Flights - cheaper now or closer to travel date generally?

SaveTheEuro

ClassicMad wrote: »

Am I missing the point to your post? My card isn't a Visa Electron, it's a visa debit and the payment definitely didn't go through when I selected it... believe me, I selected all of the Visa variables, and tried my luck with maestro/solo/switch option too.... I called my bank and they confirmed that they hadn't received any payment transactions through, so it wasn't that my card had been "stopped" for fraud reasons...

It used to be possible to avoid the £12 admin charge on return fares by paying using a Visa Electron card. Aer Lingus promised to stop this practice from the end of September 2012 to ensure there was a level playing fee, with debit card holders not feeling they were being discriminated against. I was amazed to see that the £12 discount was still available when I did a mock booking. This appears to fly in the face of the commitment they gave to the Office of Fair Trading. (Hardly anybody has a Visa Electron card but it is obtainable with a basic bank account from Halifax).

What you have discovered is that not only are passengers now facing this £12 admin charge but are also being forced into paying an additional credit card surcharge because Aer Lingus are refusing to accept Visa debit cards, only Maestro, a form of debit card that looks virtually unobtainable in the UK.

ClassicMad

Thank you SaveTheEuro. I have just whizzed an email off to the OFT and shared my joy of seeing that debit card payments were fee free and then my disappointment to find that they don't actually allow payments with visa debit. I've just actually asked my accounts department (we take online orders here) how much a c/c transaction takes and I was shocked to find that it's 10p+vat per transaction, so how the hell can they justify £60 for five of us which is on ONE payment?

ClassicMad

Reply from Aer Lingus "The administration fee is charged to cover the airline's overheads relating to each booking, such as our card processing services, merchant fees, ticketing and distribution costs (including telephone lines and web and mobile services), and helps pay for the installation and maintenance of the computer hardware and software that enables us to process each of your bookings."

and now

credit cards and debit cards are treated equally with respect to the admin fee, with the exception of Visa Electron

and another reply

on aerlingus.com the total price including admin fee is clearly displayed at all times in the Trip Total section of Your Trip Summary. This is displayed alongside your date selection and flight selection and changes in accordance with your selection of dates and flights. Visa Electron is the only debit card we accept with no admin fee.

antenna

All this makes Ryanair seem a good alternative......but if you prefer to fly from southend,then,good luck.

SaveTheEuro

ClassicMad wrote: »

Reply from Aer Lingus "The administration fee is charged to cover the airline's overheads relating to each booking, such as our card processing services, merchant fees, ticketing and distribution costs (including telephone lines and web and mobile services), and helps pay for the installation and maintenance of the computer hardware and software that enables us to process each of your bookings."

and now

credit cards and debit cards are treated equally with respect to the admin fee, with the exception of Visa Electron

and another reply

on aerlingus.com the total price including admin fee is clearly displayed at all times in the Trip Total section of Your Trip Summary. This is displayed alongside your date selection and flight selection and changes in accordance with your selection of dates and flights. Visa Electron is the only debit card we accept with no admin fee.

Maybe you should ask them to comment on this:
http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/consumer-enforcement/surcharges/Aer_Lingus-undertakings.pdf

ClassicMad

antenna wrote: »

All this makes Ryanair seem a good alternative......but if you prefer to fly from southend,then,good luck.

If I pee them off much more on FB then I can see my flights being cancelled and Ryanair might be the only way to go :rotfl:

ClassicMad

SaveTheEuro wrote: »

Maybe you should ask them to comment on this:
http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/consumer-enforcement/surcharges/Aer_Lingus-undertakings.pdf

oooh, interesting... off to post that on their FB page!

duchy

That's odd -Last month I booked a flight for a friend with Aer Lingus and paid by Visa debit without issue. Is this a very recent change ?

(Booked on the EI website not a 3rd party)

ClassicMad

duchy wrote: »

That's odd -Last month I booked a flight for a friend with Aer Lingus and paid by Visa debit without issue. Is this a very recent change ?

(Booked on the EI website not a 3rd party)

I have no idea if it's recent! This is the first time I've ever booked a flight and it was direct with Aer Lingus. I tried on other sites but they didn't find the flights I wanted....

ClassicMad

(Aer Lingus)- we are fully compliant with the undertakings to the OFT outlined in the document you’ve provided. We do not charge any additional fees above the charges included in the website headline price. If you select a particular route and date combination on our home page, you will be presented with headline prices in the subsequent Calendar and Flight Selection views. No additional fees will apply to these prices. Our prices (including admin fee) are displayed in full from the first stage of your booking. Underneath your Trip Total at all stages of the booking process, you will see a section giving prices to “Pay by Credit Card”, “Pay by Debit Card” (these prices will be the same and will be equal to the sum of the prices shown of flights selected on the left side of the page) and “Pay by Visa Electron” (which will result in a price lower than the advertised headline price). A date has not yet been set for the introduction of Visa Debit. We hope that this, along with the above, answers your questions in relation to our pricing structure.

Overnight they have changed the wording at the bottom of the Trip total to show three options
Credit card
debit card
visa electron

where before it showed the debit card option as being cheaper, and the credit card option more expensive, it now shows the c/c and d/c total as the same (£555) and the visa electron as £495

If anyone wants to following the FB conversation, it's here http://www.facebook.com/aerlingus/posts/388582871231265?comment_id=2439598&notif_t=feed_comment