The people behind Ryanair’s €500 million revenues generated by extra charges, have caught up with their money-conscious customers. The low-fare giant is now charging Visa Electron customers €5 per passenger per flight for using the card to make a booking.
Visa Electron customers previously used the debit card to sidestep the airline’s credit card fees, which usually meant an extra €20 charge for two adults booking return flights on the same transaction.
In a bid to stay in line with advertising rules on its “free” flights claim, Ryanair will no longer charge customers who make a purchase using a Mastercard prepay card.
But the head of the UK’s Office of Fair Trading accused the budget airline of acting “outside the spirit of the law” with its charging policy.
John Fingleton, chief executive of the OFT, criticised the airline for adding charges to payments made with Visa Electron debit card.
“Ryanair has this game where they have found some very low frequency payment mechanism and say: ‘Well you can pay with that’,” he told the UK Independent. “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.”
Ryanair responded defiantly: “Ryanair is not for the overpaid John Fingletons of this world, but for the everyday Joe Bloggs who opt for guaranteed lowest fares because we give them the opportunity to fly across 26 European countries for free, £5 and £10.”
Ryanair had claimed its decision to introduce charges on Visa Electron was because Mastercard’s prepaid cards were more widely available than Visa Electron, which is not available in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands or Portugal.
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