easyJet reservation fee

My husband and I have used easyJet many times over the past six or eight years and have been very satisfied with their service, prices and on-time performance. However, this spring I have become more and more frustrated with their online reservation system.

They now have a 3-level charge card system. They have all the possible cards listed, i.e., Visa credit, Visa debit, MasterCard credit, MasterCard debit and one called Visa Electron. The credit cards are charged an extra £4.99 (about $9.45) for every reservation, whereas the Visa debit card transactions are charged only £1.99 and the Visa Electron, nothing extra.

I have always used my Visa debit card with no problem, but now their program proceeds through the whole process down to card approval and then refuses to recognize my debit card as a debit card. The same thing happens when I switch to my husband’s Visa debit card. My only recourse is to pay an extra $10 for every reservation I make, which I have so far refused to do.

I e-mailed easyJet’s customer service in May asking them to correct the program and received an automatic reply saying they would answer in 20 days. I have had no further communication from them.

I might add that I was making these reservations for September, so it is not as if I were nearing a 2-week deadline for last-minute fare increases.

Have any other ITN readers encountered this problem in making easyJet reservations? What recourse do I have? Their reservations must be made online.

CHARLOTTE SPRAWLS
Montreat, NC

ITN sent a copy of the above letter to easyJet Airline Co., Ltd. (easyLand, London Luton Airport, Bedfordshire, LU2 9LS, U.K.), and received no reply. In a follow-up, Charlotte wrote, “I have had no more correspondence from easyJet except their newsletter. . . I finally had to go ahead and pay the extra £5 on several bookings (London-Venice, London-Edinburgh and London-Luton), since the fares were steadily rising.”