose sleep over fintechs, and yet, they have captured a fair share of customer base on personal banking front. And it's quite possibly a significant figure, plus it's mostly young people, even if they're fucked royally by their cuddly fintech, when they switch elsewhere, they will seek the similar level of conveniance which banks are slower to offer, so they're less likely to switch to mainstream banking. Also, fintechs ripped a chunk out the obscene fat banking fees. I remember my UK banks all offered a 20 quid fee for an international transfer, PLUS they ripped me off on 'advantegous' conversion rate, PLUS banking fee for a correspondent's bank, PLUS up to a week for the privilage. Now I pay about 2 quid for a (regulated) money transfer service, their exchange rate is still better than banks' - and it takes usually less than 48 hrs. So, re. amazon, yes, I do think mainstream banks should lose some sleep if amazon decide to take a closer look at their business model.
With Revolut or Starling, it takes about 6 hours to transfer Euros from UK to Italy, and costs nothing except a very small exchange rate margin.
Transferring £ would be a lot quicker, 3 seconds rather than 6 hours, but the exchange rate margins in Italy to convert to € tend to be about 0.25% vs 0.1% in UK.
Caveat: they avoid tax in every way possible and are terrible towards their employees.
However, as a customer I've found Amazon reasonably easy to deal with on the three times I've had to return items (out of quite a lot over the years):
1. Monitor with some dead pixels. Returned and replaced quickly and without question.
2. Joystick that developed a fault within manufacturer warrant period, quite a long time after purchase. Finding out exactly how to report this was tricky, but when I did also honoured with no quibbles.
3. PCIe wifi card, one of the few electronic items I've bought from the more idiosyncratic end of amazon marketplace, as the brand versions are crazily expensive (how difficult can an Intel wireless chip be?). Was priced about what you'd think it should be (i.e. not super-cheap), but when it arrived had a 'voucher' promising 50% refund in exchange for a 5 star review, which tells you everything you need to know about it. Also taken back without issues. (One complaint here, that brand is still all over amazon for wifi products, I did report why it was being returned. Marketplace is very much the wild west, though I've also recently got a decent active PS/2->USB adapter from it.)
"Such a move against one of the card schemes would have been unthinkable even a few years ago"
Erm, many of us old codgers will remember the 'No Amex/Diners Club' signs in shop like Woolworths, C&A and MFI for exactly the same reason... high transaction fees.
As pointed out in the story, it's not just Amazon, it's also banks switching away from Visa. My brand new Santander debit card is MC (which I still need to sort out as 'ready to use' turned out to mean 'declined' Monday!)
I switched from Visa credit card when they introduced the annual fee. When I complained they pointed out they did 'points' but I hadn't earned enough to splash out on on a salt and pepper set. They also pointed out they did 'free insurance', much in the same way that insurance companies give you free insurance for an annual fee
Use of Amex is still flaky; a lot of stores don't accept mine so I have to use another card. Annoying (particularly as mine gives me cashback on purchases), but I just shrug and pull out another card.
Visa/Mastercard pretty much have a duopoly on card transactions, so it would be interesting to see if Mastercard start ramping up their fees too where shops would go after that.
This is the bonkers thing - Amex is still being accepted. From memory, Amex is around 3x the rate (why they're able to give such great benefits to their customers). Presumably they're going through negotiations with Visa at the moment. Amex and Mastercard are presumably next.
It reeks of brinkmanship though.
As much as I dislike Amazon, this is really the crux of the matter for me and I'm glad that Amazon are taking Visa to task over it.
They are right, surely with the improvements in technology etc costs should be going down, but a 1.2% increase on rates per transaction is total bullshit.
It's not just the technology costs though (or it would be all visa transactions - they're apparently fine with debit card rates) - it's that credit card's are massively protected so that the consumer isn't liable for fraud. I suspect Amazon's fraud rates are pretty high? Therefore that cost of doing business with them is being passed into the txn rates.
The Amazon representative who was interviewed in BBC Radio, said that:
"Brexit has meant that VISA could now increase their merchant fees/charges to retailers"
This is because they are no longer capped by EU law, and implies VISA can charge whatever they want...
Amazon apparently tried to negotiate but VISA declined...so Amazon will be pulling the plug come January.
Still strange that Amazon should send out a limited and relatively low "word count" email though.
"Brexit has meant that VISA could now increase their merchant fees/charges to retailers"
So the UK dropped that part of EU legislation completely while retaining the Bank Deposit Guarantee albeit at a slightly different level. Entirely down to Parliament then isn't it?
Nothing to do with their (future) Schengen status. Any EU citizen was allowed to travel to the UK with their national ID card. Just like those few who were lucky enough to get the extremely short lived UK ID card could have used it for travel to other EU (+ non-EU Schengen) countries.
The only thing Schengen does is allow for ID free travel between participating states, although 'temporary' border controls can be re-introduced for 'emergency' reasons.
My wife and I got different emails, within 30 minutes of each other yesterday morning. Hers was blank - apart from a lot of copyright statements etc. - but mine had text. It's certainly unimpressive customer relations, even if you got the text it's written by someone more used to demanding overdue payments than talking nicely to customers.
That's exactly what happened. View -> Message Body As -> Plain Text, voila, almost everything disappears. A bit more than shown, but it's potentially personally identifying stuff (name, email, reference number), which I assume is why it wasn't included in the screenshot.
Aha! I told Amazon a couple of decades ago not to send me HTML email.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/cpc/homepage?ref_=ya_d_l_comm_prefs#general
Sounds like they provided a HTML version of the full email, didn't provide a plain text alternative and stripped the HTML from people (like old El Regulars) who only want plain text.
Well not *quite* everything. The payload was
--------------
------=_Part_2229042_1870085786.1637140369474
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
Amazon.co.uk
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
-------------
But prior to that was a whole heap of X-MS-EXCHANGE headers, and an X-Microsoft-Antispam-Message-Info: with three dozen lines of utf-8...
I believe it is the market deregulation post Brexit that is the root cause. Visa is no longer bound by the limits set by the EU and is flexing their muscle to up their merchant rates.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59306200
According to Sky, the interchange fees have had a 500% increase since Brexit.
https://news.sky.com/story/amazon-to-reject-customer-payments-using-uk-issued-visa-credit-cards-12470641
"I believe it is the market deregulation post Brexit that is the root cause. Visa is no longer bound by the limits set by the EU and is flexing their muscle to up their merchant rates"
But that doesn't make any sense. The vast majority of Amazons UK business is UK seller to UK customer. Interchange fees will only come into it if the vendor is in the EU.
