I agree that all taxes and fees should be included in the quoted price from the carriers but credit and debit cards are a difficult issue for a travel agency. Now i’m in the US I’m no longer working for an ABTA or ATOL Agency (Just IATA/ARC and ASTA) I’m not familiar with the situation in the UK but we have to charge a fee for debit card transactions that we process. In most cases we don’t charge the card ourselves. For example when airline tickets are issued through our CRS the airline charges the card. In that case there would be no extra charge unless the supplier made it (such as Ryanair does) If, for some reason we have to charge the clients card ourselves we are forced to pass on the fee that is charged by our merchant account. The simple reason for this is that our fee for airline tickets($25) in most cases doesn’t cover the 3% merchant fee we have to pay. Since we don’t have many of these transactions were not in a position to negotiate better fees. We could include the fee in the prices we quote, but then we would be ‘ripping off’ the clients who paid by cheque. Unlike Ryanair, our clients usually have the choice of how they pay and therefore the choice to pay the fee or not. I hate doing it, but i have no choice. The 3% fee we pay applies to both Debit Cards and Credit Cards.

- Darren, i know this goes on a bit so feel free to edit it

In reply to Travel Agents question.
The publicly available T&C’s for Ryanair don’t allow third parties to sell their tickets. Ryanair sell direct to the customer.

Their T&C’s state: Any booking you may make via a third party website or online travel agent may be cancelled without notice or refund.

On Travel rants you previously have had agents saying they use the customers credit cards details to book Ryanair flights for their customers, which I find amazing, maybe slightly naive of me, but I don’t work in this area. Agents have said on here, they do this to get around this problem of being a third party, but I expect the agents don’t bother telling the customers they are using their cards, or that they won’t be covered if the airline fails, or that they are making a markup on the flight for doing it.

However you book a Ryanair flight, your contract is with Ryanair and Ryanair don’t require an ATOL. So if Ryanair go the same way as XL, your money will go too. Credit cards normally offer protection for a minimum amount of £100 and Ryanair sell cheap flights.

Hi Julia

Agents shouldn’t be using customers’ credit cards…. not just for the valid reasons you outline - but also this can open the up to PCI issues (which are global standards on credit card data)

Have a read of this post that explains PCI

@Alex
I understand your post and totally agree . That was why I was surprised that someone on here posted a while ago that as an agent, that was what they were doing when they book flights for their customers on Ryanair. Agents should not be using customer’s’ credit cards.

Darren
To get a seat and fly with Ryanair a passenger should only make their booking directly with Ryanair. ABTA agents or any online agent who is a member of any Trade Association should tell you this and not use your card to make the booking on your behalf.

Infact not make the booking on your behalf at all.

Just found the rant it was on Darren about agents using client’s cards.

Here “Ryanair confuses consumers over third-party bookings“

Ryan Who?

It’s all about marketing i suspect. They can jump up and down about selling seats for £1 or not increasing their fuel charges, and instead hide the charges which cover those in the “card fees”.

It also means that their prices at search results remain artificially low, as these card charges won’t come out in the price until the payment page as it’s dependent on the card type you use.

I’m flying with lovely Ryanair to Seville on Friday… sooo looking forward to the experience - particularly the VERY LOUD recorded announcements to PLAY RYANAIR LOTTERY AND YOU COULD BE A MILLIONAIRE!!!!! nothing like a captive audience eh?

Anyway I digress… They used to differentiate between debit cards and credit cards and charge a bigger fee to use a credit card… now it’s the same fee for all cards except electon - £4 per flight. So (regardless of the lack of transparency which I agree is bad) the advice to customers is book with your credit card as you have far better cover for a refund in the event that the airline goes bust.

RyanAir don’t like travel agents and the feeling is pretty much mutual, If, that is, you can find an agent that would touch them with a bargepole. I have little sympathy for anyone that flies with them - in a good way, that is. RyanAir say they will fly you from A to B.

They do exactly what it says on the tin - but expect no mercy, no quarter given, no prisoners taken and if you expect the cabin crew to smile, then you have to pay. The fare is cut to the minimum (or to what they reckon they can get away with - c.f. Hahn at world cup time).

