Curve Card - Help/A Warning

Its a product I've used for a while, and up until now has been absolutely bullet proof - the main reason I use it is to pay my tax bill with HMRC and benefit from avios points. As a secondary, it's worked fine as a card that has no FX fees (as I travel quite a lot). Had no reason, until now to suspect it had huge flaws.

The curve cash refund is not the norm, but I have no idea why the transaction couldn't be matched, hence why it went back as Curve Cash (it was a normal refund from the merchant, deposit taken at the start, and returned at the end of hire). It wouldn't bother me for a small amount, but didn't want that kind of money sitting on there.

I was hoping the rest of the £5k wasn't going back to my CC as it was the weekend, alas it hasn't changed this morning.

I have tweeted and left a trust pilot review (they seem to be responding on there....) so will see what happens.
 
dLockers said:
Okay well yeah, if breaching the T&Cs is an argument that Clarity is the same then sure :cry: :confused: :rolleyes:
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I wasn't aware I was breaching the T&C's - Who actually reads T&C's?

Well I checked my Barclaycard app and surprisingly you can apply to just change your current CC with another one of their products, and keep all your existing credit limit, benefits etc so I applied for the Barclaycard Rewards card instead.
 
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dLockers said:
Only reason I use Curve is because BarclayCard still do not support Google Pay :(
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Use an Iphone and you don't have that issue :p


I've found Curve to be less and less useful as times gone by. Credit Cards now seem to know it's a Curve card and so apply cash fees whereas it used to be tracked as a normal purchase, along with being limited to 2 cards on the free account. Although i think the main issue is that it doesn't allow cards from a joint account to be connected to 2 Curve cards.
So since i added my Barclaycard to mine, my wife couldn't add her additional card to her Curve card.
 
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Found the CEO on Linkedin so going to construct a reply and send to him directly.

Called Barclays again, and whilst they said they cannot do much, they have frozen the transaction so I don't need to pay it off and won't incur fees. Buys some time at least....
 
For me the appeal at the beginning was the ability to use curve to pay anywhere with Amex and curve promoted this heavily during the early stages. It was fantastic. Shortly after member numbers started to rise, Amex support was pulled. Call me cynical, but I think behind the scenes they were paying the amex merchant fees and netting a loss on some transactions with the idea of then getting everyone hooked on the other features, then to bring in a subscription fee to repay investors. I may have said this on here back when Amex support disappeared.

Curve lost a lot of its appeal as other providers and CCs were offering similar perks (fee free transactions, decent FX rates) so now it's simply being able to use one card and have the aforementioned benefits.

Even that though, is a huge risk fr your USP to be 'carrying just one card' as I've also experienced declines over the years, a handful of odd 'double transactions' and the slow customer service I use it simply for paying for my YT premium, netflix, hosting and a handful of other random annual subs. Most curve users wouldn't ever just carry the one card and thankfully have at least apple pay, if not their wallet, at all times.

Also, I just noticed the iOS app recently updated and isn't going beyond the splash screen now, either.
 
There were 3 main reasons I used Curve

  1. Fee free FX rates and the ability to put foreign transactions on a rewards card without fees, and I travel a lot.
  2. Android Pay support. I use an Amex direct on GP for every transaction I can, however for ones that don't accept Amex (talking everyday small spending - I'd never put a big purchase through Curve), it was an easy way to add my Barclaycard and Virgin credit card (both of which don' support GP) to GP.
  3. Have the ability to put my tax bill (I'm self employed) onto a CC, with minimal fee.
Up until now, it worked great as the product I used it for. Its just a shame that this has happened, and that they have clearly gone severely down hill recently in support and other departments.
 
dLockers said:
Only reason I use Curve is because BarclayCard still do not support Google Pay :(
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Slightly off topic, but I realised this weekend that Barclays debit can now be added to Google Pay (since about 3 weeks apparently). I tweeted about when might Barclaycard follow this and had a reply saying

No updates on this yet, Andy. Hopefully not too far behind

Keep a check on our website and Social media for any future updates we may have
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I thought that was quite encouraging. Maybe like an agreement has been made, just the coding integration work to be done perhaps?
 
AndyCr15 said:
Slightly off topic, but I realised this weekend that Barclays debit can now be added to Google Pay (since about 3 weeks apparently). I tweeted about when might Barclaycard follow this and had a reply saying


I thought that was quite encouraging. Maybe like an agreement has been made, just the coding integration work to be done perhaps?
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I just remembered - one of the main reasons I wasn't that bothered is that I have missed out on decent $$$ cashback by using the Android Pay/Curve linkage to BarclayCard, because it doesn't register BarclayCard Cashback (10% Morrisons a usual suspect).

So I didn't bother checking/adding as it drives a bit of discipline in using the physical card!
 
Update

Had an email from someone in their support team yesterday around 1300hrs, in reply to a follow up I sent yesterday morning. Had to re-type out and explain everything that happened again, sent that back and since then have heard nothing. Not even an acknowledgement of receipt.

Disgraceful service
 
Still no reply - what a **** show.

Giving them until the end of the day to even acknowledge the issue, and then I will escalate.

Thunk I was over complicating it before - at the end of the day there is £5k refund showing on my Curve card (has been there for 8 working days now) and they haven't sent it to my Barclaycard.
 
VincentHanna said:
Well I checked my Barclaycard app and surprisingly you can apply to just change your current CC with another one of their products, and keep all your existing credit limit, benefits etc so I applied for the Barclaycard Rewards card instead.
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What Barclays don't tell you, is they don't bother sending you a card out until the end of your next statement date.

Which for me is May 24th! So Had to wait over a month to get a new card to use, even though they cancel your old card almost immediately.
 
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