Florida Vacations. How Paying For Yours By Credit Card, Could Save You Money.
Independent Travellers
Thanks to websites like Direct Villas Florida, it is becoming increasingly popular for holiday makers to book their own transport and Florida villa on the web. The savings made by doing this can then be available for spending money theeby reducing the overall cost of you families Florida vacation to a minimum., whilst ensuring that you get exactly what you want, and not what a travel operator gives you.
Paying for your Holiday
There are advantages in paying for your Holiday to Florida by credit card. For example if there is a breach of contract or misrepresentation of any elements of your purchase and the cost is £100 or more, you may have a claim against the credit card company and the seller.
Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 (Section 75) provides you with a valuable legal right when you buy goods or services on a credit card. If you buy something costing between £100 and £30,000 on a credit card (but not a debit card), you can claim against your card issuer if something goes wrong. What’s more, even if you’ve only paid a deposit of, say, £1 on your credit card, you can claim a refund of the entire cost of the goods.
So, if goods are damaged, faulty or don’t turn up, or the supplier goes bust, your card issuer wears the supplier’s shoes and must make good your loss (under what’s known as a debtor-creditor-supplier arrangement or connected lender liability). This explains why I always use my credit card to pay for expensive purchases (plus I get cashback as I spend, too).
Alas, in November 2004, three credit-card issuers — American Express, Lloyds TSB and Tesco Personal Finance (a joint venture with the Royal Bank of Scotland) — went to the High Court to argue that Section 75 does not apply to transactions outside of the UK, contrary to what the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) believed.
The OFT lost its case, so it appealed to the higher Court. Happily, the OFT won in the Court of Appeal, with the Judges overturning the High Court ruling by confirming that Section 75 does indeed cover overseas purchases. This is great news for cardholders, because we Brits spend about £10 billion abroad each year on credit cards, plus we are increasingly using credit cards to purchase goods from foreign websites.
Hence, all credit-card issuers must compensate customers for foreign transactions which go wrong, so if you’ve had a foreign Section 75 claim turned down, ask your card issuer to review your case without delay. However, the game isn’t over yet, as Lloyds TSB is considering an appeal to the House of Lords, so there may be one final chapter to this story!
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