RyanAir DO charge for using Visa Electron

I specifically have a Visa Electron debit card for making flight payments and thus save the surcharge that most carriers inflict for paying by other card methods.

When I pay for flights with all carriers (using Electron) to date then they just take the payment - all carriers EXCEPT FOR RYANAIR.

As RA have just started a UK to Alicante service i thought I'd give them a go - far as I'm concerned a bad judgement call.

Despite RA claims that they do not charge for using Visa Electron cards then I can confirm that they do. In my case a £1.50 debit card service charge for a booking. JEEZ - are there no depths to which RA will go to get money out of you!

Maybe there is a problem with your card. Get some information from your bank or card provider. You should also report the situation to Ryanair and to your bank if you are 100% sure that your card is a Visa Electron debit card. Ryanair does not charge any fee when paying with a Visa Electron debit card. That's for sure. I know that because I always book my flights using Visa Electron and I never had any kind of problem or extra charge.

Anyway... even with that 1.50£ debit card fee your flight is probably cheaper than with another airline.

Master_Dn wrote:You should also report the situation to Ryanair.....

Anyway... even with that 1.50£ debit card fee your flight is probably cheaper than with another airline.

It is VISA Electron and Ryanair have charged me £1.50

How do you suggest I report it? - without hanging on for hours to their recording of how busy they are today and racking up phone charges?

Cheaper? 2 of us fly to Alicante on Friday 6th March

AM Gatwick flight BA to Alicante £43.40p.p.; 23Kgs of luggage, online choose your seat, 2 handluggage bags, all refreshments (coffee, beers, spirits, and a meal) included, very short q's with lots of checkin desks

AM Gatwick flight RA to Alicante £44.10p.p.; 15kg of luggage, priority boarding (ha ha), 1 handluggage bag ; all refreshments extra (say £12), join the checkin q where (so I've read on other forums) their scales are set to over-read so you get an additional charge.

so £56 + £1.50 Electron debit card charge for RA and £43 for BA - no contest really.

I'm not sure if it works now as well, but there was something like a cheapest price promise from Ryanair. I don't remember details, but at general if you could find cheaper flight on same destination and date, they will turn the price for you down to other company's ones. Could anybody correct or precise me please?

http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/notices.php?notice=070508_EN_doubledifference

Master_Dn wrote:http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/notices.php?notice=070508_EN_doubledifference

1. Should a claimant for any reason fail to submit the claim form within 1 hour of making the booking on www.ryanair.com, then that claim will be deemed as late and will be disregarded for the purposes of this promotion.
   
2. Claims will only be accepted where both the departure times of the competitor airline flights are within 1 hour of the original booked Ryanair flight departure times.
   
3. A screen print of the competitor's offered fare (including all mandatory taxes, fees and charges) must be emailed with the claim form. Ryanair will then verify the "competitor fare" within 1 hour of receipt (only during office hours: 9am-5pm Monday to Friday). If the 'competitor fare' cannot be verified on the internet then the claim will be invalid.
   

Doesn't apply to 1 way flights.

So one can only claim against a return flight that departs within one hour of the Ryanair flight and is cheaper (excluding RA overheads of luggage and checkin booking charges), and submit the claim within one hour of making your RA booking .
Despite you submitting a screen print RA say they will verify on the internet so if the price changes upwards when they decide to review you will lose out anyway; and there is nothing to prevent RA from simply saying sorry we didn't receive your email or couldn't view your attachment. I'd be interested to know how may claims have been made and how many successful in their application - something less than 1 I would think.

It's also just unchecked story for me. Even if I would, I can't claim as mostly RA is flying from my airport. The others are Lot/Lufthansa, which are flying to uncovered by RA airports

Hi, Just joined 02 July 2009 and noticed the above subject, a few personal comments.

