Beat Budget Airline Charges Article Discussion

koru

I would like to request that MSE includes Monarch in the article.

They charge 3% booking fee, plus an extra 1.4% if you pay by credit card. They waive this if you pay by electron or solo. Currently also waiving if you pay by paypal.

£10-15 per hold bag per flight (one way), if booked online. So, a group of four with one bag each would pay £80-120 for return flights. 20kg per person.

£7.50 per person per sector for pre-booked seat, so £60 for return flights if you have a family of four and want to be sure you sit together.

No check in charges.

johnsgsltd

Ryanair are now charging £1.00 to send you an e-mail to confirm your flights Another rip off

mb1_3

I travel on FlyBe every week and resent paying £2.49 booking fee for a Maestro transaction, (even worse they state the booking fee for a one way journey is £2 but minimum booking fee is £2.49 - double rip off). So I was delighted to read the article and got myself a Travelex Electron card from Thomas Cook. When I tried to use it on FlyBe's website, I got an error message saying they determined it was a credit card and the booking fee would be £5.50 for a one way flight. I emailed them and got this response:

"I can confirm Flybe accept bank/building society Visa Electron cards as these are debit cards linked to a bank/building society account and the money is then debited directly from your account.

Unfortunately we do not accept the following Electron cards: Travelex cash passport cards, Travel Money Card, Barclays Gift Card or any other type of pre-pay top up card as valid Electron payment. These are cards are issued by Post Offices, travel agents etc they are not debit cards.

I am very sorry for any inconvenience this may cause but you will not be able to use any type of top up card as a free debit card on the Flybe website."

I have used the card on BMI, Ryanair and Easyjet without any problems, it must be just FlyBe that have decided it does not meet the definition of an Electron card.

PolishBigSpender

mb1 wrote: »

I have used the card on BMI, Ryanair and Easyjet without any problems, it must be just FlyBe that have decided it does not meet the definition of an Electron card.

Well, they're perfectly entitled to place restrictions on what kind of card they accept.

However, do Flybe even offer discounts for using Electron?

cbrown372

johnsgsltd wrote: »

Ryanair are now charging £1.00 to send you an e-mail to confirm your flights Another rip off

I think you'll find the £1 charge is to receive a text from Ryan Air and not an email.

Betseewren

PolishBigSpender wrote: »

Well, they're perfectly entitled to place restrictions on what kind of card they accept.

However, do Flybe even offer discounts for using Electron?

I was also caught out by the Travelex Visa Electron when I tried to pay for my Flybe flights today.

The booking fee is £4 for a debit card but if you have a Visa Electron which is linked to a bank account then they do not charge.

It's only the Travelex Visa Electron card which they do not accept.

ma5k

Does anyone happen to know if the PayPal TopUp Card incurrs charges when paying for budget flights. It's not strictly an 'electron' card but it's not a debit or credit card either & works in a similar way to electron (ie only cleared funds are available).

I've tried asking PayPal without success (useless autoreply!).

Thanks

~M
_____________________________________________________

Sorry for unnecessary post - now found answer in #104 above!

PolishBigSpender

I wouldn't risk using it if you can't get a clear answer from PayPal - shouldn't the writing be on the wall if they can't even answer queries from a potential customer?

Lieutenant_Thrift

I want to circumvent the extra £20 we had to pay the last time my partner and I took Ryanair for the wholly unreasonable cost that they have to bear because we paid by debit card. (I've yet to use my debit card in a shop to be told "Paying with that? Are you trying to ruin us!?")

We're planning on taking Lyingair, sorry Ryanair, again at Christmas and have looked at the advice on MSE to buy a Travelex passport. However, applying for this presents a problem as the online version requires a home landline which I don't have for "security reasons", so that's presumably a non-starter. (I'm a bit iffy about putting £100 on something that's got to be posted to me in the current climate of postal stikes anyway. There's also that we'd quite like to book pretty soon: in the next few days)

Going to Thomas Cook tomorrow is an option but I don't fancy having to go to Thomas Cook every time I want to put money on it. Is it true that in this day and age you can't administer a certain Visa card online and have to make a trip to the shops to do something that could so easily be done through the TC website?

In these circumstances, I would appreciate some advice. Last time we used O'Leary £1 and £14.99 flights ended up costing nearly £200 for the two of us because of using a debit card and doing the equally reprehensible and unnatural act of taking a large suitcase with us. We have since purchased two cases that are just under the max dimensions for hand luggage.

BTW my partner's brother mistyped one number of the expiry date of his passport on his Ly... Ryanair boarding pass and charged £40 as they told him it was invalid as a result of this and would have to use £40 of ink cartridges printing a new one for him themselves. Presumably something was wrong with the desk's printer.

So, do be careful when you're booking in online.

rosie383

Couldn't find this on here, so wanted to bring to peoples attention another Ryanair money-making scheme.
I was listening to our local BBC 3 counties radio breakfast show today. Presenter Stephen Rhodes had just flown to Dublin and back at the weekend with Ryanair.
As they were waiting in the queue to board, there were members of ground staff making everyone put any extras they had bought from duty-free after clearing security, into their one piece of hand luggage. If they couldn't squeeze it it in, and if it wouldn't fit in their overhead locker size checker thing, then people were forced to pay to check it in!!!!!!
Normally, most people just get on the plane with their duty-free goods in those plastic see-through bags.
Can you believe they have come up with this? I thought originally the one piece rule for hand baggage was brought in to cut down on security queues. This is making a mockery of us all surely.