We may think the cheapest travel insurance will cover us for every eventuality but the reality is that all those hundreds of different policies are different and they have different requirements of what merits a payout and how much they will pay in compensation. When you take out a policy at half the price it is more than possible that you will get around half the cover, though not always.

Free bonuses of travel insurance with some bank accounts sound attractive but if you look into the detail it is likely you will get a basic policy with limitations on cover for valuable items you take with you on your trip. This could include mobile phones, computers and cameras as well as jewelry and even expensive designer handbags.

Deciding what might be an act of god and whether you would or would not be covered is another area of confusion but most of us would expect to be covered whatever happens and that is why we take out travel insurance.

Many of us view the prospect of studying the small print in any contract with horror but the events following the disruption caused by the ash cloud have shown that we all need to be more careful to check that a contract does match our needs.

Related posts:

1. Take Care If You Want To Save Money Doing DIY Home Improvements The news that house prices rose at their highest rate...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Now I may be old fashioned but what they are actually doing is to penalise customers who want to take hold baggage? If they were incentivising they would be reducing the cost for those who travel light, wouldn’t they?

It should come as no surprise. Ryanair seems to care only about making money and if they could ship people in cattle trucks I expect they would be glad to reduce the price. There are, apparently, serious plans to charge customers to use toilets on short haul flights. I suspect that will be a financial mistake because who in their right mind will be paying rather steep prices for a cup of coffee or tea on the flight when it costs you a pound to get rid of it?

Apparently they plan to reduce the number of toilets and add a few more seats in their place. This may be the real reason for the proposed change but it makes traveling even more unpleasant if you need to worry about frequent use of the loo. Some people might find they end up spending more money on the loo than the flight cost them, if we ignore booking fees, baggage fees, checkin fees and a million other additional charges.

Time may prove me wrong but I suspect we have seen the peak of air travel as a pleasureable experience. I also suspect that we may see passenger numbers continue to decline even after the recession thanks to the feelings of disrespect air travelers now experience from airlines who are only interested in the bottom line on their accounts.

This is probably the most obvious example of a trend in recent years where companies are so concerned about reducing costs and making efficiencies and profits that they seem to have lost something from the customer experience. Yes, you can travel cheaper now than 20 years ago but is it a price worth paying? So many companies now seem to treat their customers as gold to be mined in the most efficient way possible with little thought apparently given to whether customers truly enjoy dealing with the company.

Companies like Ryanair will no doubt argue that customers continue to use their services because they are so cheap but is this really progress? Surely there is a middle ground where costs are managed but customers can still have a stress free experience, and are not left with the feeling they are being fleeced at every opportunity.

If the journey becomes a battle of wits between the company trying to find additional ways to charge you money and the customer trying to avoid the feeling of having been ripped off who really wins in the end? Probably nobody.

Related posts:

1. Goodbye Electron Hello Mastercard Prepaid Card – How To Avoid Booking Fees At Ryanair The cheap flights airline Ryanair introduced a £5 payment fee...
2. British Airways To Squeeze More Money From Passengers British Airways has always maintained an image of providing service...
3. What We Can Learn From The Ash Cloud About Cheap Travel Insurance The travel chaos caused by the ash cloud from the...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

There is a replacement free booking card and that will be the Mastercard Prepaid which will from today, December 1st 2009, be their free form of payment. No doubt many people took out an Electron card with the sole purpose of avoiding these additional booking charges and they, and anyone else who would prefer not to give money for nothing to Ryanair, should consider getting a Mastercard Prepaid card ready for their next booking.

It is thought by many that the only reason for allowing one solitary form of free booking is to avoid having to declare the additional costs in advertising since any charge that applied to every passenger would have to be included in advertised pricing. It seems like a sneaky trick and must surely leave many passengers feeling ripped off when they have to pay a £5.00 for each passenger, for every flight, when booking with a debit card is thought to cost the airline pennies rather than pounds.

Whatever the logic or reasoning, from a customer point of view the message is clear. Get yourself a Mastercard Prepaid Card and use that for booking if you plan to fly with Ryanair.

Related posts:

1. Jargon For It Costs More At Ryanair There is a classic piece of dubious language on the...
2. British Airways To Squeeze More Money From Passengers British Airways has always maintained an image of providing service...
3. Proposed Changes To Credit Card Rules This week has seen the government introduce proposals to change...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

So it is disappointing to see that BA have sunk to the level of cheap seat airlines and have decided to charge passengers an extra £10 for European flights and up to £50 or more for long haul business class if you want to pick your seat before flying.

BA make a point of mentioning some of the additonal charges the low cost airlines make here… compare costs.. and they make some valid points about additional charges but as from the 7th October when the seat selection charges come in it looks like they are joining the ranks of the ’sell it cheap and then add on all the extra costs brigade’.

It would seem to be perfectly reasonable to select your preferred seat when booking and if you are travelling with your family or friends you would think that any airline would want to help you enjoy your trip sitting with your family and there seems to be no logical reason why that should not be part of the service.

BA seem to have decided that it is another way of raising money by charging passengers an extra fee and it seems to show once again that the paying passenger is considered something of a nuisance if they actually want service.

Related posts:

1. Goodbye Electron Hello Mastercard Prepaid Card – How To Avoid Booking Fees At Ryanair The cheap flights airline Ryanair introduced a £5 payment fee...
2. Jargon For It Costs More At Ryanair There is a classic piece of dubious language on the...
3. make-some-extra-money-taking-in-a-lodger One way of making a little extra income is by...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.