This is Amazon flexing their muscles over what they see as excessive transaction fees in general from Visa NOT interchange rates.
Bear in mind that Amazons Visa transaction fees probably run into high hundred low billions of £'s - so even a 0.1% fee is a big hit to Amazon UK's bottom line.
I'm pretty sure this is the first salvo in a battle to get Visa to charge less for credit card transactions. On the one hand, Amazon can almost certainly afford the fees. On the other hand, they are ruthless about driving down cost, so this is just part of business as usual for them. Finally the financial sector is coming up against people more predatory than they are. If only both sides could lose.
But the email was complete. And it provided a link to their help page for more information, here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GFBWMNXEPYVJAY9A
At the time of receiving the email however, Visa was still saying accepted there. Not now.
What a fucking shambles...
This is the weird thing, both Visa and MasterCard spend small fortunes constantly advertising themselves, but from a cardholder perspective they are essentially interchangeable (everywhere accepts both, or neither) and you don't really get to actively choose one over the other; the bank you use offers one or the other, for reasons best known to themself, and you usually choose the bank(s) you use based on other factors.
Now, like many Reg readers familiar with the joys and risks of bank IT outages, I do have a couple of 'backup' current accounts, with a mixture of Visa debit and MasterCard debit cards, but, for whatever reason, both of my credit cards happen to be Visa. With this news in mind (and nevertheless with the expectation that Amazon will eventually arm-twist Visa into submission) I figured it might be sensible to get a MasterCard credit card as well, just in case, for extra redundancy...
I learned two annoying things while doing this: many banks are now annoyingly secretive about not only what brand of card they offer but also about their interest rates or any other details unless you fill in a tedious pre-application form (grrr), and also that, although Bank of England and mortgage interest rates are at an all-time low, credit card rates seem to have snuck up considerably (both of my existing cards, which I have had for a number of years are just under 10%), and it seems to be very difficult to find a new credit card account charging much under 20%, twice as expensive (and rather obscene, if you ask me). I did manage to find a couple of cards charging more reasonable rates to choose from in the end, at least.
This is the weird thing, both Visa and MasterCard spend small fortunes constantly advertising themselves
It's not weird. By being universally acceptable it's very hard for any retailer not to accept both. It means that they can recover that small fortune many times over by hiking their credit card fees. Visa have done this rather too much so got into a game of chicken with Amazon.
Halifax Clarity Mastercard is still available to new customers, and gives you fee-free foreign transactions at Mastercard rate. It is generally considered to be the best option.
Barclaycard Rewards does the same, but at Visa rates.
There's also 118118 Mastercard, but it is a "credit builder" card, so you are likely to get a very low credit limit, and Virgin Money Mastercard.
Santander Zero, not available to new customers, but I still have mine from when it was, does the same as Halifax, but at a slightly higher interest rate. Not a problem for me as I pay it off in full every month.
On the debit card side of things, there's Chase, Starling, and Virgin Money; all Mastercards.
> Their offering I suspect makes virtually zero in the grand scheme of things
The Amazon CC is an increibly valuable data collection tool for Amazon.
The Amazon Matercard allows Amazon to collect data on purchases users make outside the Amazon ecosystem. Use the Amazon CC to make a purchase of petrol at the petrol station? Amazon knows. Use it for a supermarket shopping trip? Amazon knows. Movies, snacks, ice cream, Disney World tickets, airplane tickets, visa (as in, entry visa's), electricity bill, ferry crossing, that TV you bought at Best Buy, Amazon knows all if you use their CC.
>an increibly valuable data collection tool for Amazon
Yep. To qualify, they want everything there is to know about me.
>>>
Amazon Platinum Mastercard
Qualifying criteria:
Be 18 years or over and have a regular income
Have a permanent UK address (unless you are HM Armed Forces Personnel)
Have a current UK bank account and a mobile phone number
<<<
You only use your new Amazon card for Amazon purchases - they already know all about them - and use another card for other purchases!
I know! It's so simple it might just work!!!!
Even better: Amazon card for Amazon purchases; another card for all other online purchases; a third for in person purchases.
All credit cards, for consumer protection. All paid off each month making interest rates irrelevant.
It will be very interesting to see how this resolves itself.
If Amazon carry out their threat then what will customers do? VISA is way more popular than Mastercard in the UK so relatively few people have the latter. And Amazon’s suggestion of using a debit card isn’t going to fly - there are several reasons for using a credit card - the purchase is insured and fraud is much easier to deal with (in theory); well at least nobody can empty your bank account! Using a debit card online is a bit foolish (though I have done it myself when there has been no choice - some HMGov services would only take debit cards in the past).
And VISA will lose a huge amount of money if this goes ahead, so I’m guessing they may relent and lower their prices.
Of course, the cynic in me suspects (!!) that Amazon are not doing this for the good of their customers. I know - I’m terrible like that
The RBS group is moving all their debit cards from VISA to Mastercard so he probably banks with one of those banks,
The RBS switch Its annoying for me as I only just got new VISA debit cards from Natwest 6 months ago to find out they are going to issue me new Mastercard ones in the next month or two, so that's extra work for me to have to update card details where I previously have them stored for subscriptions.
In regards to the Amazon and Visa spat, its clearly Amazon trying to strong arm Visa into giving them a better deal on fees by threatening to remove VISA CC from their UK payments. As Amazon would loose far more in lost sale from dropping VISA CC than VISA would in lost fees from Amazon. And if VISA number is correct that Amazon are paying around 0.1% in fees then Amazon are screwing over all those customers with VISA CC for a few pennies extra per average transaction, which makes out Amazon are being the dicks here. And that's saying something when VISA is the opposite party in a disagreement.
Seems we first direct clients are the guinea-pigs for the new debit Mastercards.
Lots of "temporary" issues interacting with HSBC UK systems in a branch (no cash deposits at machines in branch, no statement access on HSBC ATMs, card does not work when depositing cheques at a branch), which leads me to believe that this has all been rushed through; when FD did this years ago moving from Maestro UK to Visa, there were none of these issues, it was all rather seamless.
Strange how they give absolutely no indication of when any of the issues will ever be fixed!
There are other online sellers - often cheaper than Amazon.
Sure there are. And their websites don't work.
I tried to buy a sheet for my 3D printer printbed, and the site worked in nothing but Chrome and the WINDOWS version of Chrome. If it had a Linux useragent, it shit the bed. Then I got a tracking link, and that site (deliverr.com) was broken too.
