BA credit card charges

bionicatomicuk

I recently booked a flight to Salzburg with BA and if I had paid by credit card there was a £10 flat fee. I thought the EU outlawed excessive credit card fees. Even Ryanair don't charge that amount. On the amount of the fare I paid it would have been a 7% charge, which I am sure BA don't pay as their "Retailer Discount" to their card processor.

Can I challenge BA on this?

[Deleted User]

As long as it reflects their costs of handling card payments, then it's fine. If they have apportioned the costs equally across all transactions, then there will be some winners and losers.

msallen

Last time I paid this charge to BA, it was £4.50 per ticket, regardless of whether it was a £50 economy ticket to Amsterdam or a £10,000 fully flexible first class return to San Francisco.

If that charge has gone up to £5 per ticket and you were actually booking two tickets then I can't see you have any grounds, but if it has gone up to £10 per ticket then you may have.

What I always did was use a debit card for cheaper tickets and a credit card for more expensive ones where the £4.50 extra was negligible.

PeacefulWaters

There is a sneaky trick with BA Holidays where you can pay the deposit on debit card and any subsequent payments on credit card avoid the fee.

Booking flights from Dublin also incurs no fee I've noticed.

I do think BA are extracting the yellow stuff somewhat when charging the fee to users of the BA Amex card.

Zx has successfully answered the question. Feel free to take them to court over it. There maybe a case to suggest the fee is excessive. But it could be expensive if you lose.

grumbler

Deleted_User wrote: »

If they have apportioned the costs equally across all transactions, then there will be some winners and losers.

Are you saying that economy class passengers are supposed to subsidise business class ones?

According to MSE, the charge is around 0.8%, and I'd be surprised if it was bigger for a big company like BA. Also,

MSE wrote:

...traders will no longer be able to make a profit by charging consumers for credit or debit card use above the amount it costs them to process that payment.

That said, I know that not all information published by MSE is correct. And it doesn't surprise me that MSE don't say where to report / complain about the allegedly excessive fees.

guesswho2000

It's based on your billing country, but only seems to apply to the UK. I accidentally selected Ukraine once, no fee...