Quite right, Simon, it is about marketing BUT it begs the question, what should be included in a “fare” - after all you don’t get on National Express to have the driver say “That’ll be £12 please - Oh! And and extra tenner for the petrol/ insurance/ contribution to the retired drivers benevolent fund”

The only reson “taxes and charges” were excluded was to accomodate taxes which, overseas, could be rather erratic and were charged in dollars, crowns, flavian pobble beads, etc. As it varied day to day, they were expressed as a seperate entity.

BUT what about security tax - I mean, 9/11 is a while back now so that could have gone into the fare, the charge for the privilege of having to put up with the pisspoor BAA morons at Stansted/ Heathrow etc (aka UB “tax”) ?? It is also about “perception” - many of the great travelling public assume they know about travel - which they invariably don’t - and perceive RyanAir and Easyjet etc to be “cheap”.

The credit card charge is a bit of a red herring - the larger issue is that we should get back to what the extra “taxes” (NOT taxes and charges) should be…….
Oh! By the way, I see that Co-Op Travel will have nothing to do with Kiss flights. Having shafted all those holidaymakers, travel agents, not to mention XL staff, good on Co-Op!

I’d totally agree Darren… as a consumer I’m resigned to it though… I know Ryanair and I know that they will stick as many extras on there as they can…
And many others do too…

If ever I have a choice I fly with someone else…

Were does the money go, good question? What about if you consider it as an admin/overhead charge, to pay someone who they employ. After all there are staff, not just robots dealing with the bookings. The fares are so low, I have flown with them before and would again. I think £10 would be too much, but £4 is a reasonable charge to make a booking direct with them. I wonder what the agents were marking it up at?

It is wrong that it’s so high, I suspect Ryanair’s argument would be that it is fully transparent and that other people do the same by marking up prices blah blah blah.

Slightly off topic, but it’s interesting how more and more of the industry seem to be getting fed up with Ryanair - I wonder how long it can last before Ryanair have to back track.

Darren is right, it will all be automated, in the same way that credit card fees are. Set the amount, and the computers do the rest!

I don’t think that Ryanair need to justify that charge. Looking at their history and Mr. O’Leary’s past comments they would probably say something similar. You have a choice. Book the flight and pay the fee or don’t. Ryanair’s attitude has always been, this is what we are doing, if you don’t like it, tough. Go somewhere else.

I think it’s all part of the bigger argument (that has being going on for years) about how prices are presented, the advertised price not being the final price you pay, (i.e. Taxes and fees not included). There is no reason why they can’t include taxes and fees in a advertised price provided they stipulate in the small print that these are subject to change at the time of booking, since the airline has no control over government taxes. If the airlines need to increase fares because the cost of fuel has increased then they should adjust the fares to compensate. Of course, they advertise the “fare” not the price and the fare may well be £1.00. Taxes, Fuel Surcharges and credit card fees are not part of the fare.

I think Murray’s National Express comment is a little bit unfair since you are told the final price before you pay. Your not charged extra when you get on the plane (are you?).
I never thought i would come in on the side of Ryanair, but, it’s their business and they are permitted to operate it however they want. You do have a choice to pay or not to pay it after all.

Hi Darren

As an agent I have previously booked Ryanair for customers - always using my company credit card. I then had to pass on the card fees they charge to the customer.

There are four points I would like to make.

1 - Ryanair are actively trying to stop agents/3rd party bookings (is screenscraping technolgy) making customer bookings. This increases the traffic to their website and hence their affiliate marketing income.

2 As an ATOL holder I could make a Ryanair booking + a hotel or car hire etc, and ATOL bond this for the customer. Although it is unlikely that Ryanair will fail, this did protect the hotel booking etc. I made no extra profit from the Ryanair flight (just sold at the screen price) But now I can no longer provide customer protection with the actions of Ryanair.

3 I have bankcard merchant accounts. Even as a low volume merchant my charges are only 1.95% on credit cards and £1 per debit card transaction. So how do Ryanair, who must be on much lower rates with the providers than me, justify the cost they charge?

4 I don’t believe that customers should be told a credit card is the saviour for all their purchases as. A) it may only cover UK transactions B) you have to spend over £100 Personally I doubt that the credit card companies will allow the situation to continue. I could start my own airline today, only take credit card sales, with no risk to me as the card companies have to pick up the tab. Why would they want to fund risky businesses or start ups?