Do not order from Fulament.com.
What is it with all of these broken e-commerce sites these days? Maybe you are right that they work only in Chrome?
I wouldn't know, since I won't install Google's spyware browser.
In the last few months I've had several sites where I couldn't get through the checkout process. A couple of these orders were for $100+, and I ended up ditching the order completely. I went to buy some parts for my hot air rework station, and couldn't place the order at all. This is a problem, since that site is the only place to get the parts!
The other was with a large agriculture supplier. The site kept dumping the contents of my cart at random. After I had to go back and add over 20 items to may cart for the third time, I just closed the tab and thought "forget it". In this case, I ended up holding my nose, and bought the stuff from Amazon for more money.
I would like to support anyone that is "not Amazon", but how can I if their site is broken?
You could start by letting them know their site is broken, and how much business they've lost because of it.
Assuming you can find a way to actually get a message through to them, which a lot of web sites seem to actively discourage....
There's a whole nuther issue.
Communicating with a business to tell them they have a problem is pretty much impossible these days.
It's the well documented merry-go-round of FAQs that don't mention any issue you need to look at and "contact" links that go back to the FAQ pages.
That's exactly what happened. The first site, I couldn't find any useful contact info. I tried sending an email, but never heard back, and the site still doesn't work.
With the second company (much bigger than the first), all I got was some call center (probably outsourced) where the person on the phone didn't care one bit about the problem. All I got was "sorry, there's nothing I can do about it".
These companies are going to wonder why Amazon is kicking their butt!
I used to work for a small e-commerce company. It was just coincidental that our consumer call center was right outside of my office door. When a customer would call about having problems with our site, if the rep thought it wasn't just simple user error, they would yell to me that a customer is having an issue that I need to look at. I would often have them transfer the call to me so that I could ask the customer questions. I would try to reproduce the problem with the customer on the phone. I could then write it up for the web developers.
I was just the network admin, but I was always interested in why someone is having problems with our site. After all, having the site work provided the money for my paycheck. Maybe that is why I get so worked up when some company doesn't give a crap.
>What is it with all of these broken e-commerce sites these days?
What my partner finds irritating is how many sites including event ticketing don't work on the iPad(*), AirBnB is problematic depending on which version of (in support) iOS you are running, although in the case of AirBnB there is the app...
Or work but don't display the QR code necessary for paperless tickets...
yeah, lots of cheaper online stores, but people being people, they prefer... convenience. A nice, friendly, cosy garden where you feel 'welcome', don't see the walls up there, and why strain your neck to check for the walls, lookie here, all this shiny-shiny down here! Another reason is...convenience (again): if you don't take a mickey, and you were wronged by a dodgy seller, generally, amazon _will_ side with you and you'll get your money back with relatively little hassle, and you get that warm feeling that you're protected and that amazon CARES about you (rotfl), so you... come back. While dealing with cheaper sellers direct, well, you can complain to the blue moon that your 10 quid usb dongle only works half-way, you give up, because who wants to spend time for endless emails for low value junk. Amazon umbrella is... convenient (though I generally, these days, always check ebay, particularly for books)
Changing my credit card will be a (minor) hassle, and no, I don't want two cards, thank you.
Not being able to access Amazon reduces expenditure on pointless tat so saves me money,
If Amazon don't want my money (credit card) I'll take my business elsewhere to someone that does, and be more discerning in my expenditure. Win for the other traders, win for me, and who cares about Amazon?
Two cards one VISA and the other MasterCard from different card issuers is the miniumum prudent of cards to have. Insulates you from a whole bunch of failure modes from VISA going down, your card being cloned and stopped by the bank, etc. etc. I would argue a third card left at home locked up is also prudent for when your wallet is lost or stolen. Get back home and you have a means to make purchases while your replacement cards arrive. Debit cards are for withdrawing cash only. Its not funny when important direct debits start failing when your current account is drained.
"VISA is way more popular than Mastercard in the UK so relatively few people have the latter." Evidence? On hearing the news I took a look at all my (rather too many) debit and credit cards from different banks and supermarkets. All the ones I actually use are Mastercard, the two I don't use are bank Visa debit cards.
The reason I have multi credit cards are many and varied. One gives me a very high credit limit (although all get paid off monthly by direct debit it's good to have the contingency), various companies and supermarkets give some kind of benefit if you pay there using their card - hence my Amazon card is used at Amazon because I get, IIRC, £10 back for every £1000 spend, not a big deal but better in my pocket than their's.
What I don't understand is that in comments above, the issue Amazon are arguing with Visa about is their fees but mastercard charge the same so why? And don't Amex charge a lot more? I understood that was why Amex can give customers bigger cash-back. I tried Amex a few years ago for the big cash-back but found it impossible to use it enough to recover the monthly fee because some businesses wouldn't accept it stating the high fees and difficulties dealing with the company.
I've been using Amazon less and less over the last few years - mainly because they seem to go out of their way to promote cheap tat
Exactly. The laws about not passing on card fees were never really about consumer protection, they were the result of heavy lobbying and devious PR by the card industry and exist solely to protect the card industry's revenues. They know that if people were charged more for paying by card, some of them would choose to pay another way and card payment revenues would go down. The net result is that any customer who pays by other means is subsidising the customer who pays by card.
Many of my customers are happy to pay by bank transfer, which costs me nothing in transaction fees - and in these days of online and mobile banking it's very easy for them to do so. If they pay by card I have to hand over a percentage to the card industry. I'd love to give the bank-transfer customers a small discount as they've saved me money, but it's illegal for me to do that. Instead the fees become part of my overheads and my prices have to go up a little - for everyone, regardless of how they pay.
The weird thing is that it used to be illegal in Australia.
I forget exactly when (and I couldn't be bothered finding it), but something like 10 or 15 years ago (hell, maybe it was the 90's, I'm getting old) they changed the law to stop it being illegal to do that, to allow surcharges to be added.
From that page "The ban on credit and debit card surcharges is effective across the EU from Saturday 13th January 2018, and will apply to all purchases made where the banks of the consumer and retailer are within the EEA."
So this could be the next Brexit sunny upland we've all been promised ...
> 1% cashback on purchases
Hmmm, well guess where that money comes from?
I have always shunned "Premium" cards because they are just used to shaft the retailers even more through higher transaction fees. Having one of those cards basically means that you condone these sharp business practises.
>> 1% cashback on purchases
Hmmm, well guess where that money comes from?
