Soldato
Ah well you had a good run! 
Too many credit cards? aka "The Credit Card thread"
- Thread starter robfosters
- Start date
Soldato
Or emigrate.
Our previous next door neighbours did exactly that, they racked up tons of personal loans, credit cards, posh Audi on finance, sold that and their house, took the money from all that and moved to Australia.
Not a damn thing anyone could do about it.
funny thing is now as it's been over 7 years if they ever came back they probably wouldn't even be chased for it.
When I was younger I defaulted on a £2500 credit card bill. They chased me for a long time, constantly towards the end, but once the 6 years were up and it fell of my credit record, I didn’t get a single call or letter again
Noted! Didn't know this!
Commissario
Or get a lucky streak and have the bank collapse.
I’ve posted this before. In 1991, I had a BCCI credit card and I'd made a couple of large purchases in the month prior to them collapsing. I did receive a letter telling me that someone would be in touch for me to pay my balance but nobody ever did. Because it was such a large figure, I remember exactly how much it was at the time. £4,767.25
I had the money and I kept it in a separate account for a few months but eventually decided that if they didn't want it, I'd keep it.
Sorry* to anyone who was owed money by BCCI when they failed in 1991.
* not sorry
Caporegime
That's £10k in today's money!
Soldato
Pretty crap karma move doing this on purpose though!
I'm going to be travelling quite a wee bit over the next year mainly by plane but with a train trip or two thrown in so I've been looking at the benefits of various airport lounges. I noticed the Amex Platinum card gives free access to many lounges albeit at a breathtaking annual fee of £650. In a similar question to how long is a piece of string, are the various benefits of the Amex Platinum worth the cash?
Commissario
Only you can answer that by looking at what the benefits are and how much you'll use them.
Some people on here will say that [for them], the benefits far outweigh the cost but others won't. It's different for every person.
Soldato
Had Amex in the past and never used any of the additional benefits, it was cheaper getting an holiday on discount rather than using points on their site.
Personally, I use the Halifax travel card as My travel credit card. The forex rates, free cash withdrawals and interest free, if you pay the amount you taken out on the same day makes it worth it.
The lounge experience is nice to have, if you have to travel for work.. but when going on holiday, for me the airport is part of the experience. You can always pay and book into a lounge if there’s a layover period where it’s too long to mingle but not long enough to leave the airport, but I’ve paid for it in the past and a few times never used it, them queue at Burger King are lengthy but I rather queue than be sat in a lounge with a crying baby. Lol
I think Barclays and Netwest have lounge passes as part of their accounts but not as many lounges as Amex.
Associate
I use Amex platinum as the points systems on is excellent. I use it for travel and also quite a few places accept it. I spend a fortune on it so I get many times the points (cash) than I pay for annual fee.
Lounge access can be achieved cheaper with the Santader World Elite mastercard, if you want just that.
You also get 3 additional cardholders for free, versus only a single additional cardholder on the platinum for free.
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I made extensive use of it when it was £300 a year and I was travelling by air every week as it meant I had lounge access covered either by the various airline status I had at the time (think I was gold on all 3 major alliances at the same time) or Priority Pass. As we were allowed to pay for all our travel and expenses on our personal cards and claim it back it made for a rather enjoyable few years racking up the points and making use of the benefits.
I've dropped down to the green card now as I don't travel much at all any more but still like to accumulate the points on everyday spending.
Soldato
lol.. yeah, it's my local airport.. I rather travel out at some stupid hour in the morning so there's never many spooners around and have a normal return time, straight into a taxi and at home in 30 mins.
same
Soldato
- Joined
- 22 Nov 2007
- Posts
- 4,209
I am curious, care to eleborate?
Caporegime
On the whole a pretty broad sweeping generalisation there isn't that much difference between Manchester and other airports. It's the UK's 3rd biggest after Gatwick and Heathrow, but there is some truth to it. It's not like Manchester airport is the only airport to have budget airlines or airlines for package holiday companies, but I bet if you ran the numbers there would be a higher portion of family holiday makers flying on these types of flights out of Manchester compared with Heathrow which will have more global flights and more Scheduled flights compared to chartered ones.
The airport lounges also tells a story. Go to heathrow and fly Virgin - you have the Virgin Atlantic Club House. Fly BA and you have separate first class and business class lounges in Terminal 5. None of that at Manchester, just their own 2 lounges which aren't airline specific.
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Can't speak for the other airports but apart from Air Canada, all those airlines run scheduled flights from Edinburgh.
Caporegime
I've removed that point. I think Manchester does have a decent range of direct international flights, but I don't think its necessarily any better than the other top airports in the UK outside of top 2 of Gatwick and Heathrow. I think all of the top 10 airports outside of Heathrow / Gatwick are going to have the similar splits in terms of scheduled / chartered flights and budget airlines and Manchester is no worse than say Edinburgh as you say. It's a perception thing.
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