FREE FAIRFX CARD FOR ALL READERS! CLICK BELOW TO GET ONE!
In this latest series of articles, we are going to detail how you can miss out on the optional charges and
what you need to be best prepared for it. As you’ll see, all the optional charges can be missed out on
if you are prepared to do a little homework.
1) Card charges
If there is one thing you could choose to miss out on, it would be the card charge. Simply put, it is an added expense that makes no difference to your journey. If you purchase checked baggage, fast boarding or insurance, there are tangible advantages to be had. But not so with the card charges.
At a potential £5 per person, per sector, this can add up very quickly and often, the efforts needed to sidestep this quickly pay for themselves. If you fly 1o times a year, you would be overpaying by as much as £100 by not using the correct card. It should be added that this £100 is probably more than or equal to your flight costs if you are savvy.|
The ‘FREE’ payment card for Ryanair used to be Visa Electron but as of this year, it has changed to a PRE-PAID Mastercard. This is not the same as the regular Mastercard you already have; pre-paid ones carry no credit limit and are just that: pre-paid. If you see the link above, you’ll already see who we recommend: FairFX – and you can get a free card (usually £9.95) when you purchase one with top up.
I’ll recommend the following points:
- Get a pre-paid card purely for the purpose of paying for flights. It usually isn’t worthwhile to use this for other spending means because of the hassle of topping up regularly.
- Once you have it, keep it in a safe place, so you don’t lose it. Unlike normal cards, there are administration fees required to get a new one, which could exceed your balance.
- Try to anticipate your flight demands and keep an balance accordingly. If you’re only going to use it for free, or £1 flights, you won’t need as much, but it’s always best to have a buffer in case.
- That said, do not load too much onto the card. Nothing is concrete, and there is nothing to say that next year, another card might be free.
What are the downsides? I wouldn’t worry about this too much. Clearly, there are many cards on the market for you to choose from, and you may feel an affinity to another brand (Entropay, for instance). But don’t get sucked in to paying application, or monthly fees and you should be fine.
The card providers make their money by these means, or by charging you a transaction fee (ie. 1.5%) or when different currencies are involved, making you take their exchange rate (probably a couple of percent worse). However, compared to paying a card charge, this really is small change.
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