In a past life, I used to put £3~5k of expenses a month through the company Amex card. This with the associated Amex points, hotel/airline/et al. loyalty card often meant I was triple dipping and effectively getting 2~3% cashback...
We take card payment online via Stripe - nothing to do with Amazon - and our merchant fees are the same for Visa/Mastercard, but 2% higher for Amex. It's been that way for the 20 years we've been doing this, long before we moved to Stripe (can't remember who we used before, one of the big old school processors).
In short: yes, Amex suck for merchants and always have. We wouldn't take them except it's B2B for us and a few companies use them exclusively.
If it's truly merchant fees that are bothering Amazon, Amex would be target number one.
If you look carefully into those benefits, you'll probably find you're paying for them (and quite possibly more than if you got them elsewhere). Maybe some people get more from it than they put in, but AmEx have a business model, and on balance, they have to make a profit.
I guess that's why I don't get it: I'm looking for a credit card, not a lifestyle.
Regarding Amex Travel Insurance, a friend tried to rely oh that once. Absolutely zero support.- In fact the only time Amex got involved was when they gave up trying for help, and tried to make their own arrangements to leave the hospital and get back to the UK.
Only then did Amex stepped in, to try and prevent them doing so because they were worried about the insurance liability.
You get what you pay for. And you're paying nowt.
Odd, my NatWest Visa debit card was replaced back in June [ with a new end-date ], so if they stopped issuing Visa a year back, shouldn't they have changed the new one to Mastercard a year ago, shouldn't they have done this with the replacement ?
Please make it clear in the article that this is a direct result of Brexit.
Pre-Brexit, there was a cap on card provider fees of 0.3% across the EU, something the UK government has chosen not to bother translating across into UK law.
As a result, Visa are free to jack up their charges, presumably soon followed by Mastercard once Visa reap the whirlwind of bad publicity.
No mention of Brexit in this article, nor many other UK news outlets, it's getting very concerning how reluctant the UK media is to actually detail out the abject failure Brexit has been.
Anon posting because, sigh, people get very angry when they get told they've been duped into voting for something that is making life in the UK worse on a daily basis
"Visa are free to jack up their charges, presumably soon followed by Mastercard once Visa reap the whirlwind of bad publicity."
Mastercard already did jack their prices up, at the same time Visa did, some time ago. See my earlier comment.
It's not that simple. The EU cap applies to transactions within the EU, and the UK still applies a cap to transactions within the UK. The difference now is that transactions between EU and UK are not covered by either cap, and since Amazon operates as an EU business for tax d̶o̶d̶g̶i̶n̶g̶purposes, any payments to Amazon from a UK credit card aren't capped under either scheme.
Anon posting because, sigh, people get very angry when they get told they've been duped into voting for something that is making life in the UK worse on a daily basis
They also tend toi get annoyed when people who don't understand why they made a choice assume that they were duped, by accusers who are certain of their own righteousness, but won't even put their name to their allegations.
True, some of it was about sovereignty - not letting the EU force us to have straight cucumbers and stuff like that, or fish our own waters. Except that the straight cucumber story and similar were all myths and we don't actually eat much of the fish from our own waters, preferring cod/haddock/plaice etc. But hey, blue/black passports.
The majority of people voting to exit the EU were concerned about sovereignty, or a lack thereof with "ever closer union" forming a proto superstate without the consent of the governed. This is mentioned in every reputable analysis on the subject.
If the EU had of remained much more akin to the trading organisation that people were told they were joining then they wouldn't have chosen to leave it. The sovereignty issue (an ongoing process of stripping powers from democracies without the consent of their electorates) is unanswerable and on a practical political point indefensible, and the campaign to remain part of a reformed EU fell flat on it's face when they refused to discuss reform.
Which is why the remain side likes to talk about the economy, despite leave voters only real concern being the effect of immigrant labour on the working classes in depressed incomes and increased housing costs.
The fact the remain campaign decided to then deride basically anybody from the working classes as being thick subhuman scum is why Labour has ceased to exist as a political force, as the working classes quit voting for the party of "Labour" and go elseware.
So pick an option, continue to sneer at the working classes and accept this eradicates your ability to form a government again ever, or accept that they had and have legitimate political grievances and discuss them and potentially form a government again at some point in the future.
i.e. Fears that were whipped up and played on.
Don't even try and pretend to take a moral high ground on that subject. It's absurd.
And then let's look at a "vote leave" example of exploiting fears of the "myth" of an EU army as a reason to leave.
Brexit campaigners’ outrage is little more than a storm in a Euroskeptic’s tea cup. There are no imminent plans to create an EU army.
I then offer this contemporary news article without comment.
> So... you're saying there were people who weren't duped and willingly voted for this shitshow and are happy with the result?
Yes. You may find that hard to believe, but yes.
Reasons include nauseating hypocrisy: the EU is happy to negotiate EPA agreements[1] with African nations that effectively mean the EU has joined the African Continental Free Trade Agreement [2] - neither of which insists upon free movement of people; but that same EU wouldn't agree a free trade agreement with the UK without insisting on free movement of people.
[2] https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/trade/publication/the-african-continental-free-trade-area
The EU agreement with Africa is a very welcome one from an African development point of view, but one that should have happened at least 40 years earlier.
And at some point the EU will get over its dislike of Muslims and allow Turkey to join - maybe in a century or two.
Go on - downvote away - but there has been much to dislike about the EU's politics for a long, long time.
You're a bit confused, the EU has got a FTA with the UK without FoM. This is what it looks like. If you wanted an even freer trade agreement then that's called staying inside the EU.
The EBA agreement with Africa is in no way like trading inside the single market/customs union, there are still border formalities, just like there are with the EEA/Switzerland, with Canada, and with the UK.
> You're a bit confused, the EU has got a FTA with the UK without FoM. This is what it looks like. If you wanted an even freer trade agreement then that's called staying inside the EU.
Allow me to clarify: the EU started their Brexit negotiations with the position that FoM was an absolute necessity. They changed their position, as you point out, so now we have an agreement without FoM. However their starting position with African EBAs is that FoM is not necessary, in other words the complete reverse which some people interpret as hypocrisy.
The EU started with the position that FoM is intrinsic to bring part of the single market. It still is.
The UK chose to leave the SM (May's Lancaster House red line speech), negotiated that, hence no FoM.
The EBA agreement never meant African states joining the SM, hence no FoM.
I fail to see what the problem is, other than you've confused FTAs with the SM.
