Key Post Methods to avoid/minimise Credit Card charges with Ryanair and Aer Lingus

moonman said:
thanks undo for that info unfortunately the 150 limit would not be of any use to me .when booking with ryanairas i normally book for 4 people
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Yes, the €150 limit is annoying. But when booking for more than one person, what prevents you from making it four individual bookings?
 
undo if one is looking for bargain priced seats , sometimes ryanair have notifications saying last 2 seats at this price , then there can be a dramatic price rise. on other occasions they can change from no tax to full blast . in that event the price difference can make them the same price as aer lingus. so my attitude when im booking is to book all tickets together at the price quoted.
 
If it says "one seat at this price," I would have thought the website would sell you one seat at the low price and three at a higher one, even if you booked them together. Interesting to hear that by booking for several people together, you can convince the website to give you the lower price for them all.
 
I don't think it works that way. In my experience, you pay the highest price for all the tickets. I've certainly saved money in the past by splitting my booking.
 
Homer said:
I don't think it works that way. In my experience, you pay the highest price for all the tickets. I've certainly saved money in the past by splitting my booking.
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In which case the €150 limitation of the Dublin City Gift Card again is no problem - you can get a separate one for each passenger.
 
last sept i booked 4 seats for sept , 6 seats for oct and 4 seats for jan at a total price of 1250 approx. i would have needed 9 dublin city cards , and i would have had excess on all cards.with my moneybookers acct i just transfer money to the card from my bank acct and book im afraid its not for me
 
Heads up to anyone trying to avoid Aer Lingus' handling fee by using Entropay.

I found yesterday, after hours of trying to understand why, that basically Entropay Virtual Visa cards, denominated in GBP, are no longer recognised by Aer Lingus as Visa Electron cards.

I tried two Entropay Virtual Visa card numbers (after having created a second card number) to see if the issue was to do with the provisioning of the first card number. Still the same message on the Aer Lingus website "Your card number cannot be processed online. If you are sure your details have been entered in correctly, please contact your card company."

I called Aer Lingus, as I wondered whether their website was playing up. They assured me it wasn't.

I contacted Entropay support, they just said "EntroPay Virtual Cards are categorized, and branded by VISA as the VISA Classic Debit." and told me to select Visa instead of Visa Electron. I replied to Entropay saying that there are many websites and forums that confirm that Entropay Virtual Visa cards that are denominated in GBP are categorised as Visa Electron and not Visa Debit, and that the starting of my card number is 4101 and not 4313. Entropay replied "Please note that it depends on the merchant's payment processor whether it will accept our cards as VISA electron cards. Please note that we have no control over this." Fair enough.

In the end I accepted defeat and transferred more money to my Entropay account, so that I could pay Aer Lingus' €6 per person "handling fee" (and there were 7 of us travelling!). Since I also had to pay Entropay's 4.95% topping up fee, this whole event cost me more than if I had just paid for the flights using my credit card.
 
So what is the best card to get now in order to avoid paying the administration fee with Ryanair, is it a prepaid master card??
 
cashier said:
So what is the best card to get now in order to avoid paying the administration fee with Ryanair, is it a prepaid master card??
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Yes. Neteller is good. Only the plastic card works though, not the virtual one. Order one now if you don't yet have one. Costs you €4 to buy the card though. But once you have it, no fees to load (if loading from debit card or bank account) and no fees to spend.
 
Where can I order one? I use Ryan air a lot commuting from London on a regular basis and I could do with the savings by having one of these cards
 
cashier said:
Where can I order one? I use Ryan air a lot commuting from London on a regular basis and I could do with the savings by having one of these cards
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Mind PMing me your email address and I'll send you a Refer-a-Friend link? We both get a bit of a bonus then, I think.
 
qwerta369 said:
Heads up to anyone trying to avoid Aer Lingus' handling fee by using Entropay.

I found yesterday, after hours of trying to understand why, that basically Entropay Virtual Visa cards, denominated in GBP, are no longer recognised by Aer Lingus as Visa Electron cards.
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I do not think this ever worked for Aer Lingus. They have a flat charge irrespective of which card you use.
 
soy said:
I do not think this ever worked for Aer Lingus. They have a flat charge irrespective of which card you use.
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Aer Lingus still offers zero handling fee for Visa Electron payments. See link. And the Entropay GBP "trick" used to work with Aer Lingus.
 
Obtained a pre-pay mastercard from moneybookers.com, annual charge of €10 and can top up online free via bank transfer or laser card. Last month was able to book flights with ryanair and avoid credit card charge.
 
Kerry Gooner said:
Obtained a pre-pay mastercard from moneybookers.com, annual charge of €10 and can top up online free via bank transfer or laser card. Last month was able to book flights with ryanair and avoid credit card charge.
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I think the Neteller card trumps that, as it's €4 one-off for the card rather than €10 annually.
 
undo said:
If it says "one seat at this price," I would have thought the website would sell you one seat at the low price and three at a higher one, even if you booked them together. Interesting to hear that by booking for several people together, you can convince the website to give you the lower price for them all.
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In my expereince It does not work this way. You have to take the lower priced seat off the system first. If there are only 2 left at the lower price, it does not knock the next priced seats down.
I booked five flights to Carcasonne, 3 at 29.99 and 2 at 39.99, Separate bookings. Had I booked all 5 together, it was charging me 39.99 for all 5.
Two separate bookings had to be done to avail of the low priced seats. I have done this 3 or 4 times now, and its the same very time. In fact the first time it happened, I rang Ryanair to see what was going on and she explained it all to me, she could see on her system two seats left at the low price, but when you book more than that, it skips past them and books the next available block you require. You can then link the reservations on their system, which means kids etc wont be separated.
 
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