How do Jet2 get away with their website?

Mark_Michalowski

Their headline prices are stated as 'fm £X one way inc. taxes' There's a small footnote on the main page saying '* Payment card fees may apply. Also individual bag charges (if you are travelling with checked/hold baggage)' (cleverly, it's not asterisked from the first, bigger place they say 'fm £X...' but only from a smaller, less visible one further down. They don't mention the inevitable fuel supplements that will be added, either.

And then the website seems to go out of its way to be obstructive or to trick you into paying for stuff you don't want or need.

1 Pick your flights, move on to 'Step 2' and helpfully they put up a box in the top right hand corner giving you the cost of the flights plus the taxes (which, on the example I'm using to run through this, turn a £40 return flight from Leeds to Barcelona into a £73.48 one - I know that Jet2 can't be blamed for the taxes, but giving such cheap headline fares seems a bit naughty). Also at this point, it tells you that 'Excludes variable payment card fee and fuel supplement which will be added later in the booking process' which is a tad different to their earlier statement that 'payment card fees may apply' - they do apply and there's no way to avoid some card charge, so how do they get away with not including it in the initial, base price? And anyway, why don't they include the fuel supplement as this point?

2 The next page asks for your details and how much hold luggage (because, of course, they're going to charge you extra for it (£6.99 per bag per flight!) and try to trick you into buying insurance from them: by default it assumes you want it, and you have to click on a 'remove' hyperlink (not, of course, a nice, obvious radio button to click or unclick!). If you click 'remove' it asks you if you're sure, again assuming that you do want it. This time, though, they've seen fit to give you the options as nice, obvious radio buttons.

3 The next page is where they try to get you to pay to pre-choose your seat. (Even if you're a single passenger, they'll tell you that 'The members of your party can't be guaranteed a seat together if you don't pre-choose' - well, d'uh!) There's no obvious way of not booking your seat - you do it by clicking 'continue': you can't unclick the radio button alongside the passenger's name. If you haven't chosen a seat, it'll bring up a box reminding you, and asking if you're sure. Fair enough.

4 On the next page, it gives you a summary of your costs so far (not including payment card fees - they clearly want you to think your flights are cheaper than they are for a while yet!): with one piece of hold luggage, my £40 return flight has rocketed in price to £99.46: more than double the originally quoted price.

5 It's only on the next (and almost final) page that they tell you the payment card charges. Actually, they don't: they give you a total figure, including card charges, but no breakdown; so if you've not been keeping a clear note of the price from the previous page, you have to get a calculator to work out how much more you're paying for, well, paying them! There's no choice other than debit or credit cards (debit: total charge £101.45 = card charge of £1.99) (credit: total charge: £106.45 = card charge of £6.99).

6 So we've gone from £40 return (headline price) to £106.45 (by credit card). No insurance, and just one item of handluggage. Even with no handluggage, you couldn't do it for less than £92.47, which is still more than double the headline price.

Sorry if this sounds like nothing more than an extended whinge (well, OK, it is!) but it really bugs me that airlines (and Jet2 is particularly bad - the Flythomson website - perhaps surprisingly - was much nicer, more straightforward and honest!) get away with all these extra charges (particularly ones that can't be avoided, like a minimum debit card charge).

I assume that Jet2's not breaking any laws with their site and pricing, but aren't they guilty of misadvertising in some way? I suspect, sadly, not....

Mxx

jd87

Yeah Ryanair's website is just as bad. When I tried to book a flight I got all the way to payment before I knew that there was a card payment charge. They are allowed to say "card payment charge may apply" because one obscure type of card (Electron) doesn't incur a charge (for Ryanair at least).

The insurance trick is the same too, and very deceptive on Ryanair, because the way you accept insurance is by choosing your country of residence from a drop down menu, and by default it is set as UK. So if you are just scanning the menus, you see that is says UK, and you think, yep, that's right, that's where I'm from. You have to scroll all the way through all the countries to get to option that says insurance not required.

I refuse to pay these hidden fees. Where they can be avoided people must avoid them. We can't rely on laws to make the process transparent. These so-called airlines will always find loopholes.

Paul_Herring

How do Jet2 get away with their website?

1) Because the rules and regulations allow them to.
2) Because people pay the prices regardless.

TravellingAbuela

I'm in total agreement with you on this Mark. We have used Jet2 3 or 4 times a year since their launch and I have always had nothing but praise for them. Until this year! And that is entirely down to the booking procedure such as you describe.

They are number 12 in the Which short-haul airline chart and, in my opinion, would be higher than that if it wasn't for the booking procedure letting them down. I have no complaints as regards any other part of their service - apart from their inflated in-flight prices, but all airlines are guilty of that!! Come on Jet2 get your booking procedure back to how it used to be!

coxy07

I have no complaints about any of the low cost airlines. All that is required is careful reading of the website while booking. These airlines have allowed us to travel to many places we would not previously have been able to visit at a cost which is less than it would cost us for a train ticket to places in the U.K.We now enjoy several really cheap holidays a year thanks to these airlines. Long may they continue!!

Buzzard1_2

I do have a complaint. :mad: Ryanair are now charging a booking fee of £4 for each passenger each flight. This is for using a debit card more for a credit card.

If your a family of four in now cost you an extra £32 to book your flights. We travel from Scotland to France and have to get two flights so this means it costs us £64 extra.

I would like to know how this is legal. No way does it cost them this to process the transaction. When you add the total cost of the flights/taxes/charges it does not make them cheap flights.

I would rather the company be up front and tell you what the whole trip will cost. But of course this way they can't advertise low airfares..........

Lynsey

It is frustrating but I only look at the final price.
If a fare is £9.99 each way and charges are added for luggage, booking fees, credit card etc. and it comes to say £60, then that's what I regard as the flight cost and if I can get a return flight for around the £60 mark or cheaper then that is a bargain. A return taxi fare to my city centre would cost around £30, so to fly abroad for around £60 return would be a bargain.
It would be a lot easier if the total price was advertised as people feel cheated with add ons, but I think the price would be the same anyway, it's just a way of shuffling the figures.

Lynsey

PandaPants_2

Just be careful if you're slagging off Ryanair. There's a guy on here who takes it VERY personally, i had to put him on ignore after he repeatedly had a go at me on another thread!! :rotfl:

I personally only look at the final fare, i've got sick of getting excited and thiking im getting a really cheap flight, only to find out that there's another £50-odd to add..... :mad:

benjus

I fly with Ryanair regularly, so I've just opened a new bank account (Halifax Easycash) specifically to get the Visa Electron card to buy Ryanair flights. It took a few minutes to apply online and I got the card in the post after about a week. Should save me quite a bit, although knowing my luck Ryanair will probably change their "no fee" card to Solo or something!

ince_mon

I've also applied for the Electron card,and i've no doubt there are people who work for Ryanair check this site.So where do you get a Solo card from.;)

PixelPound

benjus wrote: »

I fly with Ryanair regularly, so I've just opened a new bank account (Halifax Easycash) specifically to get the Visa Electron card to buy Ryanair flights. It took a few minutes to apply online and I got the card in the post after about a week. Should save me quite a bit, although knowing my luck Ryanair will probably change their "no fee" card to Solo or something!

Well I've just applied for one, so lets hope not. The £4 pppf is scandalous. If it was £4 per booking I could probably understand it as Visa do charge, but per flight is pure money making.