Ryanair tightens the screws again

[Bridget and Peter]

The Electron card concession by Ryan Air which means you don't have to pay the surcharge for using a card when booking (£5 per leg, I think) is ending on 1 Jan. After that the only way to avoid the fee will be by using a pre-paid card which usually involves a fee in itself.

Ryan Air, the Airline you just have to hate!

"Unlike the Visa Electron, prepaid cards often incur a number of charges – either weekly or monthly subscriptions, application fees, or transactional charges.

"Anyone thinking of signing up to a MasterCard prepaid card to avoid Ryanair admin fees should consider if they intend to use the card regularly – in which case, a card with a low transactional fee is most suitable.

"Prepaid cards do have other advantages, though. They are a secure alternative to cash, and, as they are pre-loaded, they help you to control the amount of money you spend. Many prepaid cards also offer cashback when shopping online, which could offset the fees paid for having the card in the first place.

"If you intend to travel with Ryanair and want to use a MasterCard prepaid card to avoid the booking fee, and also to use it for your travel money, then check the charge for using an ATM abroad – make sure the benefits outweigh the costs."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/de ... enger-fees

 

[Sagalouts]

greetings from sunny Portugal
all thanks to Ryanair-1 pound each way plus 10 pound for my debit card, thats 12 pounds in total.
scraping ice off the car before starting out now basking in the sun at A 61pounds beach front apartment bed and breakfast for the week.
now tell me how else I could afford to fly here.
god bless rock n roll and ryanair.
Obrigado Ian

 

[Anonymous]

Ryanair-1 pound each way plus 10 pound for my debit card, thats 12 pounds in total

Enjoy, Ian! After my Camino last week I flew back from Madrid to Gatwick with Ryanair for £5 and it was one of those rare flights with no extra charges at all, not even airport taxes, and it does make you wonder how they can afford to do it, doesn't it? I spent more on one pre-flight drink at Barajas than I spent on the ticket home!

Gareth

 

[Bridget and Peter]

Fair enough! At least you can afford to off-set the carbon emissions!

(ducking and raising arms over head for protection!)

Portuguese holiday in December sounds idyllic. No ice here today, just greyness and dampness.

love
Bridget

 

[Hermanita]

greetings from sunny Portugal
all thanks to Ryanair-1 pound each way plus 10 pound for my debit card, thats 12 pounds in total.
scraping ice off the car before starting out now basking in the sun at A 61pounds beach front apartment bed and breakfast for the week.
now tell me how else I could afford to fly here.
god bless rock n roll and ryanair.
Obrigado Ian

Ryan Air can be positively wonderful if you get lucky and also have a little know how on their weird and ever changing rules and fares, then again, it can be a nightmare and not worth it on other occasions.

Ian, glad to hear you got such a good deal and are having a nice holiday in Portugal. Sounds great!! Enjoy!!!

 

[Tia Valeria]

...............
"Unlike the Visa Electron, prepaid cards often incur a number of charges – either weekly or monthly subscriptions, application fees, or transactional charges.
....................
"Anyone thinking of signing up to a MasterCard prepaid card to avoid Ryanair admin fees should consider if they intend to use the card regularly – in which case, a card with a low transactional fee is most suitable............

Thanks for highlighting this Bridget and Peter.
We had a 'Cash Passport' last year in Euros - pre-paid. On looking at it we see that it says Visa Electron which raises a question. Are there two types of Visa Electron card, one pre-paid and the other more like a credit/debit card? Does anyone know?
We take the point about checking charges etc as we actually closed our Cash Passport on returning home - because of the terms and conditions. We are thinking of getting a new one for next year, but which? especially as, looking on-line, most seem to be Electron. :?
Glad we are not planning to use Ryanair
Tia Valeria

 

[ivar]

My bank in Spain has "Visa Electron cards", but they are all debit cards... they are usually cheaper to use, but one minus is that I don't think you can buy anything online with a Visa Electron card, like an airline ticket. I had one, but realized that as soon as I went on any website to buy anything, no one accepted the card.

Saludos,
Ivar

 

[sillydoll]

They are probably the same as the Cash Passport debit cards issued here by Master and Visa. Because they are not personalised you cannot use them to hire a car either.

 

[Deleted member 3000]

...it does make you wonder how they can afford to do it, doesn't it?

Having spent fifteen years in the airline business, I can tell you that cost-cutting in the maintenance department goes directly to profit.

 

[Anonymous]

I can tell you that cost-cutting in the maintenance department goes directly to profit.

Oh dear... And I am already nervous enough when flying because my very first job in life was airframe technician, and I was so hopeless at it that I broke all the planes. Each time I fly I wonder if the plane had been serviced by incompetent idiots like me who once accidentally drilled through the main wing spar of a Canberra bomber. :shock: (Well, I did apologise later... so that was all right.)

Gareth

 

[Tia Valeria]

This thread seems to raise as many issues about Cash Passports as about Ryanair so I feel led to start a new post 'Cash Passports' and see what others think about them
Tia Valeria

 

[Caminando]

now tell me how else I could afford to fly here.

