GUWonder

Paygoo is at least one of the products I thought I encountered at some stores.

Never flown on Ryanair; I have never personally even bought a ticket on them. By the time they or some other LCC tried to market MMX as being Copenhagen, I knew I had done the right thing by never using a single bit of my own money or anyone else's to book a flight on them. Between the marketing scam and their revenue scams, I stayed away from them.

nacho

The only issue with repaying credit card before time is that some card issuers such as Komplett don't let you put much more than what you owe them., e.g. if I want to buy tickets worth 20k and my credit limit is 10k then we are SOL. These cards are history now because they cut the card as soon as they found out Mr is no longer registered in Sweden. A long time ago with OKQ8 card - we used to be able to use the card as part payment for our new car, so I deposited a big chunk of $ in it and got 1% cash back which was awesome.

No idea if they sell reloadable GCs in Sweden as I like to use self scanning - especially when I use coupons.

I saw some people churn their AMEX using "curve" and "betalo" - I know Betalo and it made sense when COOP had no fee for using them, now with 2% I really don't see any reason to use them. I checked curve, again make no sense to me (I really don't see the value of SK points TBH). It's just how we see the value of the points, I know some people believe that they have a higher value.

johan rebel

For sure, but the others make even less sense in combination with "city".

I'm not sure what City Gross is supposed to mean in any language. In Swedish, gross means 12 dozen, as it can in English. Swedes also seem to think that "city" means downtown. In my neck of the rural woods the real rubes can be heard to announce excitedly "i morgon skall jag till city!", referring to the center of the nearest one-horse town.

So maybe City Gross actually means Downtown 144? That would make real sense.

Johan

GUWonder

Was the first City Gross in Hyllinge? Could it be that it was the regional "big" grocery store and it was in that "city" trying to lure the country-side folk from around that part of Skane for bulk grocery purchases?

Perhaps someone can dig up the articles from around the time the first City Gross was launched and find out why they came up with the name City Gross.

FlyingMoose

Sure, Swedes will typically play ball with other socialist countries but forget bringing in paperwork from other Western countries. The other issue is of course when you use the card for corporate expenses which will typically range a multiple or your income.

SEB will let you do this, you can also just pay off your bill in the middle of the month, wait a few days and have a clean credit limit as a work around. AMEX will start sending you letters and remind you that they are not a bank and as such can not 'extend credit' but they'll let you if you typically blow through the credit in 1-2 invoice cycles.

nacho

I think some Swedish financial institutions hate people with income from DK. When we were looking into building our own house in Sweden, SBAB turned us down and said if the income is from Norway, it's ok, not from DK. Then another "...tek" (can't remember the name) said they only grant mortgages with Swedish income. Handelsbanken offered us a mortgage with double the ongoing interest rate and would only lend us the $ if we have a signed sales contract for our house (I'm talking about a SEK 2,6M loan and Mr.'s annual income can easily handle that). We got a mortgage from DK with the double amount and got it approved without any issue.

Mr got a corporate card and he had to use on business trip/dinner etc., he had to wrote to his boss and explain why he needed to claim this and that if the expense wasn't paid by the corporate card.

nacho

https://www.citygross.se/om-city-gross/historia

Yep - first store in Hyllinge in 1993. I don't see anywhere it explains why it's called City Gross (Hyllinge is certainly not a city from what I remember).

GUWonder

Beyond Hyllinge, nowhere else around that part of Skane is really as close to being a "city" unless going "all the way" to Helsingborg and considering that the "city".

For some living out in the boonies, even a small town can be the "city" -- especially if it gets or got an ICA Maxi and a Max fast food joint. Back then I am pretty sure it didn't have either, but nowadays it has both.

the810

There is also a small independent supermarket in Kista's business district called Kista Grossen so I think the word has some meaning, but dictionary doesn't know it. Some kind of a slang, maybe?

fassy

I suppose it is derived from �Grossist�, I.e. bulk retailer / wholesale.

nacho

Honestly, I have no idea why Hyllinge is that big to have both CG and Maxi (I think there's a Bauhaus there too). It's like 20 mins to Helsingborg and now that there are CG in Helsingborg why drive all the way to Hyllinge? There's Vala that has a Coop, K-rauta there which is a lot closer than driving to Hyllinge - haven't been there for many years.

GUWonder

In the rural areas closer to Hyllinge than Helsingborg, Hyllinge was more convenient and "less intimidating" for a while. Vala is sort of out of the way for those who live SE and NE of Hyllinge, but in one direction there is Astorp that is bigger. But given the rise in fuel costs -- especially diesel, people may like to go more local than used to be the case out in those parts too.

In the US, some FTers would be paying closer attention to the rural areas to run up manufactured spend since opportunities which have dried up in urban and suburban areas have survived longer in rural areas. In Sweden, manufactured spend works differently.

fassy

Well, that�s probably why the city gross in Hyllinge closed� I think about two years ago

The Maxi has the prime location there. The City Gross was just hiding on the other end and most people just didn�t notice it at all. I only saw it when I needed to pick up some stuff from Jula which Bauhaus didn�t have.

I think Hyllinge is pretty well located to both attract Helsingborg and surroundings but also people like me which live but further away but to far from the next major place like Kristianstad or Halmstad.

and by the way�. I hate coop even more then city gross� given the coop in V�la isn�t that bad but still a coop.

GUWonder

I never got a chance to play up the Coop-to-SAS points transfer games while the gaming may have been good, so that draw has passed for me.

Clustering for gas stations is quite common in the US, but grocery stores seem to do that kind of thing a lot in Sweden -- especially when convenient for those living in "car country". Even Hyllie now has a City Gross + ICA + Willys within five minute walk of the Hyllie train station. Didn't realize that the Hyllinge City Gross had closed permanently there, but I can see why.

If it weren't for Coops at Stockholm and Malmo train stations, I would probably even more rarely enter any of them. The Coop most convenient for Malmo FF home matches was depressing the last time I ended up going inside it. And even the ones next to Systembolaget -- say like the one in Are -- don't manage to draw me in any better than IKEA. City Gross also barely ever sees me. I think the City Gross in Vaxjo or in Kalmar scared me away a long time ago, but the one in Rosengard was a draw.

vanillabean

How does it work? I just have no idea!

When some years back we got off the bus from Oslo to Copenhagen, Tanums shopping center I think it was, we got the bus tickets there to take the local bus to Fj�llbacka; that was our introduction to Coop, which stayed with us during trip. I had never really thought of Coop in Denmark, but always liked Brugsen and Irma. It wasn�t long until I got a membership card, not to forget a Coop bank card. I think it�s charming how the Swedes pronounce Coop, reminding me of the damn good coffee FBI agent in Twin Peaks. In Denmark, it�s basic co-op.