I have been organising my summer holiday.
The accommodation has been booked directly with the hotel - I got a great deal - and I have paid €459 with no credit card fee. I do have to pay a exchange fee as I paid in Euros but that is minimal compared to the savings I have made on the hotel.
I have now booked the flight, again paying on my Visa credit card, and have been charged £5.85 on a booking of £200.79, this is charge of 2.9%.
I have also booked my transfer from airport to resort, again paid on my card and again been charged a fee by the retailer, this time £3 on a £20.98 booking (I didn't get my promised 12% discount, but that is a separate issue), this is more than 14%!
According to Visa, the charge to the retailer's bank for using a credit card is 1.10%, which works out at £2.21 and 23p, so I have been overcharged by £6.41 which, ok, in the scheme of things, is not horrendous but it is the principal.
Why are we even paying the charges in the first place? I can understand small independent stores charging if a customer is paying under a certain amount, but for major retailers surely this should be accepted as their responsibility to pay, and they certainly should not be making an additional profit from it.
Have you been charged over the odds for paying by card?
Eyebrows have been threaded, clothes bought, returned and more bought, euros have been collected. Toiletries purchased and the case is packed. I have also attempted to wax legs and armpits, but that is a whole other post.
The case feels lighter and it is certainly more neatly packed than it was for Great Yarmouth, I haven't even had to open the extension on it and yet I have just weighed it and it is 6kg heavier than it usually is for a week in Spain. I can only put it down to my ACCA books weighing more but taking up less space, but I have no idea why it feels lighter when I pick it up.
I have 20 kg of hold luggage included in my ticket with Monarch airlines, I bought an Essentials pack when I booked the tickets so the cost of the hold luggage was included as was the little bit of extra allowance. However I have since discovered that had I not booked my flight so early I would qualify for a further 3kg of allowance as they have increased the allowances for flights booked on or after the 12th April 2013.
Surely all luggage on the flight should have this allowance, why should someone who booked on the 11th April be entitled to less than someone who booked the same flight and essentials pack the next day?
I am just on the 20kg limit (according to my scales) so do I take a few bits out or do I leave it and hope that that my scales are wrong?