"Yes. You may find that hard to believe, but yes.
Reasons include nauseating hypocrisy: the EU is happy to negotiate EPA agreements[1] with African nations that effectively mean the EU has joined the African Continental Free Trade Agreement [2] - neither of which insists upon free movement of people; but that same EU wouldn't agree a free trade agreement with the UK without insisting on free movement of people.
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/countries-and-regions/development/economic-partnerships/index_en.htm
[2] https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/trade/publication/the-african-continental-free-trade-area
The EU agreement with Africa is a very welcome one from an African development point of view, but one that should have happened at least 40 years earlier.
And at some point the EU will get over its dislike of Muslims and allow Turkey to join - maybe in a century or two.
Go on - downvote away - but there has been much to dislike about the EU's politics for a long, long time."
Ooh, look at all those lovely principles. Aren't they well worth being poorer for.
> Then disavow ever having bought in to.
Quite. Try finding someone that voted Brexit because they didn't like brown people or europeans - they're rarer than hens teeth, it was all about "Sovereignty" and freedom to form trade agreements.
Makes you wonder why the Brexiteers felt running this poster was a good idea, really. Clearly it wasn't a vote winner at all.
Yes.
I voted in full knowledge it risked an entire decade of economy harm, because I wasn't voting on economic grounds. The economic impact since has been broadly minimal, entirely swamped and overwhelmed by the pandemic.
If Amazon can't take advantage of cross-channel tax opportunities (their UK based competition can't leverage) without incurring extra payment scheme costs, I think that's great too. I like Amazon, I buy a lot from them, but they have to choose between cheap prices for UK customers and cheap taxes to maximise shareholder returns.
If they choose wrongly, they lose a lot of UK revenue and their shareholders lose out anyway. Which is as it should be.
I voted in full knowledge it risked an entire decade of economy harm, because I wasn't voting on economic grounds. The economic impact since has been broadly minimal, entirely swamped and overwhelmed by the pandemic.
Only the ONS estimated the damage by Brexit at twice the damage of the pandemic.
It's hilarious, you can say what the UK has lost and will continue to lose over the next decade, but you still can't say what the UK has gained, because it hasn't gained anything, nor will it.
>I voted in full knowledge it risked an entire decade of economy harm,
I'm betting the economic harm isn't gonna touch you and yours, eh?
This is why there should be a Brexit surcharge tax: Voted Brexit? You pay an additional 2-3% income tax. Job done.
They'll be plenty proud Englishmen ticking the "I voted for Brexit" box on the tax form.
"Was that stated on the referendum?"
Errrr. It was a joke. But I'll bite: Was increasing NI? Or trying to get your mates off a corruption charge by changing the parliamentry rules? Or allowing raw sewage to be dumped into rivers? Or destroying fresh produce SMEs with customs redtape? Or any other government mis-step in the sad, sorry story over the last 5 years. What's your point?
> Errrr. It was a joke. But I'll bite
And so was my response - unless you thought that being forced to eat surströmming was serious?
> What's your point?
You proposed that a retrospective additional tax be levied on people who voted Leave. I made a counter-proposal. The point being that if you want to make retrospective changes then two can play at that game. It's a very simple concept and I'm surprised you had to ask to have it explained.
@Dan 55
"Someone else who says they're happy with how things have turned out yet can't manage to say a single quantifiable good thing about what Brexit has achieved."
Eh? Take it as you have missed various other posts on various topics where I have mentioned the immediate benefits that were unexpected but substantial. And it seems more is in the pipeline.
For example if you were in the UK you were probably offered vaccination before member countries abandoned the collective procurement. ROI only able to watch as NI (under UK law) had vaccine.
And the covid bailout fund where the EU issues debt in the name of member countries directly at great expense that we are not part of.
And the global financial centre of Europe which is only second in the world to New York is removing regulations designed to shackle it by the EU, while the EU has again backed down on trying to move Euro clearing out of the UK (for fear of going broke).
None of these things you mentioned were in the Vote Leave manifesto so I guess you're looking for good news where you can find it, but let's have a look closer.
For example if you were in the UK you were probably offered vaccination before member countries abandoned the collective procurement. ROI only able to watch as NI (under UK law) had vaccine.
The UK could have shared with Ireland, but decided not to, nor will it, because it still doesn't have its whole adult population vaccinated.
The choice of collective procurement was up to each individual country, and the UK also had that choice. It decided not to take it. It funded the AZ vaccine, rolled it out, but is now is falling down the chart and not getting on with double vaccinating the whole population above 11.
And the covid bailout fund where the EU issues debt in the name of member countries directly at great expense that we are not part of.
If the ECB didn't do anything you'd be saying the EU doesn't take care of its own so... meh. Where's the UK Covid recovery fund BTW?
And the global financial centre of Europe which is only second in the world to New York is removing regulations designed to shackle it by the EU, while the EU has again backed down on trying to move Euro clearing out of the UK (for fear of going broke).
The plug was never going to be pulled on this overnight, but Amsterdam has overtaken London for stock trading and Euronext will ditch London for clearing by 2024. The EU also granted equivalence to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
@Dan 55
"None of these things you mentioned were in the Vote Leave manifesto so I guess you're looking for good news where you can find it, but let's have a look closer."
You been asleep or something? Not being under EU rule, escape EU incompetence and mismanagement, stop throwing our money away of the badly run project. Those are reasons for leave, very clearly reasons for leaving the EU. You can cry 'manifesto', make our own laws is in there.
"The UK could have shared with Ireland"
Why would we need to unless you are accepting the EU screwed up? Also the EU wanted to apply a hard border to stop vaccine legally coming to the UK (aka steal). Also more importantly the EU blocked Ireland from getting the AZ vaccine and when a Dublin minister suggested going over the border and getting some the EU said no-
https://www.dublinlive.ie/news/health/covid19-vaccine-oxford-ireland-brexit-19672792
"The choice of collective procurement was up to each individual country, and the UK also had that choice"
Are you a UK supremacist? It amazes me how many remainers are. Every member country of the EU joined the joint procurement and even ditched their own plans to join it. Do you believe the UK is run so much better than every individual member country that we would have been the only ones to resist the pressure and go our own way? I dont and I voted leave. And the wailing and threats against member countries who eventually got sick of waiting on the EU failure and bought their own. Are you a UK supremacist or do you realise brexit got vaccine to the UK while the EU screwed up?
"If the ECB didn't do anything you'd be saying the EU doesn't take care of its own so... meh. Where's the UK Covid recovery fund BTW?"