I use the Halifax Easycash account which gives you the Electron card, which of course I use for all of my RYA flts. Like the lead article, I also have to bear the £1.50 charge made by my bank, but I believe it is because the booking is made in Euros and as such is considered to be a EU transaction and therefore a non UK charge occurs. I may be wrong on this but looking at my statements that's the way it comes across.

Ironically, speaking to another frequent flyer in Dublin on 30 June who also uses his Electron card but is issued by the CO-OP, (he had no idea of the name of the account type), however, I mentioned to him about the £1.50 charge for each transaction, he came back with, 'Have made over 200flts and have never incurred any form of charge using my CO-OP Electron card' - debate still open?

Regards

ChesterFlyer

I also use the Halifax electron and a £1.50 charge is added when i book and ONLY pay in €s,regardless
of how many people fly the charge is only £1.50 so still it has a great advantage over major credit cards.
still curious to find out why the co-op dont charge this fee but the Halifax do.

Hi Guys,

you can find a list of banks in the UK that issue visa electron cards in http://visa-electron.co.uk/.

I hope this helps more travelers like me!

Cheers

ChesterFlyer wrote:Hi, Just joined 02 July 2009 and noticed the above subject, a few personal comments.

I use the Halifax Easycash account which gives you the Electron card, which of course I use for all of my RYA flts. Like the lead article, I also have to bear the £1.50 charge made by my bank, but I believe it is because the booking is made in Euros and as such is considered to be a EU transaction and therefore a non UK charge occurs. I may be wrong on this but looking at my statements that's the way it comes across.

Ironically, speaking to another frequent flyer in Dublin on 30 June who also uses his Electron card but is issued by the CO-OP, (he had no idea of the name of the account type), however, I mentioned to him about the £1.50 charge for each transaction, he came back with, 'Have made over 200flts and have never incurred any form of charge using my CO-OP Electron card' - debate still open?

Regards

ChesterFlyer

Have been toying with the above statement I made (which still stands) however, to try to minimize the £1.50 charge, I have found (call me cheap-skate) on the £1 flt offers, if I was booking DUB-GWK as a single to make it into a return choosing another £1 fly day and booking GWK-DUB to do the DUB-GWK flt on the day you want, costs another £1 but saves 50p!

Cheers

Chesterflyer

cheap-skate!! :D:D
By the way - LGW if you meant Gatwick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Gatwick_Airport

The question is "who is making the £1.50 charge"?

If it comes up on the Ryanair booking page then it is Ryanair. But I have never seen it when I have booked with my Electron card.

However, a couple of posters have said that it is just appearing on their bank statement.

Therefore, the charge is being made by your bank and is nothing to do with Ryanair!

Ryanair still doesn't charge visa electron. I've just booked 5 minutes ago and I paid 2,99€.

If there's a charge it is made by the bank.

I think that untill easyjet won't charge for VE also ryanair won't: the gap will be to big for a lot of destinations. Beauvais vs orly, Weeze vs duesseldorf, amsterdam vs eindhoven (in my opinion completely different places to be). If I should pay 20£/€ more it's the hassle worth, but if it will be just 10£/€ or less, a lot of people will prefer a closer airport thus easyjet

Of course, some banks charge, some don't.

Are you paying in euros from a sterling account or vice versa. Or in euros from a euro account etc. All have an affect on whether the banks charge or not.

I have booked hundreds of flights using visa electron with ryanair. I did get charged the £10 charge once a couple of months ago. I phoned ryanair and the call centre told me to send proof that I paid by visa electron to them so they could investigate further. Couldnt be bothered with the hassle so I left it. Odd as it never happened before or after this one instance? I have heard that they were supposed to be introducing charges with visa electron as of 01/01.2010 but when I have checked today 02/01.2010 they still havent added the charge charge to the final booking, have I missed something?

