Ryanair - Prepaid Mastercard Problems

Dr._Richard_Kimble

Been trying for last 24h using my prepaid Neteller (physical) card with no luck - Ryanair site keeps bouncing me out with declined message.

On advice of Neteller, they said their virtual card will be accepted by Ryanair now, but tried 3 different numbers generated and still no luck.

I am beginning to think the Ryanair website is designed to be full of pitfalls (the webpage does funny things like reset your flight choice if there is a page refresh, so you have to be extra careful that the chosen flight time is the one you originally ticked).

I am also of the opinion that Ryanair are blocking the fee-free cards, perhaps depending on the value of the flights (as some MSE users seem unaffected?)

bigC_2

Just booked a single flight with Ryanair for 16.39 € with my prepaid mastercard. After 2 month of trying. Let's see for how long it works.

LowtonLou

Has anyone found a resolution yet to the problems reported when trying to use prepaid mastercard when booking Ryanair flights?

I fly Ryanair every weekend, and for the several months now this has been paid for on my dad's prepaid mastercard (FairFX) without any problems.


Last week we were booking flights for the coming months using the card. The first 6 bookings went through without a problem, but on the 7th time of using a 'payment error' message appeared, saying I had done one of the following:

• Mistyped the card number
• Selected the wrong card type for the card number
• Put the card number in the cardholder name box, or vice versa
• Entered the wrong billing adress

Of course we checked (and retried) many times, but nothing had been entered incorrectly - and certainly nothing was different to the previous 6 times the card had been used that evening.

Following advice in this thread I have since tried to rebook the flight on 2 further occassions, I have cleared out the browser history and have successfully used the card on Amazon. There has also always been plenty of credit on the card, but still no success.

As others seem to have done, I've ended up using another card and paying the fees, but am keen to find a resolution before making further bookings.

Has anyone made any progress on this, before I embark on what will no doubt be a long and fruitless call to Ryanair customer services?!

Thanks.

James_H_2

I'm in the same boat as you, however with an Orange Cash card. It's almost certainly Ryanair doing it, although I'm going to give Orange Cash a call at lunch time just to confirm my suspicions.

I've just tried again and noticed the name of the "failed" page - "FRPaymentBinRangeError.aspx".

A BIN range is what card number matches which type of card, so this is most certainly on Ryanairs behalf. You can find a list of them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bank_Identification_Numbers

Interestingly, my PP Mastercard begins with 5308 and isn't on that list!

The_Groat_Counter

The difference James H is that, as per your other thread about the Orange Prepaid Mastercard...
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3164030
...you're having problems each and every time you try, whilst with the FairFX card it seems people have occasional problems like LowtonLou, or some cardholders have problems and others don't.

So whilst the root cause of the problem with the Orange Prepaid Mastercard seems pretty simple - it's Ryanair misclassifying the card type (i.e. the BIN ranges they use aren't up to date) - any FairFX card problems seem as though they might be a bit more complicated.

James_H_2

The_Groat_Counter wrote: »

The difference James H is that, as per your other thread about the Orange Prepaid Mastercard...
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3164030
...you're having problems each and every time you try, whilst with the FairFX card it seems people have occasional problems like LowtonLou, or some cardholders have problems and others don't.

So whilst the root cause of the problem with the Orange Prepaid Mastercard seems pretty simple - it's Ryanair misclassifying the card type (i.e. the BIN ranges they use aren't up to date) - any FairFX card problems seem as though they might be a bit more complicated.

Thanks for clearing that up However re: FairFX if they are receiving the same error page (mentioning BinRange in the page name) then I still maintain that it's Ryanair causing the transaction to fail before they even try to authorise the payment.

I'd be tempted to call Ryanair, if it wasn't for the fact that online booking problems apparently need you to call a £1/min telephone number!

Either way, I hope you guys get yours sorted and report back if you do

James.

The_Groat_Counter

James_H wrote: »

Thanks for clearing that up However re: FairFX if they are receiving the same error page (mentioning BinRange in the page name) then I still maintain that it's Ryanair causing the transaction to fail before they even try to authorise the payment.

Yes, the 'BinRange' error URL would absolutely be a giveaway - maybe FairFX cards sit in two or more different bin ranges, though that still wouldn't explain LowtonLou's odd problem whereby the card has just suddenly stopped working.

That said, maybe it's not so odd - perhaps a system somewhere has flagged up 'suspicious' usage patterns (i.e. several purchases in quick succession), and hence blocked the card - that system needn't be at the Ryanair end, it could be at the FairFX end (or perhaps more likely at the Newcastle Building Society end - they're the ones who actually issue FairFX cards I believe).

I'd be tempted to call Ryanair, if it wasn't for the fact that online booking problems apparently need you to call a £1/min telephone number!

Either way, I hope you guys get yours sorted and report back if you do

Agreed - any reports back would be helpful. Not sure that calling Ryanair would actually lead to anything useful happening though, I'm afraid - previous posters have just said that Ryanair told them there was no problem at the airline's end, and that they should contact their card issuer, which is a totally predictable response - then of course the card issuer says there's no problem at their end either!

stinky84

Another way to avoid the £6 per flight per person charge is by booking the flights through travelrepublic.co.uk which charges 1.25% for debit cards, 2.5% for credit cards and free if you are one of the few people with a Visa Electron card. If you've found a cheap flight then you can save quite a bit over the Ryanair charges.
Only works if you want return flights though as you can't book singles with them.

James_H_2

stinky84 wrote: »

Another way to avoid the £6 per flight per person charge is by booking the flights through travelrepublic.co.uk which charges 1.25% for debit cards, 2.5% for credit cards and free if you are one of the few people with a Visa Electron card. If you've found a cheap flight then you can save quite a bit over the Ryanair charges.
Only works if you want return flights though as you can't book singles with them.

I tried this, but they don't list all Ryanair routes, so I couldn't book my flight to Gothenburg City with them I'm afraid.

stinky84

I tried this, but they don't list all Ryanair routes, so I couldn't book my flight to Gothenburg City with them I'm afraid.

Sorry, I've only booked flights to Spain and Lanzarote with them, probably they just do the popular holiday rotes.