The EU doesnt thats why it screwed the members over and then continued digging a hole. The ECB is in charge of the Euro area, this extends beyond. The 'covid recovery fund' was to be an emergency one off measure for this crisis, but one idiot MEP already stated this could be a normal way to finance the project. And still we are out of it so its to our benefit. If your really asking the dumb question of where is the UK recovery fund I can only assume you are either not in the UK or scarily clueless.
"The plug was never going to be pulled on this overnight"
Nor at any speed they hoped. In short the global financial centre of Europe is in London. Thankfully the EU decided not to trash its members economies by doing stupidity they keep threatening such as cutting them off from London.
@Dan 55
"So I have to choose between a nonsensical argument or a few months when the vaccine rollout went better for the UK than the EU. Makes sense."
Nope. You have to stand by what you seem to be suggesting- if the UK remained in the EU that the UK would have rejected the joint procurement. Where every member country agreed to the joint procurement and cancelled their own procurement plans you believe the UK is so much better run that we would have rejected the joint procurement and done it our own way.
I can only assume that is what you are suggesting otherwise there is little point in you saying- "The choice of collective procurement was up to each individual country"
@AC
"Hmmm. Crowing about UK vaccine procurement as a Brexit benefit whilst ignoring the UK's ventilator debacle. Just fiddling while Rome burns."
I have a 2 part response to this. First Dan 55 said "can't manage to say a single quantifiable good thing about what Brexit has achieved" and I have proved his completely wrong. This is a hammer I keep hitting with because too many remainers are in denial even if they still believe we would over all be better off in the EU. The simple fact is leave has brought immediate benefits at a time of great shame for the EU.
Second you are more than welcome to bash the UK response to the pandemic, yet the exact same situation exists if we remained in the EU... AND we would have the vaccine procurement problem of the EU. How does that help? Also didnt the UK get a great supply of ventilators very quickly?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/britain-mounted-a-heroic-effort-to-build-ventilators-but-it-never-needed-them/2020/08/14/0cb510f4-c1ea-11ea-8908-68a2b9eae9e0_story.html
"and I have proved his completely wrong"
No you haven't. With or without Brexit the UK's ventilator decision (Technically still in the EU) and vaccine decision (Fully withdrawn from the EU) could/would have been the same.
Keep sifting & shifting. Nreciteers may find a real benefit in a a couple of decades if this. So much winning!
BTW how are the steel tariffs with the US doing? EU's are gone now .... (snigger)
@AC
Are you just Dan 55 but dont want to seem really dumb?
"With or without Brexit the UK's ventilator decision (Technically still in the EU) and vaccine decision (Fully withdrawn from the EU) could/would have been the same."
Aka do you believe the UK is better run than every member country in the EU where nobody else went alone until the EU screwed up badly? Member countries actively abandoned their own plans to join the joint procurement with the EU so are you saying the UK is so much better run as to not do the same as every single member country in the EU?
"Are you just Dan 55 but dont want to seem really dumb?"
Oh deary me. Lashing out as the Brexit falsehoods turn to ash in Brexiteers mouths is not a great look.
Anyway BOT: Why are the credit card companies, (along with mobile phone networks, energy companies, etc.) all whacking up prices for UK customers, Hmmm?
And I hope those Northern voters don't twig they'll be getting no investment up there now the EU development funds are no more. Things might get even uglier.
Ah well, Carry on with your winning!
a hammer I keep hitting him with
Snort. Yes. Shame it's a Fisher Price "my first toolkit" hammer.
And as for the joint procurement, I made no other comment other than it was open to as many EU countries who wanted it, including the UK as well as it was still in the transitional period. No country was forced to do anything it didn't want.
Also didnt the UK get a great supply of ventilators very quickly?
No, it got ventilators made by people who didn't know how to make them which weren't suitable for the job.
The inside story of the UK's NHS coronavirus ventilator challenge
Britain’s top diplomat: UK opt out of EU ventilator scheme was ‘political’
Are you just Dan 55 but dont want to seem really dumb?
No, I'm the one who's as dumb as a bag of spanners, the AC is someone else.
@Dan 55
"I made no other comment other than it was open to as many EU countries who wanted it, including the UK as well as it was still in the transitional period. No country was forced to do anything it didn't want."
Which as I pointed out is a pointless statement if you are not trying to suggest the UK would have gone its own way. The only reason the UK didnt join the EU procurement against cries from remainers is that we left the EU and we had a gov finally pro brexit.
"No, it got ventilators made by people who didn't know how to make them which weren't suitable for the job."
Really? They made basic models that would do the job in an emergency, shockingly the situation we were in with a pandemic. So while not the fully fancy tech that is normally acceptable to use it is equipment made to the most basic components for an emergency situation. So it was a success which in the end wasnt necessary. On top of ordering from abroad.
"The inside story of the UK's NHS coronavirus ventilator challenge"
“They [the government] were initially talking about a Manley-Blease-style ventilator,” said a source at one specialist ventilator company. “They sent links to it.”
He was referring to a 1960s design by Roger Manley and the Blease Medical company, a major advance at the time but crude by modern standards.
In a document sent to manufacturers, the government said the new devices should ideally be able to support a patient for a number of days, but left open the option to build devices capable of providing support for a few hours to a day.
"Britain’s top diplomat: UK opt out of EU ventilator scheme was ‘political’ "
As was not ordering the vaccine with them. Thankfully.
"No, I'm the one who's as dumb as a bag of spanners, the AC is someone else."
Apologies. I do have a pet troll coward who likes to insert himself into comments to go trolling.
Going back to vaccine procurement and the extremely unlikely hypothetical situation that the UK did go its own way while remaining there is more! The EU made clear moves to steal vaccine they believed was for export especially aiming their vicious attacks towards the UK. The French have apparently been accused for stealing AZ vaccine from Holland to the UK. If the UK remained and did successfully procure vaccine you can guarantee the EU would steal it using all their political power available.
@Roland6
"Well Westminster has shown it is quite capable of throwing money away on anything that takes its fancy; provided there is a kickback to the party..."
Which always comes back to the question of how putting a crap government above our crap government improves things? In this example it just throws away more money. And more kickbacks.
> People, presumably, who don't care about the financial impact on people's lives, loss of opportunity etc.
You seem to be confused about the way a referendum works: you're not asked to put yourself in every other person's shoes and try to vote the way they would vote, you simply vote for what you feel is best for you and yours and everybody else does the same for what they think is best for them. The result is an average 'best' for the country.