Hi Dean
That is exactly why it is becoming harder and harder for travel companies to get merchant accounts (and that the money is “held” for months as the product is not “consumed” for a long time between booking and travel).

I am confused at where Julie is coming from. Are you a consumer or do you work within the airline or travel industry? You seem to be coming across as negative towards travel agencies. As for the charge, if it was £4 per transaction, then fair enough, but £4 per PASSENGER, that is OTT.

Delete “get on the bus” insert “when you go to buy” come to think of it, if you buy a rail ticket, they do not say “It’s £20 plus £10 for diesel, £5.00 for using Paddington, £4.00 for using Bristol Station and £3.00 for the City of Bristol, etc etc…”

My point is that, too much is getting into variables that really ought to be included in the fare. If you think £4.00 (for using a credit card) is too much, is really academic - that’s what they charge and if you don’t like it, by all means fly with someone else. Now, everything is “part of the fare” (see the dictionary - a fare is the “cost of a passenger’s conveyance”)

The fare is what you have paid, in the final anaylsis, when you get off at point B. The reason for seperation is/ was due to daily fluctuations in overseas exchange rates - and the Railways buy fuel, Coaches buy fuel - of course that should be included in the fare.

Airlines say they buy it overseas, well, so does everyone else, even you and I when you come to think of it. Oh, and agents don’t mark anything up. They never have done. The commission is paid by the supplier, not the client. It (Used to be!) was historically the same price for a holiday/ flight if you bought direct from the supplier or through an agent, it’s just that the supplier then gave the agent a commission or pocketed the commission.

You do get a mark up on consolidated, CAT45 tickets etc which is, er, what we can get away with, basically. (And internet agents get away, very often, with a sight more than High Street agents do - expedia is ruddy expensive) But as I say, most of Jo Public, at the end of the day, know naff all about (the mechanics of) travel.

@ Murray I don’t want to get into semantics here but your right the fare is the cost of a passenger’s conveyance. Tax isn’t conveyance. Landing fees are not conveyance. Last time I checked (which I admit was a long time ago) the government didn’t impose a per passenger fee or tax on each coach ticket sold which the coach operator was required to collect on behalf of the government when it sold the ticket. Rail is not a good example because it’s a controlled situation so let’s get back to bus companies for your Bristol example. Now, I will admit that Bristol Bus Station might charge National Express a fee to use its facilities but usually that is a fixed price per vehicle and not per passenger. This would be similar to the landing fees paid by the airlines to the airport. The airlines (like the coach operators) include this in the fare since it doesn’t vary dependent on the amount of passengers. With the exception of fuel surcharges the reason for separation is for accounting purposes. To identify how much goes to each party. If you look at an airline ticket you will notice each of these charges shown separately, the fare followed by the taxes and fees. Each tax/fee has a code which identifies what it’s for. In many cases a flight ticket isn’t just A to B. It could be A to B to C to A. At each point in the journey there are different fees and taxes to be paid none of which goes to the airline and therefore none of which is part of the cost of conveyance. I agree (and have stated previously in this thread that the total price should be the advertised price). I’m just trying to put an alternative view.

Incidentally, something that took me a while to get used to when I came to live here in the U.S. was sales tax. Unlike the UK where prices include V.A.T! The prices in stores here don’t include tax. Tax is added at the checkout. The advertised price (or the cost of the item) excludes tax.

About travel agents commissions! I have to disagree with you here as well. Agents don’t always earn commissions from their suppliers. In fact very few, if any, airlines pay commission. Any agent will mark up an air ticket because otherwise they wouldn’t make any money. Some airlines do offer some agents with high volume override payments which are commissions by any other name, but this is not the general rule. Package Holidays and in some cases charter flights do pay commission and generally travel agents won’t mark those up. However, there are exceptions and the travel industry is moving evermore to being a fee charging service as suppliers cut costs in every way they can. This of course brings us into the area of what a travel agent is. Some are just booking shops that sell you whats in the brochure and take a commission from the supplier. Others act as a consultancy, making bespoke arrangments to the clients exact needs often with suppliers that don’t pay commission. Clients using the latter will often be happy to pay a fee becuase of the higher level of service they receive. A good professional travel agent with experience and the customers best interests at heart will, to their client, be worth the fees thay charge.

