I just booked 4 flights from Bournemouth to Ibiza (much cheaper than flying from any London airport but that’s a separate post). The price was a bargain at £20 each flight including taxes.
I have heard a lot about Ryanair charging extra fees and so was very, very careful to avoid their numerous ploys to extract more money from me. With a little reading and careful mouse clicking I succesfully avoided travel insurance (£7.17), early boarding fees (£4 to get on the place 2 minutes before everyone else?!) and checked baggage fees (£15 each flight).
I got to the checkout page, entered my Mastercard info and thought I was home free with the price still showing as £80. Confirmation screen appeared and flights were booked. Hurray I thought but wait… why have I been charged £100 when the price was £80? Somehow a ‘handling fee’ had been added to each flight.
As I mentioned, I was very careful during the booking process and saw no mention of ‘handling fees’. A quick search on the web revealed the fee is levied for any type of credit card other than Mastercard prepaid debit cards are used. I used a Mastercard credit card. According to web research, Mastercard prepaid debit cards are a pain in themselves and carry their own set of charges. I also double checked on why the fee was being charged per passenger and not per transaction as every other online retailer does… it’s just Ryanair policy! Did I mention Ryanair’s desire to extract more money from passengers?
Now this flight was cheap and I have no qualms or regrets about booking Ryanair. I can put up with their plastic seats and expensive in-flight drinks because the flight itself was cheap. My issue is with the unannounced addition of the handling fee. Ryanair ought to be honest about the fee and just put it on the flight price. This would allow customers to see the true base cost of a Ryanair flight when comparing against other flights from other airlines.
I need to book another Ryanair flight to get me home from Ibiza… I have one in mind for the super-low cost of £25. Again it’s Bournemouth but I can take the train and the hassle to save £50 over flying from London. Thinking their may be a way to avoid the Ryanair fees I used our flight comparison engine to find other websites selling Ryanair flights. Bravofly came up and I thought I had beaten Ryanair’s system… sadly I had not because Bravofly and all other providers also charge the same fee plus a bit more for themselves.
The moral of the story is that every Ryanair flight costs £5 more than the quoted price. I am trying to get this changed on diyflights.com so that we quote the actual base cost… I will update this page if I am successful.
I titled this blog post “How to avoid Ryanair handling fees” – unfortunately 99.9% of customers cannot!