£9.99 fare, Sir? Certainly, that will be £46.30, please [Archive]

The SSK

18th Jul 2006, 11:03

In a move announced today, the EU are cracking down on the advertising of rock-bottom airfares then loading them with taxes, charges and fees.
Is there *anything* that can be said in favour of this practice?

nzmarty

18th Jul 2006, 11:12

airnz was recently growled for this practice, and now advertises all included prices, however i have today bought a ticket to europe, and the e-ticket shows as $1999, plus taxes and levies of $415.

RevMan2

18th Jul 2006, 13:00

There's a lot to be said against regulating it away.
Wrapping the entire populace of the European Union in cottonwool, for example.
What's the difference between
advertising a low fare and publishing government/airport charges/fees/taxes on a website
and
offering a trade-in rebate of "Up to €5000" and then having to read through the small print to find that you only qualify for 54c?
Life's complicated. Get used to it

StarWinder

18th Jul 2006, 13:36

I for one do not agree that "taxes, etc." should amount to more than the basic amount.

The other day, I requested air fares for DXB-KHI on various carriers. EK had (not surprisingly) the most expensive fare, but to my astonishment, QR offered the lowest at only Dhs 450. However, they also levied the highest "taxes" (or whatever goes under that heading in UAE) at a whopping Dhs 540:yuk: , making them the most expensive choice.

Clearly, nobody in their right mind would expect or accept the tax component to be higher than the principal amount.

woolyalan

18th Jul 2006, 15:09

Taxes are unavoidable, and they change depending on the carrier, amongst others it may depend on which handler the company use (handling charges), the airport they fly to (landing fees), if the aircraft has an entertainment system which will warrent a fuel surcharge as the plane will be heavier.

A flight with a budget carrier may originaly cost 99p, in which case it would be silly not to expect the taxes to be less than this.

On the other hand, there is the "Administration Fee" or something like it which seems to me like a profit booster :eek:

I think advertising prices without taxes is fine, providing it is clear that taxes will be added before you commit yourself.

WoolyAlan

RevMan2

18th Jul 2006, 15:30

Taxes are unavoidable, ....... amongst others it may depend on which handler the company use (handling charges), the airport they fly to (landing fees), if the aircraft has an entertainment system which will warrent a fuel surcharge as the plane will be heavier.
WoolyAlan
Wrong. Landing fees, handling agent charges, fuel surcharges etc are factored into the cost of the ticket. They're the cost of doing business.

We're talking about airport taxes (if not directly debited to the passenger on departure), security charges and suchlike levied by airports and government bodies.

And I still maintain that if the information is provided at POS, the European Commission should use its time and resources for more important things.

Like drafting regulations for banana curvature or similar

James 1077

18th Jul 2006, 15:38

The price you see should be the price you have to pay. Any non-compulsory fees etc (eg paying by credit card) obviously shouldn't be put into the overall fee unless the airline gives you no choice other than to pay those fees.

I have no problem with airlines giving me a full breakdown of how the fare is made up when I come to pay it but when I search for the cheapest flight I want to be able to see it without having to go through the whole booking process.

When I buy petrol I don't see the price as being 20p per litre and then when I go to the till it magically becomes 96p per litre. When I buy clothes I don't see a £10 t-shirt becoming £11.75 at the till so why should it be any different with flights?

10secondsurvey

18th Jul 2006, 15:52

The SSK

18th Jul 2006, 15:57

If you go, for example, to the BMI website, you will see on the homepage an electronic billboard offering flights to Amsterdam, Dublin, etc from £25 *including fees and charges*
If you go into the booking engine, you will see these flights listed, from £7 *excluding fees and charges*. It's only when you have selected the flights will it tell you how much you owe.
If they can advertise net fares on their home page, why on earth can't they put net fares into the booking engine?

L'aviateur

18th Jul 2006, 18:13

Hence if i'm booking flights for myself I usually do my search via opodo or expedia for instance to find the actual total price, then goto the airline websites afterwards.