If you feel that the those who voted to leave were misled then I suggest you take it up with those who led such a complacent and inadequate 'remain' campaign.
"You seem to be confused about the way a referendum works: you're not asked to put yourself in every other person's shoes and try to vote the way they would vote, you simply vote for what you feel is best for you and yours and everybody else does the same for what they think is best for them. The result is an average 'best' for the country."
Well put it this way, I'm rather deeply aware of how freedom doesn't work at the moment. I'm sure the same is true of some of our dearly deported Brexit voting ex-expats.
"If you feel that the those who voted to leave were misled then I suggest you take it up with those who led such a complacent and inadequate 'remain' campaign."
You think it's the remain campaign's fault that Leave mislead the public we'd still be in the common market after the event? Either you haven't been paying attention or you demonstrate an astonishing lack of self awareness (as did some of our dearly deported Brexit voting ex-expats, one of whom gave the reason for them voting Brexit as "too many foreigners).
> You think it's the remain campaign's fault that Leave mislead the public we'd still be in the common market after the event?
Yes. If the Leave campaign were misleading the public so blatantly why didn't someone from the Remain campaign step up to challenge them?
> Either you haven't been paying attention or you demonstrate an astonishing lack of self awareness
What has self-awareness - lack of or otherwise - got to do with anything? Political awareness or social awareness maybe but not 'self' awareness.
> (as did some of our dearly deported Brexit voting ex-expats, one of whom gave the reason for them voting Brexit as "too many foreigners).
One anecdote about one silly person is amusing but otherwise irrelevant.
"Just a wee note to remind you that here North of the border, we voted to stay and got dragged out anyway..."
Yes but those in the forgotten zone sandwiched between the delusional scots and the london/bbc "elite" who know better than the rest of the country were so pissed off that they exercised their democratic right to give them a long overdue kick in the balls.
Whether in the longer term brexit was a good choice remains to be seen. Various other countries are toying with the exit option now, perhaps genuine, or perhaps to wrest some concessions from the EU. Others taking no credible steps to manage their citizens engaging in frauds against the EU. Then there's the incredible gravy train that is brussels (and just let's not think about Strasbourg), a couple of states (Poland, Hungary) that just choose to disregard significant parts of the treaty they don't like, and the rising support for far right in several states.
Brexit was a failure on the part of the EU to recognise legitimate concerns and to believe it possible that the referendum would turn out as it did. UK were described as "rats deserting a sinking ship", well I admire the perspicacity in regarding the EU as "a sinking ship" and my best wishes to the rats that chose to stay on-board.
I realise that we're wandering a bit off topic but UK now has the freedom to offer market competition and consumer choice rather than central edict. If Visa and Mastercard had colluded to cap their charges at (was it 0.3%?) dictated by the EU that would have been illegal price-fixing under UK competition law, now if one decides to undercut the other, they can do. Hopefully retailers will soon be allowed to choose to give a discount to consumers opting to use the retailer's preferred payment method too.
Visa are bleating about customer choice - but what they don't want is for retailers to have a choice. Most companies can't take the risk of not accepting both Visa and Mastercard, so there is no real competition to keep their charges down. Amazon are doing this for their own benefit, but if it eventually reduces the cut taken by the credit card middle men then I'm all for it.
>As in, where does the UK card get charged?
Purchases from Amazon UK will be made by Amazon SARL in Luxembourg...
So on your UK issued Visa, that's 1.5%, whereas on a German issued Visa that will be 0.3%
Aside: I would not be surprised if Amazon's accounting system can't handle the different rates.
By a strange coincidence, today should have been my Prime renewal date, except that I didn't bother last year and have gone a full year actively avoiding Amazon and either shopping locally or finding other online resellers. In most cases prices have been cheaper, but I did relent for a few things and consolidated a few items to still get free delivery (albeit 3-5 days).
This news has simply made me double down on my decision, and I'll probably shut the account in January. I don't want any more credit cards, thanks.
Reading the comments I do wonder if there is far more to this than meets the eye, but with the state of government at present I won't be holding my breath for any sensible legislation to come out of parliament.
Wal-Mart had an issue in Canada a couple of years ago with Visa. Apparently Visa charges more for transactions than anybody but AmEx, so they periodically lock heads with the big vendors who demand discounts for the volume of transactions they do.
I'm not at ALL surprised the AMERICAN businesses like Amazon and Wal-Mart would have no qualms about inconvenciencing and ticking off their customer base to play games with their providers. All they care about in reality is PROFIT; the customer is as much part of the "product" as what is getting delivered.
I must admit I'm surprised Amazon accepts AmEx. I'm betting they get a HUGE discount for giving AmEx the market leverage of being able to say "You CAN use our card at Amazon."
It's long past time the cozy duopoly of Visa and MasterCard gets a visit from some of the major competition regulators like the European Commission and UK watchdogs too. They've WAY too much market power and in a way that makes far more impact on day to day life than browser options or OS lock ins.
This is being caused by Brexit but only in the sense that EU regulations were keeping them on a tight leash and preventing excessive charging. The moment that went away - price went up in the UK.
Cant believe you got thou the entire article without mentiong the real reason for this debacle ..... which is Brexit and the removal of the EU legistation Cap on credit card fees in the UK!
You didn't even get as far as musing why Visa payments are not being wtihdrawn in any other EU countries?
In this instance you are almost doing as well as the Brexit Blindspot Coporation in relation to not spotting the elephant in the room!
Please do keep up Reg, we trust you to do better than the traditional sources with their associated political and financial pressures.
Or not. The card providers get a kickback of the fee Visa & MC charge to the retailers, so for them it benefits for Visa to charge a larger fee as they make more from each transaction too.
That's why the 1% cashback cards suddenly became 0.5% or disappeared when the 0.3% cap was introduced - thanks EU!
Now, I'm just waiting for the 1% cahsback cards to return :)
I am ashamed to admit, that over the years I have purchased two books from Amazon.
So, I am the problem, because no matter how hard I try to point a finger, it keeps pointing back at me.
I would have loved to bought those two books from my local small retailer at twice the cost, but Amazon put them out of business.
I should have went to the publisher and admonished them for abandoning the local retailer.
It is not a question of money, it is the principle...
Multinationals have made me rich, but I want to blow all that cash by spending at the shops that surround me every day, at home and on my travels...
When will they announce 'a deal has been struck"?
a) Just before Christmas
b) just after Christmas
c) two days before the policy is due to start ...?
