Barclays Connect/Electron Visa Debit with Ryanair ?

exel1966

agsnu wrote: »

Ryanair are cheating lying scum.

And for all we know so could you be !

happycouple

I thought it might be worth recording the experience I've just had. I was looking for some cheap flights to Portugal and found out that Aer Lingus have some great deals from Gatwick. So yesterday, I went through the booking procedure on line and found out that I needed an Electron card, otherwise I would end up paying five Euros for each of us for both flights = 20 Euros. After doing some research I found out that you can get an Electron card from main Post Offices, over the counter. Off I went to the Post Office. I then found out that these cards are available in dollars, euros or sterling. The euro card is free, but the others have a £3 transaction fee. As I was booking with an Irish airline, I decided to go for the Euro one 'cos it was free. I loaded the card with Euros over the counter and came back home. The card can't be activated until the following day, so this morning I activated my card by phone and went through the booking procedure on-line again. Interesting experience ..... the return flight I was booking had gone down from £4.99 to zero, but the taxes had increased by £4.99. I'm left wondering how that can happen ......... Anyway, the end figure was the same, so I processed the booking .... all in pounds sterling, and went to pay with my Electron card. The Euro Electron card was accepted but when I checked the balance on my card and converted the euros I had been charged back to sterling, I found I had paid £5 more. Had I bought a sterling Electron card, I would have saved £2 because that would only have cost me £3. Hellishly complicated, but at least I didn't end up donating twenty euros to Aer Lingus by not using an Electron card. Hope this has enlightened others trying to do the same ........

agsnu

exel1966 wrote: »

And for all we know so could you be !

Except that my conclusions are based on public knowledge and common sense.

Take for example the rates that PayPal charge for processing credit cards and debit cards or the pricing for WorldPay.

Notice there is some variation there, but it's in the region of a couple of percentage points. Note that WorldPay exposes the difference in processing credit/debit cards - £0.50 flat fee for debit card transactions, for small/medium business. Ryanair is huge, the volume of transactions is massive, there is undoubtedly a significant opportunity for them to negotiate prices down towards the underlying fees charged by VISA and MasterCard to their merchant acquiring bank.

The underlying prices charged by e.g. VISA are sometimes available but it's a bit of a pain finding them e.g. here for VISA's US fees.

There's a general theme here that you should be getting: in general, fees for processing card transactions are either a flat rate (as is the case for many debit card transactions) or a percentage of the total transaction value (in general less than 5%).

Ryanair's "payment processing fee" is £5 Per passenger/ Per One Way Flight. As this is clearly unrelated to the underlying transaction cost to them, this is an obfuscation of the total price that the overwhelming majority of customers will have to pay.

It is not allowed for businesses to exclude non-optional components from advertised prices. Ryanair gets around this by waiving the fee for VISA Electron card holders, and thus it arguably is optional - all you need to do is pay by VISA Electron. But since the majority of people don't have VISA Electron cards, in practice it's not really optional - there's a massive barrier to paying the advertised price, in that you have to go to the hassle of opening a different bank account.

Ryanair also clearly claim that the fact that it's waived for Electron cardholders is a promotion. This is clearly bunk - if it was not a promotion, it wouldn't be an "optional" price component, and they wouldn't be allowed to exclude it from their advertised prices.

So basically, Ryanair advertises prices which are in effect £10 cheaper than what they will actually cost most people to buy. They do this by exploiting loopholes in the law, and blatant misinformation. They treat their customers with contempt.

happycouple

It's not only Ryanair - it's Aer Lingus too!!

I agree that they are advertising prices that are £40 dearer than most people will be paying ..... my post was to try and help people who want to get one over on them and avoid paying these hefty handling fees. Now that I have my Electron card, I will just re-charge it before I book my flights in future and pay by Electron each time ........ until they change the rules again!!!!!

sieve

agsnu wrote: »

It seems far more likely that they have picked a card that pretty much nobody has so that they can advertise a lower fare than the one most people have to pay. Ryanair are cheating lying scum.

That is EXACTLY right. They also have to do it with a 'low-class' card like Electron as everyone can get one if they jump through enough hoops - if they did it with any other card, it would be classed as discrimination against people who couldn't get say a full Maestro/Visa Debit.

dquelhas

Hi Guys,

If you go to visa-electron.co.uk you'll find a list of banks in the UK that issue visa electron and a list of airlines that don't charge any fees for using visa electron cards.

I hope it's useful.

Cheers :beer:,

Dinis

peterbaker

Well done dquelhas, ... that's probably one of the more useful responses on this thread, even if you are plugging a new website. Do be aware that threads elsewhere in MSE forums mention many examples or anecdotes aboiut other Electrons e.g. Travelex, which plainly do not, (or sometimes may) work with a restricted list of airlines I think. The visa-electron.co.uk website may therefore need another 'mopping up' section to deal with those if only as a clue to the competition to Visa. Who knows? ... the VISA organisation themselves may even come knocking and offer advice, or at the very least, might ask the visa-electron.co.uk website owner what the devil they think they may be up to in setting up a site so plainly in the name of one of their products :eek:

I used to book Ryanair using my Barclays Connect card (mine is not and never has been a Connect Electronic in Barclays parlance - my son has one of those, but I don't). When Ryanair intoduced a charge for debit cards that were not Electron, I wbecame somewhat devious like Ryanair themselves - I simply banked on their website application developers not distinguishing the use case when I selected Visa Electron from the dropdown list every time even though they would have preferred me to select Connect or Debit. I banked corerectly. It worked for many months and saved me money.

Then Ryanair noticed so I had to think again. After asking Barclays if they could possibly issue an Electron and learning they no longer did, I called Co-op's Smile division with whom I happened also to have an account, and they sent me an Electron that runs nicely alongside their separate Visa Debit on the same account. Cushty :beer:

So Barclays have lost that part of my retail banking business.

I don't think they miss it.

Edit: I see from the visa-electron.co.uk website that a contributor has discovered that as of about July 2009, Smile may no longer offer VISA Electron, so I guess I might have to find another provider before my existing Smile Electron card expires.:(

edsut

Thanks dquelhas. A useful job you've done there. Have just applied for an Easycash card.