Help Me Please Overcharged On Debit Card

michellepryor

hello, i have never posted before and i am not sure i am in the right place. recently booked a flight with ryanair, got charged ......wait for it......an huge £16.00 DEBIT CARD fee, can that be right or even legal??? i use credit card generally for everything but realised i would be charged so decided to use debit on this occassion. my husband booked a flight with ryanair a few months ago and he was charged under £3 for a debit card fee. i have tried to contact ryanair by phone, they charge quite a lot on this line, keep you hanging on and i have then been cut off....3 times so far so i have given up.. i am really mad now :mad: should i write to them or wait until my flight in october to complain. i work in retail and i would be out of business if i charged £16 on top of the price for debit card use, its akin to theft in my eyes...your thoughts/advice please. many thanks. michelle

shellsuit

It is right and legal I'm afraid.

exel1966

Comes up alot this and it's right and perfectly legal. Yes, it's expensive, but you are advised of the charge during the booking process and accepted it at that time.
There's absolutely nothing you can do about it except next time vote with your feet and use another airline, but you'll probably find you won't get a flight as cheap elsewhere.

OP, maybe you should change the title of this thread as you haven't been Overcharged.

nzseries1

Just don't use ryanair any more. These tactics SHOULD be illegal, but unfortunately they aren't.

Richard019

nzseries1 wrote: »

Just don't use ryanair any more. These tactics SHOULD be illegal, but unfortunately they aren't.

If even allowing for charges they're the cheapest operator that's just biting you nose to spite your face isn't it?

I actually take the opposing view to yours on it, I think all the companies should be forced to display exactly what they're charging people for, with their costs having to be displayed as they are. That way you can see that your BA ticket from Heathrow that costs £10 extra compared to an Easyjet one from Stansted should only cost £8 more, but BA are pocketing an extra £2 and blaming it on the airport charges.

It's the same with discount supermarkets charging for carrier bags. The amount of people we get moaning about having to pay for carrier bags in the genuine belief that the big 4 give them away and just take the loss against their profits. The idea that these companies just add the cost into their mark up just seems beyond them.

exel1966

I'm not sure it should be illegal, but maybe it should be proportionate to the actual cost to Ryanair which is minimal.

Then again, if it was it would just mean the headline price would be higher as it would then be included in the actual flight cost meaning that overall flights would actually cost more as those who don't pay any debit card charge to Ryanair would then have to pay.

Is the annual road tax we pay the Govt. proportionate to what they spend on our roads ? NO. not by far ! It's the same principle.

The way to avoid these charges if you're a regular Ryanair user is to either open a Coop Basic Current account or a Halifax Basic Account as these come with an Electron card which isn't subject to these additional charges.

NickX

Right what has happened here is that in the last few months Ryanair changed their Debit Card fee so that it was equal to the Credit Card fee with the exception of Visa Electron cards.

In addition to this, they do not just charge a single fee per transaction. They charge the fee for each leg of the flight and for each person even if you are paying all in one transaction.

Therefore for 2 people traveling a return flight you pay the fee 4 times, even though you have made only one transaction.

At present this is legal, but I think this could be challenged. Such Charges should be in keeping with the effort required to process the transaction. Why does it cost 4 times as much to process a single transaction with 2 people on a return flight than it does for 1 person on a single flight ? Personally I think there is a case to suggest that these charges could be unlawful.

To be honest it is all marketing, it is a con - they advertise a very cheap headline fare, and you only find these hidden charges when you actually make the booking. Yes they are cheap, but when you take the charges into account, they are not necessarily the cheapest. I have certainly found cheaper flights elsewhere.

I'm thinking of getting a Visa Electron card JUST for Ryanair, but knowing my luck by the time I get the card, Ryan will start charging for them to.

As it stands there is no advantage over paying on Debit Card over a Credit Card, so for now I pay on a 0% purchases card.

JimmyTheWig

NickX wrote: »

To be honest it is all marketing, it is a con

Exactly.

Never trust a price (from anywhere online) until you get to the bit where you are ready to pay for it.
This is no different to a booking fee on theatre tickets, etc.
Just find out the full price you pay with each option and then decide which is better value.

exel1966

NickX wrote: »

To be honest it is all marketing, it is a con

I agree, very clever marketing, but a con, no. You are told of the charge prior to booking, you don't have to accept it, there are ways to avoid it so I just can't agree with that.

If this is a con, then what about the smallprint in contracts which can include a multitude of items which many would deem unfair. Are those a con ?

NickX

exel1966 wrote: »

If this is a con, then what about the smallprint in contracts which can include a multitude of items which many would deem unfair. Are those a con ?

OK well it depends how you are defining a con. Does a practice actually have to be against the law to actually be a con ?

I would probably call hiding specific conditions that go in the Company's favour in smallprint as a con aswell.

Remember that these big organisations have access to a multitude of legal and marketing advisors that the customer does not. It does seem somewhat unfair to expect customers who haven't got such experience to understand every single line of the small print.

I certainly would call a clause that allows an admin fee for processing a card transaction to be duplicated across the number of individual flights and the number passengers concerned as a "con".

nzseries1

Richard019 wrote: »

If even allowing for charges they're the cheapest operator that's just biting you nose to spite your face isn't it?

The reason I have such a thing against Ryan Air is not actually the debit card fee (although that's still underhanded and sneaky), it's actually this (which I think genuinely is illegal):

They charge an "airport-check in fee", however there is no way for me to avoid this fee, therefore I think it should be included in the advertised price, because if I'm not mistaken the law says that all compulsory fees and taxes need to be in the advertised price.

The reason that this fee is unavoidable for me is: I can't use online checkin because I don't have an EU passport. This makes the fee unavoidable for me, and therefore charging this fee separately to the advertised price is, IMHO, illegal. And because they're acting illegally, I choose not to fly with them.

Even if it weren't for that, I'd still not use them as a matter of morals (e.g. the extortionate debit card fee). Usually I always go for the cheapest, but this is the one exception.