Today I’ve booked a flight on Ryanair’s website using my Revolut virtual card (€ account). The price listed on the website was around 289€ but I was charged 308€ on my Revolut card.
I’ve been looking at Ryanair’s and Revolut’s sites but I can’t figure out where this extra cost came from.
Do any of you have any idea about the existence of extra fees? Any similar situations here?
Same thing happened to me when I booked a hotel recently. The hotel showed the price in PLN but then charged my card in GBP with their own ~6% markup PLN » GBP exchange rate. They or their bank detect the card is not local and charge the currency of the card issuer without asking.
I thought about that however I did it through booking.com and they write on the terms and conditions that this exact situation might happen. I’m not sure how much recourse I have.
On RyanAir after you type your card number it changes it automatically to GBP. This is their trick to earn more money. But you still have option to pay i.e. in EUR. See the information text below table with your details? If you click on that you will be able to tick option to charge you in first currency. In the past there was a button allowing you to choose if ryanair gives you their exchange or to use yours card provider exchange. But now the is no button but its hidden in that text so less people can find it. This is done on purpose by ryanair to force people to use their exchange. Whats even funnier - that seems to be just a normal not expandable text, but when you click it new menu shows up. This way I saved £9 last time when was buying tickets from ryanair.
It would prevent disingenuous merchants from converting non-GBP amounts to GBP based on the card’s country of issue. But Revolut don’t appear to have done anything to implement it.