easyJet just lost their “we’re the friendly face of budget airlines” image by ditching fee free payment by Visa Electron and introducing a flat fee admin charge of £9 on all bookings.

Now while this may not be as bad as Ryanair charges of £6 per person per flight (unless you pay with Ryanair’s fee riddled own brand Mastercard prepaid debit card) it’s still bad news for UK travellers who are sick fed up of money grabbing tactics such as increases in APD (Airport Passenger Duty) and airport drop off charges, pushing up the price of their travels.

If you pay for your easyJet flights by credit card, there’s an additional 2.5% fee with a minimum charge of £4.95.

I recently booked a single easyJet flight from Edinburgh to Lisbon at a price of £38 and was able to pay with no supplement by using my Visa Electron card. However now that flight would now cost £47, a whopping increase of almost 25%. If I paid for that ticket by credit card there’d be an additional £4.95 to pay, pushing the total price up to the best part of £52, an extra £14 in easyJet fees.

I assume that easyJet have changed their charges to circumvent forthcoming legislation on excess card payment charges. I’ve read that it costs 20 pence to process a debit card payment. I wonder how consumers would react if they had to pay a £9 admin fee to pay for their supermarket shopping?