I was billed an extra £34... for paying in euros by error
VEE Pitchley felt she had been ‘mugged’ when she purchased two flights to Warsaw in Poland for her tennis player son Tom, 17, and a companion with low-cost airline Wizz Air last month.
She was invoiced £265 – confirmed in an email – which she paid with her debit card. But when Vee checked her bank statement, she found her account had been debited by £299.
Contacting the customer helpline – costing £1.10 a minute – Vee was told she had paid the bill in euros and therefore incurred conversion fees.
Vee, a London-based communications executive, says: ‘They told me there was nothing I could do. But when you are booking what you think is a cheap flight you feel cheated.’
When Wizz Air investigated, it found Vee had accidentally pressed the wrong button on the payment page and chosen euros.
The help desk told her the extra cost was spelt out in its terms and conditions. But the detail was buried away.
Even if it was a slip of the finger that had caused the error, Vee says the extra £34 fee was excessive. Wizz says this total included charges made by Vee’s bank.
Like other airlines, Wizz sets its own exchange rate using a form of dynamic currency conversion – where the charge to the customer is usually higher than on the open market.
James Hickman of currency specialist FairFX, says: ‘Banks make a charge of about 2.75 per cent per transaction plus a fixed fee of a couple of pounds.’
In Vee’s case this would probably account for about £10 of the extra charge.
Jane Wallace, co-founder of Skinted Minted Mum, warns travellers to always check bank or credit card statements. Most airlines have clauses allowing them to charge extra after a ticket has been issued. But some give themselves greater leeway.
Wallace has found several airlines with small print catches. For example, Swiss states it is ‘entitled to retroactively charge (an) optional fee’ for currency conversion.
Monarch says if you use a card of a different currency to that quoted, it will charge the Reuters wholesale exchange rate ‘plus an average margin of 7 per cent’.
Wallace says: ‘When a restaurant bill includes a dessert you never ordered, you are justified in asking for it to be taken off. Airline customers getting charged high fees for foreign exchange should do the same.’
Wizz Air has agreed to refund Vee the charge ‘as a gesture of goodwill’.