Please check exactly what message you receive when you entered your card number: it will either be that your card is invalid or that it was declined.

If the card number is invalid then the most common reason is that you clicked the wrong logo image on the first page. For Visa in particular, there are 3 card types - normal Visa, Visa Delta and Visa Electron. If you select the wrong one, you will end up with a message saying your card number is invalid. Be sure to select the correct logo, and of course, to enter your card number accurately, without any intervening spaces.

If the message you get is that your payment was declined then please understand that we would have no reason to refuse a payment - if your bank agrees to pay us then we'd be delighted! The only reason a transaction would be declined would be if your bank declined it or if it failed your bank's automated anti-fraud tests.

Every credit card transaction is referred directly back to the issuing bank, and a payment is only declined if the cardholder's bank refuses to authorise the transaction.

Sometimes this happens as a security precaution - especially if you do not often use your card for Internet purchases or for international transactions.

Sometimes you may receive the code W331 - this simply means that the payment was referred to your bank and they declined the transaction.

Please note that sometimes a bank or card company will refuse a payment on the grounds that they are going to telephone the cardholder to check the transaction is genuine. This works fine for retail situations, when the shopkeeper can hang on the phone waiting for the transaction to be authorised, but it doesn't work for Internet transactions because it's impossible for the website to hang around that long. So if a bank decides to contact you to check if the transaction is OK, the website will treat this as a refusal. This is not something specific to our system, it applies to all website transactions.

If you would like personal assistance with your enquiry, please select "no" and the next page will then show a form on which to submit your query.

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