Think Before You Buy Those Scratchcards

trisontana

There is an interesting article in the travel section of today's "Times" about how the no frills airlines make extra money from passengers. One example they quoted was the EayJet "charity" scratch-cards. According to the article only 1% (yes 1%) of the money raised actually goes to charity,the airline keeps the rest. The staff are paid commission to sell the cards.

Other money-raising ploys used by the airlines are charging extra for airport car-parking and hotels than can be obtained by booking direct. I have experience with this. I once booked a car park at Luton via easyJet and then found I could of saved £10 if I had booked through the airport website.

dag_2

Quite. I think the true moneysaver would never buy scratchcards.

Budget airlines also often sell tickets on the flight for connecting bus or train services from the airport to the city centre - again this is something you can probably save money on if you've looked into it in advance.

i_love_it

Have I missed the point? An Airline is a business like any other, surely? The aim is to make a profit from the customers to stay in the game. In particular the budget airlines rely on revenue gained inflight, especially those that offer 1 pound fares. The savvy moneysaver would opt out of such extras, they are not compulsary after all.

Many retailers have jumped on the charity bandwagon to tap into the so called consumer with a consience, like the RED campaign for aids, armani red fragrance for example donates a small portion of the sales for RED fragrance. It merely enhances their sales.

Hardly a revalation from the Times.

trisontana

But the airline, if they want to tug at the heartstrings by using the charity angle, should pay more than a measly 1%

jetboy

The airlines don't make the scratchcards they just sell them like they sell other goods and services from their trollies. Ethically it would be nice if they insisted on bigger proportion to charity and yes 1% is borderline scandless but in the charity game generally how much of every pound spent really goes to the good causes? This is a practice also used by the charter carriers not just LCC's. Does the average passenger really want to give to charity or do they really want to cling on to the very faint hope that they might win £20000? At the end of the day, you don't have to buy them.
Rail and bus tickets onboard are not popular with crews..they get virtually nothing for selling them. You are unlikely to get a better deal from the ticket booth in the station when you land. As for car parking, well it pays to shop around. It may well be be cheaper but you are paying for the convenience of having all these services in the one place while you book..in the same way that you pay over the odds when you book a package holiday.
LCC's make their money on the 'spend per head' not the seat prices. That is why they offer their fares often at such low prices. It is a very different business model from the traditional airlines. The canny moneysaver will buy their ticket well in advance for pennies and spend nothing on board. If however everybody does this, the laws of economics will kick in and the seat prices will have to go up.

plane_boy2000

We had a similar experience with a travel rep when we were on holiday in portugal. The rep gave us a long spin about how expensive it was to use your mobile phone and started getting people to turn them off before declaring that he had calling cards you could buy from him!!! I was really shocked to see him scaring some of the older people on the bus into being afraid to have their mobiles on. This was a large UK based travel firm

peterbaker

i_love_it wrote: »

Have I missed the point? An Airline is a business like any other, surely? The aim is to make a profit from the customers to stay in the game. In particular the budget airlines rely on revenue gained inflight, especially those that offer 1 pound fares. The savvy moneysaver would opt out of such extras, they are not compulsary after all.

Many retailers have jumped on the charity bandwagon to tap into the so called consumer with a consience, like the RED campaign for aids, armani red fragrance for example donates a small portion of the sales for RED fragrance. It merely enhances their sales.

Hardly a revalation from the Times.

It IS a revelation because the majority would never have dreamed that the contribution made to the charity was so small.

So...just another rip-off fully exposed, but as you have described, it is also just another example of how low businesses have stooped.

Sam_Bee

On a recent RyanAir flight I'm convinced the the head steward said '100% of profits go to charity'.

Did I mishear or did they lie??!

reehsetin

Sam_Bee wrote: »

On a recent RyanAir flight I'm convinced the the head steward said '100% of profits go to charity'.

Did I mishear or did they lie??!

think i read it in the mail that some had been misquoting the percentages

reehsetin

oops mirror not mail http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/mirrorinvestigates/sommerlad/march2007/ryanair.htm

trisontana

I'm flying with easyJet next week. It will be interesting how they will promote these charity cards and if they remember to mention the measly 1% paid to charity.