PAXboy

18th Jul 2006, 20:50

I am fascinated by the way in which credit card surcharges can be such a major part of the fee. I don't wish to blame FR for everything but it was probably them that notched the surcharge so high and the others, seeing that FR got away with it, then followed. Of course, FR were just supplementing their artificially low head-line price. Other carries had no such excuse!

Interestingly, on a trip just booked with BA (Berlin £145 all up) I was charged £3 for using a credit card - even though it was the BA AmEx card :hmm: . However, when I booked the airport parking with APH - and used the same card - they only made a surcharge of .28p! Now, I know that these charges are often a percentage of the total (as that is how the card company bill the merchant) but the BA one was a fixed price.

SXB

18th Jul 2006, 21:16

Paxboy
That's an interesting point about credit card charges, I've been charged by a small number of airlines for using my card to pay for flights and I wouldn't have any objection to this if I had a choice of another payment method where I wasn't charged, if there isn't any choice then the credit card surchage is another hidden fee which should be included in the advertised price.

With the likes of FR and BA is there still a charge if you use a UK based debit card rather than a credit card ? I'm using a French based card but it's a debit card and not a credit card and FR still make a charge. On my statement FR payments seem to be made in Ireland so I imagine they treat debit card holders the same whether in UK, France or where ever....

Airlines want people to book via the net rather than calling them so it seems a bit rich to levy such a charge....

Bangkokeasy

19th Jul 2006, 05:53

I initially reacted to this story thinking, "what the hell difference will it make?". But, then after thinking a bit more, there may be a need to regulate the way these fares are quoted. Recent experience booking two flights with FR, illustrated the fact that extra charges do creep in during the booking procedure, of which I felt I received inadequate warning.

I am not complaining that the end result is too high, but I would really like it to be clear before entering the procedure, what exactly I am expected to pay. I don't believe the current system operated by locos does that.

Before BA and other "premium" carriers crow too loudly about this, they should note that it is likely this will actually increase the pressure on them to do something about their fare structures themselves.

Flying_Frisbee

19th Jul 2006, 06:56

Paxboy
Airlines want people to book via the net rather than calling them so it seems a bit rich to levy such a charge....
I don't know if other lo-co's do this, but FR are especially giulty of using this as a "stealth" profit. I can understand companies passing credit card fees onto the customer, but I'd like to know how FR justify charging a credit card fee for EACH passenger sector in the booking. Presumably the credit card company charges 1 fee for the transaction, so why not FR?

patdavies

19th Jul 2006, 07:32

CARR30

19th Jul 2006, 20:49

Surely no one believes that the price that is displayed at the end of a web air- fare booking session is somehow more deceitful than the shock of the take it, or leave it random rail fare quoted at the local station.
I think the EU should leave off hounding the airlines for a while and sort out the UK rail network's fares and travelling conditions.

potkettleblack

20th Jul 2006, 10:10

I think one of the main issues that the EU has with the airlines is the fact that you seem to get through to the final stages of booking before you actually findout how much it is going to cost you. Some people will click and accept regardless as they might have spent 5-10 minutes already and not wish to start over again on another carriers website. Having the full price up front at the first search page on the website would make it much more transparent.

As an aside my "favourite charge" is the online booking fee that Aer Lingus add on for you taking the time to go online and saving them the cost of paying a travel agent employing or reservations clerk to take your booking. Nice if you can get it! Of course this gets added on pretty late in the booking process.

PAXboy

20th Jul 2006, 12:25

The supermarkets are doing the same. "Use our self-service checkouts and yourself save time" translated as "Use our self-service checkouts and save us lots of money". :hmm:

jet2impress

24th Jul 2006, 12:10

James I couldn't agree with you more. The sooner this tosh is regulated out the better. Sure, some in the industry will throw their toys out the pram, but I really believe new legislation is urgently needed to address the current regulatory imbalance which favours the airlines in almost all scenarios.
The like of ryanair and Easy regularly shout about how cheap they are, so what do they have to hide? let's get the WHOLE price upfront, and then we'll see how cheap they are (or not).

