Ryanair swaps fee-avoiding cards

09/14/2011 - 13:17

Ryanair passengers must sign up for a new branded pre-paid card available from 4 October in order to avoid an administration fee of £6 per journey.Passengers using Mastercard pre-paid cards, which currently exempt them from the fee, will be charged from November.The airline will instead only waive the charge for those who sign up to the new Ryanair Cash Passport.Wow!S

Comment

Thanks for this. Another example of Ryanair trying to catch people out to make money.

Many thanks for the tip - will certainly keep a look out for the card. At £6 per person per flight, the 'admin' charges soon add up so am always keen to avoid wherever possible.

I wonder how long it will be before they start charging us for using the card too? They never seem to miss a trick although I have always found them cheap - until this year and the flights seem to have rocketed

A friend told me that they had booked Ryanair flights to Spain through Travel Republic to avoid the £6 each way per person admin charge. Has anyone else used Travel Republic to book Ryanair flights and was it ok? I did some research a couple of days ago on flights for 4 people from Stansted to Rome at the end of September and coming back about a week later. The flights I chose had no taxes either way. The price of the flights via the Ryanair website was the same as booking them through the Travel Republic website ie £242.94. On top of that Ryanair would then charge £6 each way per person admin charge - an additional £48. However, on the Travel Republic website they charge 1.25% of the total cost if paying by debit card and 2.5% if paying by credit card. My maths is not brilliant but I make it an additional £3.04 if paying by debit card and an additional £6.07 if paying by credit card. Quite a saving. I phoned Travel Republic and asked if Ryanair accepted bookings through them and they said that they did and sold a lot of Ryanair flights. They take the booking on their site and Ryanair send the customer the confirmation email. Has anyone any experience of booking Ryanair flights through this or a similar company? It sounds a good deal.

I have never used a ticket agency to buy R'air tickets but I do remember that a couple of years ago they were threatening not to honour any tickets not bought via their website - not sure how or if it was resolved. I would be concerned that if there was a problem ie flight cancellation you would fall between the two and end up with neither assisting. If flights are cancelled you can rebook/request a refund online so not sure how you would get on. Interesting though.

Will it only be possible to sign up for the new Ryanair card from Oct 4th? I cant find anywhere that tells you how to apply yet. I read somewhere there could be an 8 week delay in receiving the card and the other prepaid mastercards lose their eligibility for booking with no fees from early Nov. Best to book before then for anyone wanting flights before Christmas. It IS still possible to find return flights under £20 and i cant really blame Ryanair for trying new ways of making money to keep fares lower. I'm afraid they wont be making a lot of money from my use of the new card. I've only ever used first the electron card and then the prepaid master card for booking flights in order to be exempt from charges. I use other cards for other things. It's a bind to keep changing cards but other airlines still have electron cards as their no-charges card and they have been increasingly phased out. Does anyone have a good suggestion for an electron card? My co-op one was so easy to top up at the post office but my new Halifax one is much more inconvenient (I use it for Jet2 flights).

I think that Ryanair are in serious danger of shooting (either) themselves in the foot OR OR !! the airports themselves due to the 'deals' that airports have had with flyers(such as Ryanair). The losers could be those who have bought places that have previously been 'good' deals for the Ryanairs of the world. pile em high, sell em cheap !....................move on. Maybe I'm a sufferer ???? oh hec !! S

That card they( Ryanair) offer is a real minefield, a geezer from Ryanair was on Radio 4 "Money Box" the other week and I felt like punching a hole in the radio-they really are full of sh*t!! Rant over

see the article below, looks as if the new R'air prepaid card is not going to be as straightforward as they would have you beleive! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/borrowing/creditcards/8793353/Ryanair-prepaid-card-customers-face-hefty-fees.html Calculators out to see if it is worth it!

I'm sorry, back to Ryanair again. I noticed they have now advertised next summer flights to Pisa from the north of England. The flights from East Midlands, our most convenient airport, are very reasonable, (well below those of Jet2 from not so convenient Manchester). As we always go about the same time and as you can still use any prepaid mastercard to avoid fees until the beginning of Nov, I have booked my next year's flights. The more I read about the new Ryanair payment card the more I want to avoid getting one. Just thought I'd mention this in case anyone else is in the same position and hadn't realised the summer flights had been released. Dont know how good flights from and to other airports are but I have paid about £300 pounds less than I would have paid on Jet2 for 3 return flights for 2 people.

Is it really 1 week and 3 days since the last post on this forum or is there something wrong with the software again?

Hi Esme, There seems to be some issues from time to time and I think the visible effect of these issues to us users SUGGEST that there is little or no activity, whereby in reality there is activity but it is not 'showing' itself. (if that makes sense !) I assume things become visible once some sort of software tweak kicks in? Having said that, one can get labelled as negative if one raises it as an issue, so be careful ! S