The Office of Fair Trading has outlawed the rip-off fees on plastic cards. Companies have been served notices by the OFT and have been asked to change these misleading practices in credit card and debit card fees. But that will not help in changing things overnight as companies will keep dragging their feet for some time in order to ensure that they earn enough profits before they are made to comply with the rules.

As of now, the OFT is also trying to push for fresh laws to stop companies from charging customers who use debit cards to purchase goods and services. However, as we have seen in the past, any new legislation will take a lifetime before it reaches the statute books and that too only after the OFT’s proposal gains support in parliament.

The announcement made by the OFT has helped in bringing about some cheer for consumers who have been ripped off with extra fees. But that does not mean that we will see victory very soon. Companies will still continue to add these extra surcharges on these plastic cards in the short term and in the long term they will find other innovative ways to squeeze out money from the customers.

For instance, Ryanair has been highlighted as one of the companies that have the most expensive surcharges. But the response that the company gave was that they don’t impose any such fees. In fact, they state that Ryanair’s fees are optional and it includes administration fees which passengers can easily avoid.

But, anyone who does their booking through the airline would be charged £6 per flight, per person, if they pay on their debit cards. So, a family of four would be paying an extra £48 on every booking. However, Ryanair is not the only airline who does this. Others like Easyjet also charge £8 on each booking.

Supercomplaint Which? was supposed to put a stop to these extra surcharges. Which? had calculated the cost of using a debit card and it was found that the actual cost was only around 20p. So, there was no way that companies could justify charging customers several pounds on each transaction.

But Ryanair states that passengers could avoid paying the extra surcharges by simply using their MasterCard prepaid card. But how many people really have those cards? Can anyone own this card merely to avoid paying Ryanair’s extra charges?

It only goes to show one thing – the government should act tough on these companies and put an end to this.

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