MSE News: Which? super-complaint to ban excessive card payment fees

About time too.

I could not believe the guy from Ryanair on Radio 4 this morning trying to defend the charge as paying for security and administration on their website but then arguing that you could avoid the charges by paying by prepaid mastercard!!!! So when booking with that card Ryanair somehow use a cheaper website or lower security do they?

The law needs to change so that the price you see for goods or services includes all taxes and charges and payment by either cash or debit card. A premium for credit cards is fine as long as it is proportionate to the fee the retailer is charged because the consumer is getting something extra - interest free credit for a month and insurance under the consumer credit act if something goes wrong.

Using 'clever' tricks like this and the extortionate boarding card fees should be deemed anti-competitive across Europe and come with a fine of up to 10% of turnover - then perhaps Ryanair might treat its customers with a bit of respect.

R.

Ironically I was trying to book flights with Ryanair today, and came across all this news. Am really annoyed not just at this hidden charge (seriously, do they genuinely expect people to have prepaid cards *just* for the privilege of going on their airline?!). I agree with Rafter - all taxes and charges (including cost for booking on cards) should be quoted with the original price.

Which? has a pledge thing where you can sign to say you support them, presumably numbers will be submitted alongside the complaint. http://www.which.co.uk/campaigns/personal-finance/card-surcharges/pledge-your-support/

On a side note - I actually sort of like Ryanair's funny response. They can do that because people will go "oh, well, they can get away with being b**tards because they are the cheapest airline" which, i think, probably persuades some people not to bother price checking or reading ts and cs of additional charges that closely.

It's a very good initiative - but the trouble is that we are not the card scheme's clients, the banks are. And it's in the banks' best interest to get you the one that they can the most commission/interchange fees from your business. They will always try to get away with the most fees from the merchant that the merchants can put up with.

(Just remember the recent actions by Natwest and Tesco to move people over to their World Mastercard scheme, which I didn't even know Tesco had - the only main difference is that for most type of transactions, the interchange fees are higher as the bank is supposed to give back more value - from the merchant evidently).

chattychappy wrote: »

I'm annoyed about this complaint. From Ryanair's home page you can click "fees" and everything is clear. Besides at the point of confirmation the amount to be charged is clear.

I would think limiting the costs to pass on to be the actual cost is a bit over the top - even passing on the costs have their costs, obviously.

In R's case, the fee structure is clear, yes - but as this charge is per-person, per-direction, it's far from being sane. They claim it's because it's a fee of the travellers entered into the booking system, then why would a pre-paid mastercard, as a payment method cause it to be so much less expensive?*

In my eyes, the reason for the complaint is simply because there's no way to tell them that this is madness, and that they should try to respect their customers. At the individual level we are powerless otherwise. Complaining to the people you meet along at a flight wouldn't have any effect, any customer-facing team's main job at such a "popular" organisation is surely to filter customer complaints, and try to resolve them at the lowest level possible - the cheapest being ignoring them, after telling they are right...

I simply cannot imagine Michael to ponder about the falling customer stats for some reason

* actually the reason for that seems to be somewhat obvious to me - it could make a business sense for them to subsidise this booking fee on the premises of more subscribers coming their way. If there are a very few issuers of pre-paid mastercards, it would make this agreement easier to coordinate.