An end to excessive card charges
The cost of booking flights, tickets and hotel rooms may be set to fall as the Government ban on excessive card surcharges comes into effect.
Retailers and businesses have been banned from imposing hefty charges for debit and credit card payments.
Previously many people were getting to the end of the booking process – for a flight, concert ticket or holiday, for example – then discovering at the last minute there was a large surcharge for paying by debit or credit card.
The ban wasn’t due to become law until mid-2014, but the Government decided to bring the new law into force in the UK from this April. It says the new rules should put an end to unscrupulous practices by some businesses.
The campaign
Consumer groups say consumers have been paying extortionate surcharges for too long.
In March 2011, Which? issued a super complaint to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), asking it to investigate the issue.
The OFT upheld the complaint, agreeing that excessive surcharges caused consumers harm, demonstrated a lack of transparency and needed to be addressed. It also said that the extra fees made it difficult for consumers to compare prices between different companies as charges were typically only revealed at the end of a transaction.
It introduced enforcement measures under the Consumer Protection Regulations so it could take action against companies who are not transparent about their surcharges for paying by card.
Research from Which? in 2011 found only one in ten felt that surcharges were fair, while 90% said the Government should take action on excessive surcharges.
The worst offenders
Traditionally the travel sector, and in particular low-cost airlines, were found to be among the worst offenders with excessive card fees. Passengers incurred up to £350 million in surcharges for booking flights during 2010.
Some charged a fee per passenger, per leg of the journey – despite the fact that they only had to process one transaction.
Cinemas and companies selling concert tickets were guilty of adding on excessive fees too, while local authorities and the DVLA also levied the surcharges.
The new rules
Under the ban, companies will be expected to prove that any card surcharges are representative of the cost to the business.
There should also be fewer cases of consumers getting to the end of an online payment transaction then finding there’s an expensive extra cost to pay.
“Micro” businesses and business start-ups will be exempt from the regulations until June 2014, when the directive comes into force. This will allow them more time to prepare themselves for the ban.
What’s excessive?
Retailers have been quick to point out that card payments do involve an extra cost as it’s quite a complex process.
When a customer uses a card to pay for a product or service the retailer or business takes the card details and gives them to an "acquirer". The acquirer is the bank which processes the payment on the retailer's behalf and will charge a fee for its services.
The details are then passed on to the customer's bank and the payment passed back to the retailer. This operation is overseen by the card scheme, such as Visa, Mastercard or Maestro.
But although there’s a cost involved in the process, it’s relatively low.
According to Which? charges for paying by debit card should be around a maximum of 20p (and will be free in many cases) while credit card charges should be a maximum of 2% of the transaction amount.
Also deemed as excessive are firms that charge more than one surcharge per transaction. For example, if you buy flights and you’re charged a surcharge for each ticket or each leg of the journey.
Consumers who have found excessive surcharges since 6 April are being encouraged to report the company concerned to Trading Standards.
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