Hotel price fixing

"Martin" wrote in message
...

On Mon, 13 Aug 2012 11:27:51 +0100, "tim....."
wrote:

"Erick T. Barkhuis" wrote in message
...

tim.....:

"Andreas H. Zappel" wrote in message
. ..

I can tell you that it works in the other way - british debit cards
wors well in Gemrany.

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That's because they "look" like credit cards.

But IME German bank cards don't - they don't have enough numbers.
Perhaps they have fixed this since I left

My current german bank card (Maestro Card) shows a 10-digit account
number, a 10-digit card number, an 8-digit 'Bankleitzahl'-number, and a
'valid until'-date. Looks pretty much like a credit card.

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I presume you don't just mean it "physically looks like", which of course
it
does (but then so does my library card)

Credit cards (and in the UK debit cards) have a single 16 digit number (and
a 3 digit verification number printed on the signature stripe to be used
for
"not present" transactions).

It's the lack of the 16 digit number that I am suggesting *may* cause it
not
to work in UK establishments

Despite which they do. The secret is in what is on the part of the
card that you can't read visually.

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So how do you type them into internet shopping sites if they only exist on
the mag stripe?

tim

On 2012-08-13, tim..... wrote:
"Jesper Lauridsen" wrote in message ...

On 2012-08-06, tim..... wrote:

We're talking 60-70E, but that's in Munich.

The best price (any available hotel) that I can get from HRS for the last
week in August is 100E.

What's going on there? The prices for that week are a lot higher than
usual. I'm seeing hotels where I have stayed for 50 euro charging ~150.

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Dunno. I checked the messe, but there only appeared to be some obscure
medical conference on.

Looking further into it, the problem is Monday and, to a lesser extent,
Tuesday. The rest of the week has normal prices. Doesn't solve the puzzle,
but does offer a way to take the edge off the price hike.

"tim....." wrote:

That's because they "look" like credit cards.

NACK
It's because they are connected to the Maestro system.

But IME German bank cards don't - they don't have enough numbers. Perhaps
they have fixed this since I left

There are existing german bank card without the Maestro symbol as well
- and they will not work for payments even in Germany, they only can
be used at the ATM of the own bank.

Greetings from Cologne

Andreas

"tim....." wrote:

As there's no mathematical way (in the UK) to get from bank ID/account
number to card number I assume that this is also true in other countries
BICBW (and as I said, they could have changed then format in the past 5
years)

Don't worry, the system did change.

Greetings from Cologne

Andreas

"tim....." wrote:


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Almost everybody running a business in the UK now accepts "debit" card
payments as other (non cash) methods of payment have slowly disappeared,
so they will have "the mechanism" to process Credit cards, but may
decline them on the basis of not being willing to pay the fees.

But the UK debit cards are different to the German ones, so whether
international cards (other than credit cards) work, I have no idea.

I've had my credit card not work, but the debit card always has.


--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist with iPad