You are right. Some people know naff all about (the mechanics of) travel

However, we are getting off the point here which is.. No Ryanair can’t justify the fee but (I would suggest that) in its opinion why should it?

@Mel
I like travel agencies. I work in travel (not for an airline or as an agent funnily enough) and I am learning all the time, 10+years, and I am sorry if I have appeared negative towards agents on this thread, this was not my intention. What I do not agree with is and agent to use my card without my knowledge, ie, if I give my card details to a travel agent, I don’t expect it to be passed on to another company to book something directly with their supplier. See Alex’s link.

@Darren - I understand it is automated. I am not that dim. [wink]

@ Julia. Any agent who used your card without your knowledge should be arrested. In my book thats plan old theft. However, there are times when, for the benefit of the passenger, their card might be used. For example a guarantee or deposit at a hotel. Or where the supplier doesn’t accept 3rd party credit cards, such as Princess Cruises. Most agents would charge an (normal not Ryanair) airline ticket directly to the clients card but this should all be done with the clients prior knowledge and consent.

I wrote on this topic recently and you can get a Visa Electron card with a Halifax Easy cash account. I think that Ryanair can still legally say that the price is only £x as long as they offer one method of payment for which there is no charge.

No point in using your credit card to pay for Ryanair flights until the value of the transactions is more than £100 as credit card protection only kicks in at minimum purchase of £100.

Electron Cards are usually issed to the basic bank accounts that the government insisted the banks introduce when they wanted to stop making benefit payments by cash over the post office counter. They are aimed at people who don’t have much money and probably didn’t have bank accounts when they got benefits by cash. Therefore they don’t make much money or any money on those customers and so don’t promote them to anyone with a reasonable credit rating. Most people wouldn’t want one becuase of the basic facilities it offers. However, if you use Ryanair a lot it might pay to open one alongside your current account for just the Ryanair bookings.

Also note from the Ryanair Fees page http://snipurl.com/4f8kj that the no charge for Electron is a Limited time sepcial offer (how limited time - who knows)

Banks that offer the card as part of a basic bank account are Coop and HBOS

http://snipurl.com/4f7rv [www_co-operativebank_co_uk]
http://snipurl.com/4f839 [www_bankofscotlandhalifax_co_uk]
http://snipurl.com/4f778 [www_halifax_co_uk]

You can also get them as pre-paid ‘gift cards’ or from the post office as a pre-paid travel card, however you’ll probably be charged a fee to load the cash

http://snipurl.com/4f95o [www_postoffice_co_uk]

I’m sure other banks do them or the Maestro card which is the mastercard/solo card equivalent i believe of course the Maestro card don’t get ya the fee free booking

Since i got a moment, here is a little more history for those interested.

Originally when debit cards were introduced ther were 4 basic cards. Solo, Maestro, Delta and Electron. Solo and Maestro were issued by the Mastercard (remember Access your flexible friend?) Banks (at that time Midland/HSBC and Nat West i think). Delta and Electron by the Visa Banks (Barclays and LLoyds). The rest of the Banks were mostly still Building Soc’s then. Solo and Delta were debit cards AND cheque Guarantee Cards. Maestro and Electron were just debit cards with no Check Guarantee. This was when people still used cheques in shops. The Maestro/ Elctron Cards were issued to people with no credit history or a really bad credit history. The theory being that with these cards you couldn’t go overdrawn. With the Solo/Delta cards you could run all over town writing cheques, even if you didn’t have the cash in your account.

Since people don’t use cheques like that anymore there isn’t the need for the differences so much, but i guess this is why banks still issue them to under people under 21. That way they can build a credit history and progress to the ‘grown up card’. And as i mentioned above, when the government wanted to pay benefits by bank transfer they came in usefull then since many people on benefits didn’t have a credit history either.

Since if you have one of these cards your unlikley to qualify for an overdraft, loan, credit card they don’t make much money for the banks and many of them might offer the facility but not advertise it.

