flieduk

You really don't accept that there us a spectrum. Overlap

Calchas

I meant, there is no route for 3V -> USD (in hard currency) at the spot rate, of which I am aware. If you could do it for 2.75% fee it would be interesting but you would face similar losses transferring your USD cash back into GBP, unless you do a lot of business in the US, although maybe it's worth thinking about. The other trouble is that £ several k each month into USD cash and back might raise eyebrows but I suppose that is always a risk with manufactured spend!

Indeed, he certainly does not.

21H21J

Auto-correct much?

Steve Oh

I think you could be right...

Steve Oh

How can there be an overlap?

MS would be buying a 3V from Tesco with your Amex, then having that £25 back in your account for when the bill comes in.
RS is just paying for something with a 3V instead of with your Amex - you're still spending £25 but not getting any of it back.

flashware

MS would then be getting a refund of that money that was paid in advance on those bills which some of us are doing successfully in rather decent amounts.

flashware

MS would also be using the spend x get y off vouchers at Tesco to purchase fee-based Visa gift cards which can still be run through NS&I without needing to register the cards.

21H21J

By that logic so would finding £10 on the street and using it to offset the fee on visa cards. If you could generate the spend x get y off vouchers on demand it'll be MS, but also counterfeiting.

SteveOh's definition is bang on.

Overpaying bills might work, but unless you can get the money refunded before the credit card bill is due means you have to carry the cost for a month (or more). I work for a large UK company that many people pay a monthly bill to, and one of our internal fraud triggers is multiple or large refunds, and large credit balances. Due to the nature of some of our products we have to comply with the FCA across the whole business- which includes "put policies and procedures in place to prevent and detect money laundering".

flashware

Actually, you're talking about a hypothetical situation - I'm referring to a real world one. Currently for a select few Tesco are printing spend x off y vouchers for every y spent - it's a revolving door at the moment. People are quite happily turning around, buying more cards, more vouchers are being spit out and repeating the process. I fail to see how this isn't MS.

21H21J

What might be MS for you, may not be MS for some

nearlyheadlessian

Why don't you post your current MS techniques here to bring the thread back on topic? Hardly surprising that this all becomes about redirected spending if no one is willing to say a word about manufactured spending.

flieduk

Yes and the overlap would be a chain of transactions that allows you to put 10x the value through in 3V on an item you would buy anyway.

21H21J

this is why

flashware

+1

Council Tax is a great example of that. Instead of earning 0 points/year I am earning ~15,000-20,000 that I otherwise would have missed out on as direct debits don't earn any miles

nearlyheadlessian

Well quite. But if you're not willing to share then it's not cool to pester others who are posting within the spirit of the thread, even if it doesn't quite fit the original parameters. Frankly, there must be a middle ground between posting how to do everything (like PTS) and posting the most uselessly cryptic stuff ever (think the fuel surcharge dumping threads here on FT) that would satisfy your thirst?