"Oh ye of little faith!"
:arrow:

 

[Deleted member 3000]

I think that most of Ryanair's policies are designed to offer options to the traveler so that he can pick and choose what he wants and what he wants to pay for. Somehow, they come off as bad customer service and hostility to the traveler. Perhaps it is just bad public relations.

 

[Bridget and Peter]

I think that most of Ryanair's policies are designed to offer options to the traveler so that he can pick and choose what he wants and what he wants to pay for. Somehow, they come off as bad customer service and hostility to the traveler. Perhaps it is just bad public relations.

No, they come across as being mean and callously fleecing people who are taken in by the extremely low advertised prices and then find themselves having to pat for things that other airlines include in the headline prices, such as return journeys, airport taxes, included baggage allowances, being able to pay online without being changed extra, or being able to check in at the airport if you wish, being given information about when your flight is likely to board instead of having to wait with no information, having staff around to answer queries (like do I have time to go to the loo), water available to drink, arriving at airports that are reasonably close the advertised destination, etc.

Those of us who understand this is the deal and how to make the best of it -eg by using the right card to pay online, taking sandwiches with us, limiting our baggage to the precise dimensions of the cabin luggage allowance, accepting that we will be herded like cattle - we benefit, but it's not us Mr O'Leary wants to attract - he needs the people who will end up paying out for the extras because they haven't realised that it isn't as good a deal as it seems. And the only reason we, the canny ones, get such cheap flights is because he has basically 'conned' the other people. And I don't like that, because I have rather an idealistic notion of justice and equality which for me is part of the pilgrim persona. (And cheap flights encourage people to fly more when perhaps flying should be a more considered expenditure both of money and of carbon emissions. That's another issue)

But I do understand that not everyone will agree with me and fair enough, nobody has to.

B
x

 

[Bridget and Peter]

Re: Ryanair criticised for tightening the screws again

From The Independent today:

Britain's top business regulator has accused Europe's biggest airline, Ryanair, of "almost taunting" passengers in a strongly worded attack on its charges.

John Fingleton, the chief executive of the Office of Fair Trading, described Ryanair's levying of fees for paying by card online as "puerile" and "almost childish", adding the carrier was only operating within "the narrow letter of the law".

Ryanair advertises taxes and other fees upfront but only mentions charges for paying by plastic at the end of booking on the grounds that customers could escape the fee by using an obscure prepaid card.

The no-frills carrier – along with other airlines and ticketing agencies – is being investigated by the OFT over online pricing and advertising. Of particular concern is "drip-pricing" where shoppers only discover the full cost of a service late in the booking process, which makes it difficult to shop around.

In a rare and exclusive interview, his first for 18 months, Mr Fingleton, whose organisation has previously clashed with Ryanair, criticised the airline's "funny game".

"Ryanair has this funny game where they have found some low frequency payment mechanism and say: 'Well, because you can pay with that [the charge is optional]'," he said. "It's almost like taunting consumers and pointing out: 'Oh well, we know this is completely outside the spirit of the law, but we think it's within the narrow letter of the law'."

Mr Fingleton – whose criticism elicited an angry response from Ryanair – hopes that ironing out problems on airline websites will set standards for online shopping, which is forecast to account for half of retail sales by 2020.

Under consumer law, businesses must advertise all compulsory charges. At the payment stage online, Ryanair levies a £5 debit or credit card charge per passenger, per journey, although the cost to the company is only about 30p per payment, according to the card industry. The charges can add £40 to the cost of a return trip for a family of four – several times the airline's cheapest advertised fares.

From last month, payments by Electron card that had previously been free began to attract the fee and Ryanair switched its free option to MasterCard pre-pay. Mr Fingleton suggested that Ryanair had found "some low frequency payment mechanism" to get round the rules.

He said: "It's almost like taunting consumers and pointing out: 'Oh well, we know this is completely outside the spirit of the law, but we think it's within the narrow letter of the law'.

"On some level, it's quite puerile, it's almost childish. And you sort of smile, and newspapers like yours or BBC Radio 4's Moneybox do a good job in pointing this out to consumers. This is just playing silly games at the margins of it all and we might or might not go running after something like that."

The automatic addition of insurance to flights by airlines, including Ryanair, unless customers opted out, was, he said, another legal "grey area". But public anger about such charges might prove to be more effective than regulatory action, he said. "It would be silly to go after something like that every time because they would quickly change it to something else, and it's trying to establish a general principle that what's not optional is not in there. Consumer anger and frustration, and an element of transparency, often changes these things much quicker than legal action."

 

[Canuck]

But I do understand that not everyone will agree with me and fair enough, nobody has to.
B
x

I do!
And for those reasons I make it known where it counts, i.e. I never ever use their services, no matter what.

Cheers,
Jean-Marc

 

[renegadepilgrim]

So, if I am purchasing a flight on Ryanair from the US, I have to use one of these pre-paid cards? This is so confusing!

