The taxman says three and a half million people are due a refund, but two million will have to fork out for underpaid tax.
Airlines to end surprise surcharges
Twelve airlines - including easyJet and Ryanair - will no longer spring last-minute fees on customers paying by debit card, the consumer watchdog has revealed.
Twelve airlines have agreed to change their practice of springing last-minute fees on debit card payments
Twelve airlines - including easyJet and Ryanair - will no longer spring last-minute fees on customers paying by debit card, the consumer watchdog has revealed.
The carriers have agreed to include debit card surcharges in the headline ticket price rather than surprise consumers at the end of the booking process, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) said.
The airlines also agreed to make surcharges for credit cards more transparent so these fees will be clearer and easier to find during the booking process, the OFT added.
Aer Lingus, BMI Baby, Eastern Airways, easyJet, Flybe, German Wings, Jet2, Lufthansa, Ryanair, Thomas Cook, Thomson (TUI) and Wizz Air were subject to an OFT consumer law investigation and have agreed to change their practices.
Clive Maxwell, the OFT's chief executive, said: "It is important that the cost presented when they search for a flight is realistic and that they are not surprised by extra charges."
The Government has also announced plans to bring forward legislation to ban excessive debit and credit card surcharges, which cost consumers £300 million a year from the airline sector.
The OFT said people should not have to incur surcharges to use a debit card online as they are the "online equivalent of cash" which means that headline prices should be the price people can pay. However, the OFT said traders may still impose surcharges for credit cards, which can be more costly to process.
Mr Maxwell continued: "We made it clear from the start that we would use all of our enforcement powers, including court action if necessary, but are pleased to have reached agreement with the airlines before court proceedings were required."
Which? chief executive Peter Vicary-Smith said: "Over 50,000 people supported our campaign to end rip-off surcharges so it's good news that debit card surcharges will be displayed in the headline price of flights - as long as the airlines don't use this as an excuse to push up their prices.
"It's also important that credit card charges are clearly displayed throughout the booking process and the OFT should make sure that all companies are taking these steps, not just airlines. We're pleased that the Government has said they are sticking to their original timetable to ban excessive card surcharges by the end of the year."
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57Comments
05/07/2012 10:19
05/07/2012 14:04
You try to get a flight now like my wife did to Belfast. While the flight was cheap when booking it but while going through she had to pay for each seat on the plane and then you had to pay for having a suitcase, then other hidden charges had to be added. So the cheap flight ended up being almost double what they said it cost. Bloody rip off, these airlines. It's about time they did something and they shouldn't stop at charging for cards, it's not like you could even say, you'll sit on the floor and not pay for a seat. Then they wonder why passenger numbers have dropped, people are sick of being ripped off for everything in this county.
05/07/2012 12:33
Great news, Now what about theatre and event tickets where they charge for paying them.
If I went into the greengrocers and bought some carrots for £1-00 I would be outraged if the Green grocer then added on 5% payment charge. This practice of hidden fees needs knocking on the head in all areas.
05/07/2012 10:26
05/07/2012 13:40
05/07/2012 10:43
And isn't it about time that ALL factions of the petroleum selling circus, including HM Treasury, stopped pricing their products/tax-take in decimal points of a penny. For heavens sake, the decimal half penny was demonetised in December 1984.
One would wish that the aforementioned racketeers would round their prices/take DOWN to end this anomalous scenario but we know that isn't going to happen. Does anyone ever take note of the decimal point value on advertised prices? One suspects that sensible penny-wise people round the figure UP to the next whole sequential number to arrive at the correct price. It's corporate trickery, sleight of hand, ocular deception. In effect, subliminal messaging. And that is illegal.
05/07/2012 10:10
I believe that this should have been done along time ago. As our options to book flights online is by credit or debit card as cheques are a thing of the past. As consumers we shouldn't be absorbing exuberant costs to do so. Lets face it most of the population carry little cash around and pay by card for most things now.
05/07/2012 10:32
I used to have to do a lot of travel by air and found that both EasyJet and Ryanair were actually a complete rip-off.
In one case I found the scheduled carrier that was eventually used was actually over £100 cheaper than EasyJet with better timings and connections.
In many other cases any intial difference was outweighed by the fact that the scheduled carrier wasn't going to hit me for expensive 'extras' - what someone like BA quoted me for the tickets on their website was the actual cost of travel whereas the cheapos (particularly with Ryanair) seem to always quote an initially low fare then try and load it up with extras.
The other nasty little problem is that budget flights often go into secondary airports, sometimes miles from the advertised destination. Two colleagues of mine got caught like this and found it was a 50euro taxi ride to the actual destination.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Regulations governing self-styled budget airlines need to be tightened up and in particular they need to be forced to re-structure their booking process to tell passengers exactly how much the flights are going to cost at the time of booking with last-minute additions at the gate banned.
05/07/2012 11:25
05/07/2012 11:17
05/07/2012 11:47
05/07/2012 11:37
05/07/2012 10:36
05/07/2012 15:39
05/07/2012 15:08
05/07/2012 11:41
05/07/2012 15:57
Last week we went to benidorm with ryan air ,one bag in the hold of 15kg £52! also made a mess of the booking I was not aware that the return flight was a separate booking although I had paid for a return flight when I printed the itinerary outbound tickets only were printed I assumed the tare off bit was returned for the return flight! ryan air HELP desk at the airport wanted £60 to print tickets this was after they said they were unable to do this, A big thank you to east mids airport help desk tickets printed £10,also ryan air admin charge £19! The first and the last time we fly with this shower of ***** .
05/07/2012 15:30
05/07/2012 12:25
Hmmm! will probably put baggage charges up again to cover the so called "costs" recently tried to book a flight with "Sleazy Jet" and they wanted £60 extra for a 20kg suitcase! outrageous! I actually booked with British airways, turned out to be cheaper, with 23kg bag included. (flight was to Rome), so they will get us some other way........Rest assured!
05/07/2012 11:19
I would like to know if any profit is made from the transaction charges. I can accept a charge for administration but it should be the actual charge that it costs the company involved. If not, then it is a hidden way to make additional profits and that should be against the law!
Why do different companies make different card charges. It's the same damn card after all!
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