Ryanair - Prepaid Mastercard Problems

MarkBargain

I used a different Mastercard Prepaid card yesterday (NHS Cashback Black Card) and Ryanair rejected it with some obscure message about a duplicate booking. It was the first flight I tried to book, but it said not to try again with that card for an hour. I left it about ten hours and tried again with the same card, and again it was rejected. I let another ten hours pass and tried again, and this time it worked! So, it seems it is not just FairFX that is sometimes rejected. I wonder if the cards they charge a £5 fee on are rejected as much? It is tempting to just pay the £5 to avoid the risk of prices going up in the meantime.

Sunflower1227

I booked flights a couple of days ago, no problems with my Fairfx card.

Cadwaller

I had exactly the same problem trying to use a pre-paid master card. The Ryanair website kept telling me the transaction was being declined by my bank. I contacted the customer support desk (at 10p per minute) who told me the card details must be incorrect. I checked the card details and they were absolutely right. After 10 attempts I gave up and paid to use a credit card which unsurprisingly worked first time.

How do you complain about these things.

The_Groat_Counter

Cadwaller - which prepaid card was it?

tingtong

Can't be Ryanair's fault, no way, they don't do anything wrong. Plenty of people will tell you that on this forum.

The_Crunchy_Nutter

tingtong wrote: »

Can't be Ryanair's fault, no way, they don't do anything wrong. Plenty of people will tell you that on this forum.

Perhaps because most people have never had a problem? I fly regularly with Ryanair and I've never had an issue. Staff are usually friendly and polite, and I've never been more than a few minutes late arriving.
Don't get me wrong, Ryanair have their faults, but at the end of the day if excellent customer service and impeccable cleanliness matters so much, then cough up and fly with ______* (insert high fare, full service operator here)

Anyway... back on topic... I've booked 11 flights this year so far, 10 with Ryanair, all paid with a Fair FX card (in Euro or Sterling denomination depending on origin of the flight) and not had any issues. Did have one booking flagged as "Not Confirmed" on the confirmation email - was set to "Confirmed" within an hour or when rechecking online.

MarkBargain

I've booked about eight return flights in the last year with Ryanair for a friend, as it is the only airline that does the route. I have had two rejections of my FairFX card, two rejections of my NHS Black card (both prepay Mastercard), one flight changed from around 11:00 to about 07:00 without telling me until weeks later (I noticed on the website), and one flight cancelled due to the ash cloud which resulted in waiting days to come home because of limited available flights on the Ryanair website followed by a compensation claim for expenses which was ignored. Overall, rather a terrible experience! I would much rather than paid a bit more to save all this hassle and game playing.

bigC_2

I'm experiencing the same problems. I'm a regular ryanair customer, 2 flights a month. After Ryanair started charging booking fees for the VISA ELECTRON (about 2 years ago) i got myself a prepaid mastercard. Which worked brilliantly till December 2010. Now i've tried on various occasions. Won't work. The bank (which i even work for) says everything is fine with the card.
The funny thing is, i used the card to add a bag (manage my booking) and it worked. Of course!! There is no booking fee when you add bags, ecc. anyway.
Called Ryanair today. Like taking to a wall .... for 10p per minute.
So if their paying system has reported no problems, as customer care told me today, i do think they are trying to make it difficult to avoid the booking fees.
Both my other cards always work on the first attempt (VISA - VISA ELECTRON).

benjus

I posted last week about a similar problem with my Escape card. It turned out that I was entering the card number incorrectly (a digit had rubbed off), but a representative of the company that issues Escape cards told me that they had been having problems with Ryanair rejecting their cards.

pkjules

I have used my fairfx card once yesterday and twice today, all went through first time.