If you try to pay using a visa electron now it will cost you £10 per person on your card but you cam use a pre-paid mastercard with no fee. Just another pointless change at Ryanair upsetting loyal customers again "is he a MAD MAN" I think he is

keezee wrote:If you try to pay using a visa electron now it will cost you £10 per person on your card but you cam use a pre-paid mastercard with no fee. Just another pointless change at Ryanair upsetting loyal customers again "is he a MAD MAN" I think he is

It's not a pointless charge. ALL airlines have a credit card charge.

But it is a pointless charge. The credit card companies charge FR a percentage fee of 2% or 3% yet FR charge us a flat fee of €10 for a flight that sometimes only costs €40 ie a 25% fee. Do we have to pay a credit charge fee when we use our credit cards in Tesco or IKEA or Boots? no we don't. its all one big scam. FR did it first. Now all airlines do it. That doesnt make it right

ruinair wrote:But it is a pointless charge. The credit card companies charge FR a percentage fee of 2% or 3% yet FR charge us a flat fee of €10 for a flight that sometimes only costs €40 ie a 25% fee. Do we have to pay a credit charge fee when we use our credit cards in Tesco or IKEA or Boots? no we don't. its all one big scam. FR did it first. Now all airlines do it. That doesnt make it right

Yes, I agree that it is wrong - the credit card companies generally only charge a couple of cent for using their service. But like I said, it's not only Ryanair - or airlines for that matter - who take advantage. At the end of the day, it is only €/£10 added onto an extremely cheap fare, and if you use a pre-paid Mastercard you avoid the charge. It's as simple as that, and that's just how it is - there's no use in discussing/arguing it any further.

neilk2304 - there might not have been any discussing/arguing if you had read correctly what keezee said - pointless CHANGE ! JK

very good and well spotted! charge vs change!

keezee - by reading about the Ryanair fee structure on their website you would have seen that a Visa Electron card could be used to eliminate the admin charge ' for a limited period of time ' It now says the same about MasterCard Prepaid.

It is hardly a pointless change if more ' loyal customers ' can now avoid the charge by using MCP than the numbers who could by using VE. You can see the differences by going back to the announcement on 30/11/ 09 in ' News ' on their website.

It is not difficult to get a MCP and only a very selfish person would raise objections to the switch. JK

Globemaster wrote:keezee - by reading about the Ryanair fee structure on their website you would have seen that a Visa Electron card could be used to eliminate the admin charge ' for a limited period of time ' It now says the same about MasterCard Prepaid.

It is hardly a pointless change if more ' loyal customers ' can now avoid the charge by using MCP than the numbers who could by using VE. You can see the differences by going back to the announcement on 30/11/ 09 in ' News ' on their website.

It is not difficult to get a MCP and only a very selfish person would raise objections to the switch. JK

So if you fly as much as i do for work (four flights every week for work) the card charges can add up. You expect me to keep opening many accounts with credit cards to try and keep my charges down, and Ryan air just select a different card whenever they want to, people get the cards to help themselves not Ryanair with the chgarges. when will this stop???

Why dont they do the loyal thing and give their loyal customers a "Ryanair card" that says that because you fly every "say" month with them you can book your flight using their card with no charges.

That's when their loyal customers would use them more and not feel ripped off by them...

The answer is that they are greedy (end of)

p.s. this is a discussion forum so i will alway speak my mind on here pointing out my bad times and the good times with Ryanair...

p.p.s

Do you go to bed hugging a model Ryanair plane at night....................

keezee it is the first time they change the payment method... and you can always close the account where you had visa electron to open a new one with mastercard pre-paid or even cancel your old visa electron to have a mastercard pre-paid instead.

as long as there is at least one charge free payment method for me it's ok.
they made this change so that people who don't book so often would pay the visa charge on the first months until they know that the mastercard pre-paid is free of charge.

I don't feel ripped off by Ryanair because their flights are really cheap. What is the difference between paying 5€ or 15€ or even 30€ for a flight of about 1500km ? Every other transport would be far more expensive ! In the end you get what you paid for.