Thats how i remember it anyway

OK Darren you ask an agent to come clean about what they charge and how it works. First off all methods of taking money come at a cost to a business.

Cash/cheque we pay our bank £600 pounds a year to have an account. This includes 25 transactions, transactions over this come at a charge of less than £1. So we do not charge for payment made this way as the average transaction cost is less than 50p

Debit Card. We get charge to have the machine at just under £20 per month. We then have a transaction charge of less than 25p per transaction. We do not charge for taking debit cards. However it is worth pointing out it is now very hard for companies to change Banks in regards to taking cards and some banks have started a 0.3% or such charge in addition to the pence fee. It does not sound like a lot but if a travel agent is taking £2000 balance this would be additional £6. Some travel agencies caught like this are charging small fees to cover this.

Credit Cards. Well this is a mine field. First off according to my bank Visa/MasterCard take 1% of everything you spend as a brand charge. So in other words for having there logo on your card costs 1%. Included in this they provided the system that allows the banks to see each others cards. Then the banks need to make money after all they have liabilities on a credit card that does not come with debit cards. So most agencies pay under 2%, but some kinds of credit cards this is higher. This is why a lot of agencies charge 1.5% -2% charge.

Charge Cards. (American Express/Dinners Club) These cards come at a much higher cost to the travel agency and some cases can be double the cost of credit cards. This is why some agencies do not accept them or charge higher fees.

To sum up taking a card can cost an agency over 50% of its margin, so it makes sense to charge for cards.

@Julie. Travel Agencies in the UK that pass on cards to airlines normally do this as a face to face transaction for people who do not have internet access or have made mistakes doing there own bookings, or just like the fact that a person is there. Also customers booking with us prefer the idea there money is protected, if there airline goes bust then they get there money back no matter how they pay or the value.

Darren to get a electron card, you can do it by opening a second account that comes with one. Normally a basic bank account.

I had these charges but its still cheaper than other airlines.

Interestingly, the only people we have not heard from here is RyanAir! There is also the other point about legacy airlines who (at present) do not charge extra for credit cards. When an agent issues a ticket (unless it is a IT/ BT/ CAT45 ticket - he added quickly unless Johnathan gets the wrong end of the stick again) the actual credit card is charged by the airline, not the agent and the airline foots the credit card bill. That said, there was/ is a move to change this system which means that the agent would need to take the card in his/ her own right, so there may well be an additional credit card charge here; given the rather challenging margins, sorry, fee opportunities available. This would, of course, open the door for all airlines to have a bit of a field day on credit card charges. There is still a wider holistic picture of what the man on the Clapham Omnibus could reasonably expect the cost of passage to include. I would be more concerned, perhaps, about charges for luggage, checking in at the airport - what is to come next as “extra”? - charges for being permitted to breathe Oxygen at 30,000 feet or having a driver, sorry, pilot on board? Charging for a credit card would seem to be the least of one’s worries and “a mon avis” if anything, is at least, a more transparent charge than some of the other stuff. - Which, I would add, is in many cases, not the fault of RyanAir or any other airline. Take, for example, “solidarity tax” - which appears, depending on where you go, as IZ charge - basically an EEC inspired effort to save the planet/ whale and other weird-beard activities. It would be best if the total cost of a conveyance or let us say estimated advertised cost of conveyance, was nearer to the true end cost. That will, of course never happen, as it does not make for good marketing - but c.f. cars where you have a price and about four lines of extras beneath - BUT at least they do arrive at an estimated “on the road” price. I have noticed a move for some airlines (Easyjet, for example) where they have tried to give an inclusive price - which supports my point that a lot of these so called charges can and should be included in the total estimated cost of conveyance and that airlines should stop bleating about it.

For the sake of regularity, I know with DCC ticket issues any fee charged by an issuing agent would need to be charged seperately from the ticket and taken by the agent, not the airline.

Mike are you sure that it was cheaper than other airlines? Did you actually check. I thought the same until I searched on the Ba.com website and found that the price of the flight was £42 cheaper because of all of the charges that Ryanair adds on.

Murray I wish you would talk in English. What are DCC ticket issues?