It will take some sort of legislation for airlines to change. Easy will not change to show gross fares in advertising unless Ryan do.

If you are driving down the street and you see an Easy ad for a flight for £43.30 inc tax next to a Ryan ad for £9.99 ex tax to the same destination, the Ryanair add will be a little more eye catching.

jayteeto

24th Jul 2006, 12:32

Shopping in the USA and many other countries is not as straightforward as in the UK. You have to add taxes at the till. Is this not the same?

10secondsurvey

24th Jul 2006, 14:08

jayteeto,

It's not really the same. When buying goods in USA, the tax is a fraction of the cost of the item. With the airlines, we are talking taxes and charges which total many time more than the actual advertised cost of the flight. The difficulty is that in order to compare fares on different airline websites, you often have to go right through the full booking process to get any idea of what the fare actually is, making fare comparisons difficult.

In addition, it is often hard to identify what all the charges are for, and in some cases (Ryanair) the credit card charges are completely unjustified (they charge a fee per sector per person, and not per booking - which is what the banks charge them).

In my local supermarket, i don't pick up cornflakes priced at 20 pence, and then get told at the checkout, they actually cost three pounds fifty pence, plus tax, plus some other made-up charges.

It is the scale of add-ons that is the problem, the fare you see bears absolutely no relation to what you pay.

bear11

24th Jul 2006, 17:12

something that has puzzled me - I know banks charge vendors for the use of credit cards, but in the not-so-distant past if a vendor charged you "extra" to cover the cost of using the card and you reported it to Mastercard/Visa/whoever, the vendor was sanctioned by the credit card company (mainly the threat to take the facility away) as they weren't supposed to charge the extra to the consumer. The logic being that credit card payments were a facility that was very useful to the vendor apart from the consumer (who pay their own fees), so the vendor should pay for such a service.

Nowadays, of course, clever people in Ryanair charge the fee (or in excess of it) to the consumer, who rationalises that given there is a charge for using it, it's fair enough to be asked to pay it to the vendor! And other vendors are climbing on the gravy train. So, maybe you're getting annoyed with the wrong company - worse, it strikes me that now cc companies see that consumers will pay the fee, then they could get away with charging even more, for example? So much for our "Switched on" consumers these days!

PAXboy

24th Jul 2006, 22:35

bear11 you are correct about how the CC companies used to respond to the surcharging of customers. Further, the practice of hotels when you arrive to swipe your card for a pre-authorisation check? That was officially not allowed but now is, because the hotels said that, if they could not do so - then they would refuse the card. I dare say that there are other aspects of the Ts &Cs that have changed in the pat decade.

The SSK

25th Jul 2006, 09:50

KLM announced yesterday they are introducing a charge of €7.50 per passenger on their lowest fares for using credit cards.

Flying_Frisbee

25th Jul 2006, 10:03

KLM announced yesterday they are introducing a charge of €7.50 per passenger on their lowest fares for using credit cards.

Why not? Ryanair get away with it.
I'd like to hear their justification for charging a credit card fee, not per transaction but per passenger.

smala01

28th Jul 2006, 12:19

I travel quite a bit so Im always shopping around for airfares.

I find having the tax component excluded from the advertised price makes it near on impossible to compare like for like fares.

The price you see advertised should be be the price you pay!!

el @

28th Jul 2006, 12:34

The latest trend on travel websites (skyscanner, edreams, even the very airlines) is to have all taxes included on the very first screen BUT the booking / reservation / handling fee, how do they want to call it. That is usually around 10 euro.

PAXboy

28th Jul 2006, 14:06

smala01... makes it near on impossible to compare like for like fares.Ahh, I think that you now understand how the system works. :}

When I am copaning, I take the booking all the way to the payment screen which does not usually include the credit card surcharge but will state what it will be, then I drop out and check the next carrier. It takes a bit longer but remember, ten years ago you could not do this. You had to rely wupon a travel agent to do the footwork and you did not know what benefits there were in it for them to offer you a particular fare. So, over all, the current system is brilliant.