Ryanair charging me an extra £20 for 'tax hike'

lexislittle · 22 January 2007 at 8:44PM

Has anyone else experienced this?

Ryanair have just sent me an e-mail telling me that they are automatically taking a further £20 from my CC because Gordon Brown has changed the tax on regular flyers. My flights are from Stansted-Barcelona in February.

There is no contact methods on the e-mail, or any mention of me being able to cancel.

I, in all honesty, bought the flights when I could afford them. I can't afford the extra £20 right now.

pennylane99 · 22 January 2007 at 8:58PM

its not the airlines fault....the government increased the "green" taxes on all air travel...

lexislittle · 22 January 2007 at 9:22PM

Is there anything I can do about it?

Or, is there anything I can do to prevent me being randomly charged amounts I'm not expecting in the future?

I suppose the thing that makes me angriest is that it was such a bad e-mail to recieve from a Customer Services department - it just said, we're taking it, with no mention of contact details or anything!

Bossyboots · 22 January 2007 at 9:27PM

This has been all over the news recently.

If you don't pay the extra tax you won't be able to fly. They are not entitled to take any other amounts outside of your contract with them but as pennylane has pointed out, the airlines have to collect this tax and obviously they are going to do so before you fly. Have you looked on their website for a customer service contact. Perhaps you can arrange for them to take it later when you are expecting it, but you will have to pay it.

metrobus · 22 January 2007 at 9:59PM

Some airlines are paying the extra tax themselves, British Airways for
one, they say it will cost them £11 million.

They should be applauded for this stance.

Just another stealth tax being increased with
no commitment for the raised funds being spent on
green issues.

skintas_2 · 22 January 2007 at 10:02PM

flip are they gonna do that to me too then i booked my flight to spain 2 weesk ago for june.

i booked a holiday before fuel allowance was added 2 years ago for turkey 05 didnt have to pay

o_t_e · 22 January 2007 at 10:05PM

Ryanair are notoriously difficult to contact - apparently there is a number you can try on the saynoto0870 website but as Bossyboots suggests if you wish to fly the tax has to be paid; you can contact your credit card company when the £20 is taken to advise them that you did not authorise that payment, but that is going down the route of not travelling.

ManAtHome · 22 January 2007 at 10:38PM

skintas wrote:

flip are they gonna do that to me too then i booked my flight to spain 2 weesk ago for june.

Shouldn't be an extra charge - GB increased the tax early December, so they've had a good month to include it. Main problem seems to be flights booked before or "just after" the announcement when the airlines obviously wouldn't have it included ("just after" tends to vary between airlines).

Don't Ryanair itemise charges on the invoice/receipt? Somebody in another thread said they didn't before all this kicked off, would have thought it would be a sensible move to start...

Mike_J · 23 January 2007 at 12:17AM

metrobus wrote:

Some airlines are paying the extra tax themselves, British Airways for
one, they say it will cost them £11 million.

They should be applauded for this stance.

Just another stealth tax being increased with
no commitment for the raised funds being spent on
green issues.

It has been rumoured that BA are only "paying it themselves" because their terms and conditions do not allow them to pass it on. Most airlines have a clause that alows them to increase prices to reflect changes in taxation, some only allow them to cover changes in VAT.

If this is an "urban myth" perhaps BA are just s##t-scared to incur any more bad publicity.
Mike J

davidlizard · 23 January 2007 at 12:50AM

I wonder how much it costs an airline to contact every single person who purchased a ticket before the hike (especially those like me who purchased the ticket through an agent and not via email), explain why the fee is being collected each and every time, arrange collection of the money, receive the money, send this money of to Gordon, check all passengers against the list of those who have not paid at check in (and prevent those who have not paid from automatically checking in) and collect payment from those/ban them from flying, and send this money off, and argue with those who say they have paid, not paid enough or paid too much, and so on.

In all fairness, it would probably cost a few pounds in additional staff labour costs to process the collection of the difference from each passenger, along with changes to systems (e.g. updating computer databases) already in place needing to be undertaken.

At the end of the day, it will probably cost BA £several million of the £11 million to process all of the extra taxes, therefore not worth their while collecting it, and offsetting any losses against being able to play the moral "we wont pass the cost on" card and wallow in the rare favorable publicity/free advertising.

ManAtHome · 23 January 2007 at 1:07AM

Mike_J wrote:

Most airlines have a clause that alows them to increase prices to reflect changes in taxation, some only allow them to cover changes in VAT.

Dunno, maybe an UM, but definite that package holiday providers have to absorb the first 2% (I think) of ANY cost increase, so most short-haul packages shouldn't be affected.

Ryanair charging me an extra £20 for 'tax hike'

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