DCC- Direct Credit Cards. At present, if you buy from an IATA agent and if you pay by credit card, the card details are passed to and money taken by, the airline not the agent. The agent has to take the agent’s fee seperate. (The agent can still take all the money but they usually do it through the DCC route) If it is a, let us say “wholesale” ticket, or “net” fare then the agent has to take all the money from the card. This is simplified so as not to go off topic.

A question to our trade people on this thread

If a consumer contacts their credit card company and asks for the payment to be cancelled (which is their last recourse, if they are not happy with the supplier) - once all the paperwork for the cancellation has progressed - do the credit card companies only refund the net value (minus the card charge) or do they refund the total paid.

If they only refund the net this would give an explanation as to why companies may charge a larger fee?

I thought that you had to have a good reason to cancel the charge as in non supply of goods or services (which is what a claim to a credit card company for an airline failure would be based on), not being you that booked it (difficult given that (most times) the ticket would be in your name, for you and you show a passport or photo id). I am not too sure that you can simply get the payment cancelled simply because you are “not happy” with the supplier - if you could then the whole internet credit card thing would collapse overnight! You can cancel or should I say, stop, a cheque but not a credit card payment.

Hi Murray,
Sorry - I should have given an example: If you can’t cancel your ticket (due to how low cost airlines do their T&Cs) - but want to book a different date (or not travel completely)….. maybe asking your credit card company to refund you is the last resort to get your money back?
I wasn’t really thinking about airline failure really.

I am not an expert in this field but as I understand it, you have to have a valid reason to refuse an item charged, vis: it is not what you ordered, it was not ordered by you or you did not receive the goods or services paid for.

If you could refuse on the grounds of simply, say, changing one’s mind about a service or goods, then the whole fabric of internet selling - distance selling - in effect crumbles instantly. So, if I book A to B on the 13th December and later on decide that I want the 15th, I have no valid reason to get my card company to refuse the charge. Now, a work around could be always use someone else’s card in that way that someone else could say “It wasn’t me” and problem solved.

That said, even suggesting such would give the credit card companies kittens, it would be effectively fraud and you would probably wind up spending some time explaining yourself to an irritable and bad tempered magistrate or judge…. Further, many airlines will accept third party cards on the interweb-thingy at present and thank heavens they do, they would promptly stop doing so which would make life very difficult for many…

BUT you really need an expert in this field to answer this..

HOWEVER - there was a move (which surfaces occasionally and then gets quietly strangled) to get internet airlines to give a cooling off period on their sites. My wife has a skincare website and there, if someone makes a boo-boo basically they ring up or email and change/ ammend/ cancel the order - no problem. With airlines, once you press the button, that’s it - and we could be talking serious money if it is a cancellation that is made just a few moments later. (Daren may want to pick up on this). With legacy airlines, you may choose to book through an IATA agent who can usually hold a reservation at least for a short while - the fare may change (usually not dramatically) - but your reservation is held. Further, many airlines, through an agent, will give you 24 or even 48 hours (or in some cases longer still - I have held a CAT45 (warehouse/ consolidated/ cheapo - how you wish to describe it) fare on a middle east airline for a whole week) - yes, there is a fee, but if one is not 100% sure it can be helpful (and it was cheaper then the expedia’s so-called “special fares” - which are ruddy expensive, bleat, bleat…)

WizzAir made it possible to pay through a bank transfer without any handling fee attached. I’m still hoping RyanAir will do the same. The part that I hate the most about the situation is that if you book returnflights for a group, for example 8 persons, you have to pay 8×2=16 handling fees! Doesn’t make any sense.

Look at the link below for WizzAir’s payments…

http://wizzair.com/useful_information/bank_transfer_payment/

I just booked a flight to France with Ryanair for February 2009 (no choice) and jumped out of my chair when I was charged 10 pounds for using my Visa card!!! I totally agree that Ryanair have to find the money on extra charges like luggage…etc, I even thought 2 to 4 pounds charge for using a Visa card was acceptable…but I am totally surprised that it is legal to charge 10 pounds for an action of paying!! Along other consumers I will be relieved and I ll stop thinking I m being robbed when I see the day that the advertised price is the final price!!! And if anyone from Ryanair reads this: the loud music at boarding and constant announcements are disturbing the passengers….