Where to get a VISA Electron card?

jen245

I booked some flights with Easyjet on Friday with my Natwest Visa Debit card, and they gave me a £5 discount for paying with a Visa Debit

SaveTheEuro

jen245 wrote: »

I booked some flights with Easyjet on Friday with my Natwest Visa Debit card, and they gave me a £5 discount for paying with a Visa Debit

I think you'll find they charged you £5 extra for using a debit card. If you had used a credit card they would have charged you £10 extra. You need to use a Visa Electron card to avoid these surcharges.

jen245

Flights came to £195.89, I paid £190.89 with my debit card. The discount for electron was almost £7, and if I was to pay by cc it was over £200

edit - Ah I see, they add the charge onto the total, then deduct it depending on how u pay, very sneaky!

[Deleted User]

visa electron is great
e.g with one site you get 3% off for using it on a purchase and halifax bank a/c is good too

NonGeographicalMan

vinh1000 wrote: »

visa electron is great
e.g with one site you get 3% off for using it on a purchase and halifax bank a/c is good too

Oddly Thomson no longer treat my Co-Op Cashminder Visa Electron as being an Electron card when I try to book with them but everyone else like FlyBe and Monarch still does give me the Visa Electron discount.

Although Co-Op have said they are not issuing new Visa Electron cards the card I currently have that doesn't expire for another year is still clearly branded Visa Electron and lacks the raised digits that would allow it be used in clank clank card machines at country fairs etc for offline purchases.

Has anyone else had trouble getting the Visa Electron card fee discount with Thomson on other Electron cards like the Halifax one?

jen245 wrote: »

edit - Ah I see, they add the charge onto the total, then deduct it depending on how u pay, very sneaky!

No incorrect. What they do is sneakily add the charge on in the final screen just before payment if you select any payment method other than Visa Electron. However at least Easyjet logically charge a lower percentage fee on Visa Debit rather than stupidly charging the same as for credit cards as Ryanair do. Thomson are even weirder by charging a flat fee of £2.50 or something for debit card use. This makes it cheaper to pay by credit card for one person on one of their cheap fares, especially as I also get 1% cashback on my Egg Money Mastercard. However for a large family purchase on a holiday then Visa Debit would be far cheaper than a credit card.

chubbybrown4real

Tried using my Smile visa electron card tonight to book some FLybe Flights,it says its not an electron card on the flybe website.
grrrr

NonGeographicalMan

chubbybrown4real wrote: »

Tried using my Smile visa electron card tonight to book some FLybe Flights,it says its not an electron card on the flybe website. grrrr

Like you at the time of my Thomson flight I just needed to book before the price went up but if these kind of anomalies are going to be stopped then some of us need to take the time to lodge a formal complaint with the airline concerned and with our card issuer as to why certain Visa Electron cards are not being accepted as such by website with differential card fee charging.

However the position with the Co-Op Cashminder Visa Electron is a little more odd because Co-Op wrote over a year ago suggesting all their Visa Electron cards were being upgraded to Visa Debit cards but no replacement Visa Debit card was then ever sent to me. As my Visa Electron card has continued to be accepted by all websites other than Thomson who have a payment fee free arrangement for using Visa Electron cards naturally I have not complained.........

I suppose I must get round to taking out a new Visa Electron card with the Halifax and also open an account with Metrobank so I still get fee free cash machine withdrawals once Nationwide start charging for withdrawals with their Visa Debit card in a few months time.

Its interesting that none of the other airlines or other travel related firms who copied the Ryanair lead of only not charging fees on Visa Electron have not gone down the road of now withdrawing this deal on Visa Electron and making Mastercard Prepaid their fee free card instead. Does this suggest that Visa Electron really is cheaper to operate than other Visa cards and that Mastercard Prepaid is actually no cheaper and that Ryanair's only motive for changing the fee free card was so that loads of its customers would then not be able to avoid the card payment fee, at least in the short term.:eek::mad:

[Deleted User]

chubbybrown4real wrote: »

Tried using my Smile visa electron card tonight to book some FLybe Flights,it says its not an electron card on the flybe website.
grrrr

i tried using it also on another website and says it isnt a electron but a visa debit

NonGeographicalMan

vinh1000 wrote: »

i tried using it also on another website and says it isnt a electron but a visa debit

Thomson just refuse to accept my Co-Op Cashminder Visa Electron as a valid card full stop when I select Visa Electron as the card type. I suppose if I changed the card type to Visa Debit they might well accept it but its actually cheaper on my one flight to Mallorca purchases for £68.99 including baggage with them to pay the credit card fee (2.25% I think) and then get 1% cashback from Egg Money Mastercard so taking the fee back down to 90p or so. They charge something like a fixed £1.75 for a Visa debit card. Good for large family holiday transactions but bad for one person flying alone.

Yet Monarch and FlyBe both still treat it as a fee free Visa Electron card. I can't comment on Easyjet as I vowed never to travel with them again in 2002 and so far have been able to keep to my pledge despite our family owning a place in Mallorca and Easyjet having an unhealthy percentage of the flights out there from the london airports. The fact that Easyjet always stick prices through the roof in the last two weeks before the flight and that I always book in the last two weeks has made it much easier to keep away from them. Thomson on the other hand slash the price of unsold seats at the last moment in the summer low season periods

adindas

Hi Noh and All

I already have Halifax Reward current a/c with Debit Card.
Do you think I could still stand a change if I apply for Halifax EasyCash.

If no, I have read that RBS EasyCash also offer Visa Electron.
Are they going to ask why do you want to apply for EasyCash if you qualify to normal account ?. I try to avoid the answer, I want to get Visa Electron to beat the Budget Airlines fee, as they might reject my application.
What do you think the best answer fro this question ?

ADINDAS

noh wrote: »

Halifax Easycash
http://www.halifax.co.uk/bankaccounts/easycash.asp