MSE News: Ryanair forces ALL customers to pay booking charge

budgetflyer

No news there then NFH. Ryanair etc are already including the "admin fee" in the headline fare.

ie quoted headline price is £13.99

Free Online Check in
Depart
Glasgow (Prestwick) 18:20
Arrive
Reus (Barcelona) 21:55
1 x Adult 6.99 GBP

Fare: 6.99 GBP
Administration Fee: 7.00 GBP
Taxes/Fees: 0.00 GBP
Total Price: 13.99 GBP

SaveTheEuro

csnbrum wrote: »

Looks like Aerlingus also joined Ryanair in scrapping free booking for certain card type. So far it used to be free for Visa Electron but now they have removed it. But web site says admin fee (£6 one way) is payable on certain cards (while booking) but looks like its applied for all cards now. Removed the free admin fee in a hurry. Thanks to OFT :mad:

It was surprising that Aer Lingus started offering a £6 discount on the headline fare for Visa Electron card holders as the time airlines agreed not to penalise people paying with popular debit cards. While they insisted they were OFT compliant I'm not surprised that have now fallen into line.

NFH

SaveTheEuro wrote: »

It was surprising that Aer Lingus started offering a £6 discount on the headline fare for Visa Electron card holders

What is Aer Lingus's objective here? It doesn't cost them £6 less to accept a payment by Visa Electron, and this doesn't allow them to advertise headline fares any more cheaply. What other reason could there be for this discount?

NFH

jpsartre wrote: »

not sure what it is you think I'm absolutely wrong about

You said "there's no real difference if airlines simply added their card-charges to price of the base fare". On the contrary, there is a fundamental difference in the advertised fares.

jpsartre

NFH wrote: »

You said "there's no real difference if airlines simply added their card-charges to price of the base fare". On the contrary, there is a fundamental difference in the advertised fares.

I meant there would be no difference as far as the overall price is concerned. I thought that's the difference you were asking about when you asked what the difference was between an administration fee and a card charge, aside from the name. There is no real difference, it's just different names for an amount of money the passenger pays. A card charge (so named) could be included in the base fare as well, there's nothing inherent in the concept that demands that it be added to the price late in the booking process.

I'm not sure if you got the context of the part of my post you originally quoted. It was in response to a poster complaining that the OFT were preventing Aer Lingus from waiving the admin fee for certain card types. My point was that there is nothing preventing Aer Lingus from doing this (that I can see anyway), they just can't show the headline prices without the admin fee any longer. Of course they won't because this undermines the very reason the admin fee was there for certain card-types only in the first place but that's still their decision, not the OFT's.

SaveTheEuro

NFH wrote: »

What is Aer Lingus's objective here? It doesn't cost them £6 less to accept a payment by Visa Electron, and this doesn't allow them to advertise headline fares any more cheaply. What other reason could there be for this discount?

I suppose it allowed them to make claims about their fare levels compared to other airlines, to give an overall impression of being good value.

NFH

SaveTheEuro wrote: »

I suppose it allowed them to make claims about their fare levels compared to other airlines, to give an overall impression of being good value.

How does it do that? Any comparisons would have to be against the non-discounted fare.

SaveTheEuro

NFH wrote: »

How does it do that? Any comparisons would have to be against the non-discounted fare.

They might claim that in the past year their average fare on Ireland-UK routes was xxx working off the base fare available to electron card holders only.

NFH

SaveTheEuro wrote: »

It was surprising that Aer Lingus started offering a £6 discount on the headline fare for Visa Electron card holders as the time airlines agreed not to penalise people paying with popular debit cards. While they insisted they were OFT compliant I'm not surprised that have now fallen into line.

Discounts based on payment method that exceed the cost saving to the airline are also banned since 6th April. See BIS's guidance on the Consumer Protection (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012 where on page 13, it is stated:

If the discount offered for a particular means of payment reflects the cost savings for the trader, and the additional amounts payable by consumers using other means of payment reflect the additional cost borne by the trader for the use of these other means, this would not be in breach of the Regulations or Article 19.

peter_percent

I have used a Halifax easycash Electron with Aerlingus 5 times in the last year with no card charge, yesterday I booked a flight and was charged the £14 return fee, a check on the site and I can no longer find anything that says there is no charge for an Electron, just that it is accepted