How to avoid Visa debit card fee on lastminute.com

boots_babe

Hi,

Just thought this may be of use to others. Recently I made a booking on lastminute.com, and was not best pleased to see that they charge an extra fee for paying via Visa debit card.

For some reason, I remembered how Maestro cards used to go through successfully on online sites if you selected Mastercard (useful for sites that didn't list Maestro as a payment type). And it made me wonder if in a similar fashion, a Visa debit card would process successfully if I selected a card type of Visa Electron (for which lastminute charge no fee).

And to my surprise it worked! The payment went through and was taken from my account, and no card fee was charged :T

I will definitely remember this for next time.

Pelican_eats_pigeon

??

Do they only charge visa debit cards for package holidays? As I book hotels with them all the time on a visa debit and have never been charged.

boots_babe

Don't know about package holiday sorry, it was a spa experience that I was buying at the time. Although I kind of assumed the charge would apply to all purchases from lastminute.com ?

apt

Unless the policy has changed very recently Lastminute charges a fee for credit cards, but not for any debit card including VISA debit.

boots_babe

Hmm this seems odd then. I've just been on to try it again (it was around 2 months ago when I did this, and didn't post anything immediately in case they reversed the payment or something).

So I've tried again, picked a random package holiday this time to purchase, put it in my basket.

If I input my card as being of type Visa Debit, and additional fee is added to my total. If I change the type to Visa Electron, I have no fee added at all.

Perhaps it DOES only apply to certain types of purchases after all, seeing as not everyone seems to be seeing it, but that would seem really strange