Buying flights with VISA card

Norfolk_Jim

It can be a bit confusing but assuming your travel agent is ATOL and you buy or have some travel insurance, and you use a VISA debit card, you'll have 3 different lots of protection. You would have to be quite unlucky not to be covered one way or another.

Section 75 does seem quite unfair on the CC company a lot of the time, say you pay £1 on a £30,000 purchase it seems a bit harsh that they end up liable for the whole lot in some cases. They do their best to keep it quiet and they are not short of a penny or two so in the great scheme of things they're big boys and know the game - so if it's legal but not moral? I think I heard something from the PM about this recently....

This travel agent. Is it a bucket shop operation? I'm not sure if this applies these days but long ago there was an accomodation element to these cheap deals. Of course they never expected you to actually use what was often a room in a hostel somewhere seedy.
You are right about the Flight only not being protected in some cases.
Read more here http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?catid=1080&pagetype=70&gid=1872&faqid=1035

Still, VISA chargeback isn't too bad and combined with insurance you'd think it'd be ok. What events are you concerned about? airline failure?

Gromitt

You can try a VISA chargeback.

A better idea would be a deposit of £1 on a CC, and the rest on a DC. Assuming the final bill is > £100.

pimento

I'd be happy enough to put the lot on my credit card but I don't have the limit to do that unless I can talk my bank into raising my limit for a short time.

They still won'e be making any money out of me so I suppose I'll understand if they won't.

I wonder what the chances of a new card giving me a £6k limit straight away?

luci

pimento wrote: »

If I pay by VISA debit and buy from a travel agent and they don't supply the ticket, I can do a VISA chargeback or not?

I'll admit, I'm confused. ATOL says I'm only covered if it's a flight and a hotel.

This is where the problem lies. If you buy a flight from a travel agent and they supply the ticket then they have provided what you paid them for, a ticket not a flight, therefore you can't claim against the travel agent.

There is a recent blog which explains it here:-

http://www.holidaytruths.co.uk/blog/your-holiday-financially-protected/

zerog

If the airline will let you pay by 2 cards (probably needs to be on the phone) then you might as well max out the credit card instead of paying just £1. (since you have enough funds to pay by debit card anyway)