Avoid paying Ryanair £6 / person / flight booking charge

stinky84

I've booked several holiday flights with Ryanair and know that your £9.99 flight will end up at £80 by the time you add all the extra charges like baggage, online check-in, etc but the one that really annoys me is the final £6 per person per flight charge at the end, £24 per couple for a return flight.
You can avoid this by using a prepaid Mastercard but they usually have some charges associated with them plus by the time you apply for one, receive it and load it up the cheap deals will have probably gone.
I have just discovered an easier way to avoid the charges, book the flights via travelrepublic.co.uk where they are the exact same price as Ryanairs website but they do not charge the £6 per flight per person, however when you come to pay at the end there is a 1.25% charge for debit cards or 2.5% charge for credit cards unless of course you are one of the handfullof people witha Visa electron card when it is free.
I have just booked two return flights to Lanzarote for June with one hold case for £193.96 and the charge for using a Visa credit card was only £4.85, much better than the £24 Ryanair would charge booking direct!
:j

benjus

What about this?

[FONT=Calibri,Calibri][FONT=Calibri,Calibri]This website and the Ryanair call centre are the exclusive distribution channels of Ryanair’s services. Ryanair.com is the only website authorised to sell Ryanair flights, whether on their own or as part of a package. Ryanair does not authorise any other websites to sell its flights. Ryanair therefore reserves the right to cancel any bookings made other than directly through Ryanair.com, including any bookings made through third party websites, including online travel agents, and further reserves the right to refuse to carry any passenger making such a booking.
[/FONT][/FONT]

http://www.ryanair.com/en/terms-and-conditions/copywrite

A.Jones

You can avoid payment surcharge fees altogether by getting a prepaid mastercard. If you fly a few times per year, they are worth getting. Plan in advance, and you don't have to panic to get one when offers are announced. There will be more offers from Ryanair. So get prepared now.

kirko

£6 booking fee! Yet another sneaky rise, 1st the web checkin (£5 to £6) and now the booking fee, get a prepaid MasterCard! No excuse really, they mite cost a small amount but they save you lots of money, I wont advertise which ones to get, PM for that

stinky84

In reply to benjus post above, I have received confirmation of the flights from travelrepublic AND directley from [EMAIL="itenary@ryanair.com"]itenary@ryanair.com[/EMAIL] with the booking reference etc, exactly the same email as when booking on the ryanair website so no problem there.
I know you can get a prepaid mastercard but there is always some kind of fee with them, when you take the card out and either when you buy or top up which is fair enough as they have to make money somewhere.
By booking via the travelrepublic site it saved me just under £20 for the two of us as I paid via my Visa credit card, could have saved and extra £2 if I'd used my debit card but used thecredit card for the extra protection.
Still think this pretty good as last year I booked £7 each way flights for 4 of us to Spain for £56 + £60 for baggage totaling £116 which would only cost £2.90 via credit card as opposed to the £40 ryanair charged me ( would be £48 this year )

2sides2everystory

I believe that Ryanair famously unilaterally cancelled a whole bunch of bookings made via a third party website once (irrespective of the fact that the bookings were completed and acknowledged in the normal way initially). Anyone got the details?

bagand96

I believe that Ryanair famously unilaterally cancelled a whole bunch of bookings made via a third party website once (irrespective of the fact that the bookings were completed and acknowledged in the normal way initially). Anyone got the details?

There was a scenario a couple of years back with a typical Ryanair-esque press release saying that bookings will be cancelled, and the T&Cs were ammended to reflect this as posted above.

However it related to travel agents who were putting a mark up on Ryanair tickets. For example if a ticket cost €xx on Ryanair, the agents were selling it for €yy and taking the difference. This is what Ryanair objected to.

From memory this was not in the UK... Germany springs to mind, but I am sure it was not UK agents and UK bookings were not affected. Hundreds of people book Ryanair flights through places like Travel Republic/On the ebeach/lowcostholidays. If they were unilaterally cancelling these tickets I am sure it would be all over forums like this.

Travel Republic for example sell you the Ryanair ticket at the price it is on the Ryanair website. In fact I don't know how they can provide it without the £6 credit card fee... unless they are booking the tickets via their own prepaid Mastercard system? Also I think TR book the tickets on the Ryanair website, with the customers own details, so its probably very hard for Ryanair to detect?

Either way, I dont think they cancel just because it was booked via Travel Republic... I think those T&Cs and the press releases at the time were the usual OTT Ryanair style, not sure if Ryanair would act unless it is the scenario described above with agents taking a cut.

jammin_2

stinky84 wrote: »

directley from [EMAIL="itenary@ryanair.com"]itenary@ryanair.com[/EMAIL] with the booking reference etc

I'm pretty sure you didn't get an email from that address, directley or otherwise.

stinky84

jammin wrote: »

I'm pretty sure you didn't get an email from that address, directley or otherwise.

Why would I lie? I am only trying to help others save even more on what can be a cheap way of getting flights if you play by Ryanairs rules re baggage etc and get the flights when they are on offer.
I can assure you I did get the email from Ryanair, here is the top of the email copied and pasted with my email address and the booking ref blanked.

From: [EMAIL="itinerary@ryanair.com"]itinerary@ryanair.com[/EMAIL]
To: XXXXXXXXXX
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2011 10:38 AM
Subject: Ryanair Travel Itinerary - Don't Forget You MUST Check-in Online and Print Off your Boarding Pass



THANK YOU FOR BOOKING WITH RYANAIR Please do not reply to this e-mail.
YOUR RESERVATION NUMBER IS: AAAAAA
IN ORDER TO TRAVEL YOU ARE REQUIRED TO CHECK-IN ONLINE AND PRESENT AT THE AIRPORT YOUR ONLINE BOARDING PASS AND VALID ACCEPTED TRAVEL DOCUMENT, PASSENGERS WHO DO NOT PRESENT A BOARDING PASS AT THE AIRPORT WILL BE CHARGED A RE-ISSUE FEE OF EUR40/GBP40(each boarding pass must be printed and presented on an individual A4 page).
You can check-in online from 15 days up to 4 hours prior to your scheduled flight departure.

bezzza

Don't worry Stinky84, I believe you as I have booked flights for Ryanair through TravelRepublic in the past (as well as twice for this year) and I, too, have received the confirmation emails from itinerary@ryanair.com. I have never had any problems and they have never been cancelled. Have a great time xx

fifeken

jammin wrote: »

I'm pretty sure you didn't get an email from that address, directley or otherwise.

stinky84 wrote: »

Why would I lie?
From: [EMAIL="itinerary@ryanair.com"]itinerary@ryanair.com[/EMAIL]

I think jammin was referrring to your spelling error.