 

[Bridget and Peter]

No, you don't have to use the pre-paid Master card. It's just that if you use any other card there will be an extra charge levied which you won't be informed about until you complete your on-line purchase. It's about £5, maybe?

The point is that Ryanair is a 'no-frills' cheap airline. They offer very cheap flights. But the cheap fares mean that you have to pay for lots of things which other airlines include in the ticket - like baggage in the hold, drinks, meals etc. They also have very close seats, and as few staff as they can manage. So it helps to be aware of all this before you book. Some like the challenge of getting the best deal out of Ryanair without paying the add-ons. For example only taking cabin luggage ( I think the size allowed is 55x40x20 cm or similar), taking food with you, filling bottles with water, flight side, after going through security, and even paying with the right card if you have it or it's worth getting it. Others may wish to avoid using this airline because they have such a mercenary attitude towards the public. Others won't care, and thats fine. But knowledge is power. Or something!

The other thing that maybe Americans do not think of immediately is that once you have arrived in Europe, using rail is another option. I love the trains because you see so much more of the country you are travelling through, have space, are more likely to talk to other travellers, arrive in the centre of cities rather than on the outskirts and have none of the security delays (except a bit for Eurostar).Stations are much nicer places than airports to hang around in, too. There is also the environmental factor - we owe it to those who will be most affected by climate change - the poor - to be thoughtful about our choices in everything. We try to restrict our consumption of things with a high carbon cost!

http://www.seat61.com is the place to go for all information about train travel. Early purchasing gets the best deals, like air fares.

 

[lynnejohn]

Thanks for that excellent information, Bridget and Peter. We flew Ryanair from London to Biarritz last year. I will never fly with them again, despite their considerably lower fares. All of the add-ons, the chaos, and most of all, the fact that all seats are "rush seats" made it an unpleasant experience - a virtual foot race across the tarmac! I will pay a little more next time.
Chacun a son gout.

lynne

 

[renegadepilgrim]

Okay, I understand that about Ryanair and Easyjet. They are similar to Southwest Airlines in the US. I have traveled by rail in Europe (Italy) and found it to be inconsistent. Probably the Italians, not rail travel itself. I will look closer at rail travel. So far, the French train website have been less than useful to me since I speak no French and every time I have a question, I need to go to Google Translate.

 

[Bridget and Peter]

http://www.seat61.com is in English.

 

[lynnejohn]

This is a great site! We've had lots of fun exploring and now plan to take the train from London to Madrid for our next Camino. Thanks for your help.

lynne

 

[renegadepilgrim]

http://www.seat61.com is in English.

As I stated in my post, I was referring to the FRENCH train site. There does not appear to be an "english" option, which I didn't really expect, it just takes me longer to figure out, or sometimes I get bored and have Google translate the whole page for me. I have not had time to really get into the Seat61 site. It looks promising. I am not booking any dates for trains until I book my plane ticket for my RTW trip (which includes the Camino, among other things). Still working out some details.

 

[Deleted member 3000]

In defense of Southwest (and I don't own any stock in it):

It runs on time. Baggage is free. Service is friendly. In flight announcements can be hilarious. AND it is cheap.

Ryan Air is one of the above.

 

[Bridget and Peter]

Sorry, renegade, I misunderstood. Have you tried Raileurope (http://www.raileurope.co.uk/)?

Although I believe someone found that prices vary according to which country you book from. And although just now I tried to get into the American site (.com) it was automatically sent to the .co.uk one.

Although there is a booking fee (£8 for the whole transaction), I have found for complicated journeys (several changes, needing to book bicycle spaces etc) speaking on the phone to a person at Rail europe has been really successful, as they can search for the best value deals, and you can explain what criteria you are flexible on and what not so much easier to a person than to a website! There are often other routes, or slightly less fast trains, which will cut the cost considerably without causing you much inconvenience, and you can ask a person 'is there any other way of doing this?' and because they are so experienced they know where to look!

Round the world, eh? Exciting!

best wishes

Bridget

 

[crackmrmac]

Not sure if this is helpful.......but

to avoid credit card booking fees on Ryanair...........go for prepaid mastercard.

If you open Neteller acount & then upgrade to extended account (do not lose or cancel your card as it involves charges; also use your card at least once a year to avoid dormantory fee)

suits regular users of EURO priced airlines;

( although you can open account in differnt local currencies to suit your needs.)



How to lodge money to your account to pay for all your dreams?

(1) lowest cost: No charge............ make transfers to your neteller plastic card via your local bank.......transfer time dependant on your local bank...........in Ireland ...........24hours

(2) fee: immediate transfer of cash to your plastic card. see neteller site (less than3%)

NB currently ryanair apply fees for neteller virtual account............above applies to extended account / plastic card.

During the week I have booked my flights via Ryanair for my unexpected visit on the Camino.


Edit: (2) fee: immediate transfer of cash to your plastic card. see neteller site (less than3%)
It's 1.75%