Beat Budget Airline Charges Article Discussion

richardw

Did Lufthansa make a payment card charge?

Mehitabel9860

Simple tip for us ladies - buy a man's jacket. They come with loads of lovely pockets big enough to put books in, plus rolled up clothes, cameras, mobile phone etc. I bought a small man's outdoor jacket at Yorkshire Trading for £5 in a sale, it was slightly padded and showerproof. I wore it on to the plane, then removed the more fragile bits and put them in a plastic carrier bag, and the jacket became my seat cushion/blanket. Once in a hot climate the jacket went over my arm as normal.
One other tip - I was held up by an officious security woman on one trip because my ziplock plastic bag was two inches too deep! I had a spare in my bag which was actually less than 200x200 and had a "freezer contents" opaque panel, so should not have been OK - but she passed it! So yes, always carry spare bags, the airports want you to pay £1 for one.

unsyiom

entropay visa card,WARNING,FLYBE TREAT IT AS A CREDIT CARD,SO YOU PAY AN EXTRA 5% ON TOP!, i live on the isle of man and halifax won,t let us have an easycash account with visa electron,easy jet treat entropay as an electron card.the only reason a got a entropay account was because i read about it here,but in the end it has cost me money.they let you open an account,load some money on it,then freeze it and you have to send them emails of your passport,utillity bill,and a photo of your card which will fund it,and they all have to be under 1mb in size,a real pain!

antsea

Hi. I'm doing a long haul flight to Korea today, and will be there for a while.

I'm thinking of wearing about 5 jumpers and coats onto the plane and sticking books etc in the pockets.

Will this kind of pis...er thrifty thinking cause problems going through security?

Last thing I want is to not be allowed on the plane.

trytosave

I'm a bit confused about the new Ryanair cash passport. The MSE webpage seems to say that you won't get charged an inactivity fee after six months if you have a zero balance, but there doesn't seem to be anything in the T&Cs to that effect. Indeed, I think you would be charged £2.50 a month and then a £10 negative balance fee on top!

richardw

trytosave wrote: »

The MSE webpage seems to say that you won't get charged an inactivity fee after six months if you have a zero balance,

http://www.cashpassport.com/1/en/Ryanair/About-Cash-Passport/Fees-Limits/

implies that inactivity generates an 'inactivity fee' irrespective of the balance of the card.

goingtothedogs

Anyone tried clicking Ryanair Cash Passport in the dropdown but then putting in details of a normal prepaid Mastercard?

The Ryanair card is issued by the same company and address as the Travelex Sterling Cash passport and they have the same info on. Their online system would have to be v clever to detect between the two.

2sides2everystory

Thats an interesting wheeze GTTG but if you play around with various card number sub-series in the card number box you will see that the Ryanair website does indeed contain sufficient data or data connections to be able to assess almost instantaneously the base currency of the card even when it is with the same provider. The clue is the line above the Card Details box which does the FOREX conversion (or disappears when Ryanair don't fancy their chances with Dynamic Currency Conversion).

I would imagine it may be a small step for Ryanair to have tweaked their system to be able to tell via a single digit difference for example whether it is a Ryanair Cash Passport as opposed to a similar product from the same stable.

User_2011

oldbellsfarm wrote: »

Over the last three or four weeks both my wife and I have booked flights with Ryanair to travel from our holiday home in Spain back to our house in England and then back to our holiday home.

On both occasions the orices have been quoted in euros, as they used to be, but when payment is taken from Visa card Ryanair convert the euro price into sterling using their own conversion rate. My credit card conversion rate is always the money market rate. When I looked at this in more detail I noticed the following 'extra' charge that results from the Ryanair approach:

At the time of booking the euro to pound conversion rate I would have paid if I used my credit card and paid in euros would have been 0.835. ie eevry euro paid costs me 83.5p. However Ryanair have used the rate of 0.887, so every euro I pay them costs me 88.7p - nearly 0.4p extra and since I think they also apply their conversion rate to any car hire you book with Hertz this has made quite a hidden difference. In my particular case today nearly £2.50. Not the end of the world I know but thought it might be of interest regarding this dicussion.

I spoke to Visa today who confirmed their policy that you should be allowed to choose whether to pay in local currency or home currency of you Visa card. They said they would let it be known across the organisation but I would have to take it up direct with Ryanair. I will but not holding my breath! Simply expecting a response of 'tough' and 'don't forget we are the cheapest'

I just experienced the same thing, i.e. Ryanair applied its own exchange rate to a purchase, without informing me before I clicked "pay" that it was was going to do so. The result is that my purchase of a Euro denominated gift voucher was priced in Sterling (rather than in Euros as I expected). As a consequence I paid £34 for a £25 gift voucher owing to Ryanair's extreme exchange rate: 30EUR (i.e. the 25EUR voucher plus the 5EUR voucher purchase fee) at the current VISA exchange rate, comes to £25.78!

I don't think I'll complain to Ryanair as I doubt I would get a response. But hopefully mentioning this here provides a warning to some/emphasises the post above.

victorkee

Easy jet's hand luggage is unlimited in weight, but it must not measure more than. 55 x 45 x25cm. Ryan Air, often checks hand luggage at the boarding gate for size and weight. The girl who puts bag 1 into bag 2 then after security, takes bag 1 out of bag 2, then boards the plane, is just lucky. Ryan Air is usually pretty hot when it comes to boarding with two bags. She is a jammy mare, getting away with it. Victor .