There's too much money (hundreds of millions) of "profit" (quoted as obviously Amazon don't make profit on any of those transactions ...) on both sides to not do the deal ...
Trouble is, lurking in the background is the general increase in financial fees. A charity I know refuse to take membership cheques any more as they cost too much to process, credit card fees have gone up and banking, which was relatively cheap for the charity, has more than quadrupled in cost. Hell, they even get charged for depositing cash in a bank that's ten miles away, now only opens two hours in the middle of the day and don't provide night safe facilities. Financial organisations are fleecing their customers and nobody is shouting (apart from Amazon who, to be fair, try to equally fleece everyone ...) I used to get annoyed at "old people" who kept their cash under the creaky floorboard and refused to used banking services ... I'm starting to think they were right.
that anyone on here is complaining. The VISA fee is not paid by Amazon its paid by the many large and small vendors who use Amazon as a marketplace and see a reduced sum paid to them by Amazon. Now you know that if you are using VISA then relative to other payment methods you are short-changing the vendor you choose while the vendor has no say in the payment method you choose to use.
It seems to me the VISA PR team has been working overtime to try to counter this move and has been able to use many of you to make Amazon seem like the bad guy for not wanting to put up with higher charges. Amazing. But that's what you can do with so much cash floating around.
I'm more worried that the UK is next in line for banks to start charging montly fees for personal accounts. It's already happened in a few European countries (over the last 10 years or so, gradually, of course), and recently Germany has fallen too. There was a grab in the UK in that direction too, well over several years ago, but they failed then. But, you know, 'every little helps' and banks are organically 'creative', so I expect them to make a move there, sooner or later :(
On the other hand, just like the UK, there are also lots of new fintech banks in the EU which are upsetting the cosy fee-charging apple-cart(el) of old school banks.
Banks make their money by lending out our money that we lend to them in our savings and current accounts. There is no reason that we should pay to have a current account, as we are the ones providing them that source of funds (unless you think that those accounts which have packaged extra services are somehow worth it).
So my credit card is Mastercard and my bank debit card is just about to switch from Visa to Mastercard.
Previously if the Mastercard didn't work for a transaction I would use my Visa card. What would I do now:
Walk away from the petrol station?
Wash up in the restaurant?
Leave my wife as collateral?
Maybe it's time to start carrying a wad of cash again - if anyone will accept it now;)
"So my credit card is Mastercard and my bank debit card is just about to switch from Visa to Mastercard.
Previously if the Mastercard didn't work for a transaction I would use my Visa card. What would I do now:
Walk away from the petrol station?"
Cant speak for the other establishments but no, for a petrol station you simply need to go in, explain the situation, fill in some details and sign a "letter of intent" to pay then you can drive off and return with appropriate payment within a specified time frame (used to be 10 days).
When I worked for shell, I was told that it was a legal requirement for petrol stations to offer this - though that may have changed because it was *a long* time ago (2001).
It does seem weird that American Express (which normally charges higher fees) is retained, but Visa Credit is dropped.
I note that both Santander and First Direct have changed their debit cards from Visa to Mastercard in the last few months. Whilst this doesn't affect Amazon (who will still accept Visa debit), it makes me wonder that something bigger is at play here. Visa must have done something which *really* screws over their bigger partners in both banking and retail.
Certain crypto formats offer alternative routes to fast and inexpensive transaction handling that would be transparent to end user. Obviously not talking BTC here, but there are others that do it.
You would have thought the established operators would be looking to cut retailer costs given the existential threat posed.
If Amazon were to get behind such an option the world would have to take notice.
You are all assuming that Amazon are paying the "headline" rate to Visa, MasterCard and AmEx. Trust me, they aren't. They are big enough and have enough clout to negotiate a substantially lower rate from all 3 of them. Visa are trying to buck that trend post-Brexit because they can in the UK, now that the idiots gave the Tories free reign to rip everyone off whilst lining their own and their owners pockets. I'm no fan of Amazon or their practices, but in this instance they are obviously not interested in paying Visa more than they are paying MasterCard or AmEx as that would complicate their purchase process. Would you prefer that Amazon change their checkout so that if you pay by Visa Credit card they add an extra 1% to the purchase to cover the higher costs?
I only have Visa Credit cards and I am glad that Amazon are doing this. I will be contacting my bank to ask if they offer a MasterCard Credit card, and if not, I'll get one from somewhere else.
"Brits purposefully use credit cards for big online purchases because it can protect you from fraud. Under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, the credit card company is jointly and severally liable for any breach of contract or misrepresentation by the retailer or trader. This means punters can make a claim with the credit card provider to get their money back for goods or services, provided they cost more than £100 and less than £30k."
Except of course the majority of Amazon transactions are below £100 so using a credit card offers no additional protection.
Well, other than if I use a debit card that money leaves my bank straight away and once its gone its difficult to get back.
Whereas with a CC you generally don't pay for purchase until the next billing cycle which gives you time to spot and dispute the charge before being financially inconvenienced by it.
Under EU rules charges for credit card purchases are capped. 0.3% IIRC. But from early next year there UK will no longer abide by these rules. Ones would assume that other credit card providers have entered into an agreement with Amazon not to exceed this cap and that Visa have not. As such those is probably a pre-emptive
tive striker by Amazon. It's very likely that this is a result of Visa calling Amazon's bluff.
I think Amazon will win simply because the majority off customers would rather buy from Amazon via another payment method than use their Visa credit card to buy from somewhere else.
Ahmed if you don't that something like an increase from 0.3% charged to 0.4% would have an impact on Amazon there are two things you should consider. The first is the amount of money concerned, 0.1% of billions is a lot of money. The second is Amazon's very tight profit margins. Amazon have historically operated on very tight margins, which is why they are so often cheaper than three competition. When you are operating on margins of say 5% or less then just that tiny increase in charges is a 2% reduction in profits. More traditional business models work on margins several times the size off Amazon's. Back in my days of b2b retail we had a base margin of 14.5% to work to.
I don't much like Amazon but when you are short on money needs must so I use them.
I switched to a Mastercard with the best deal I could find, Virgin Money. Switched to claim my free £20 (as I'm a prime member anyway). Will then carry on using the Visa until its blocked. But I think this is going to be a push for Visa to do a deal with Amazon, possibly. Amazon's own fault for where they are "based" for tax purposes, its why Visa charge them more.
Hopefully just goes back to Visa as can't be bothered with another credit card, its currently only in use to get my free £20.
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