Aer Lingus’ Stealth Charges

I’m heading over to Paris in a couple of weeks to attend the ICANN meeting.

While I may have booked my hotel room ages ago I still haven’t organised my flights. Flying from Dublin to Paris shouldn’t be hard to organise as so many of the airlines serve the route.

So earlier today I decided to look into my options.

Air France’s rates seem ok, but I thought I’d check both Aer Lingus and British Airways as well. I’m not interested in Ryanair, as I don’t really fancy a trek from Beauvais, while I know that getting from Charles de Gaulle is quite easy.

That an airline would add fuel surcharges and possibly baggage handling charges is one thing, but that the “national” carrier would have the gall to charge a 6 euro credit card handling fee is nuts!

For all bookings except those originating in the USA, there is a handling fee charged. Charges as follows:

€6 per person Credit Card handling fee.

€2 per person Debit Card handling fee

With the volume of transactions that a company like Aer Lingus is processing I would suspect that their cost per transaction at the merchant level is negligible. I don’t know who they use to manage their payment gateway, but whether it’s inhouse or outsourced there is no way that it could possibly cost 6 euro. And a 2 euro debit card fee is just as insane, as they actually cost less to process.

I already mentioned their inane issues with browser language detection issues (everyone is in the US according to them!)

I’d love to know how people would react if we started chucking on CC handling fees.. Actually, I wouldn’t want to know. The very idea of it makes me feel queasy