Surcharges on debit cards

deaglan169

Hi i hope this is the right section, i recently bought car insurance over the phone haggled out a deal for x amount then when i agreed to pay, she asked what type of card it was so i said a visa debit, only to be told there was a 2% surcharge so my bill was now €12 odd more. she told me if i had a laser card there was fee i used to have one of these but my bank replaced them with visa debit cards, is it legal for them to charge such a fee its not mentioned on their website or paperwork:mad:

3DataModem

This is legal in Ireland at the moment.

Interesting article here: http://www.tribune.ie/archive/article/2008/jul/20/eu-insists-ireland-free-to-ban-credit-card-surchar/

Just so you know... if this is an Irish insurance company then they are effectively paying 1.3% of this straight back to your bank. Then about another 0.2% or 0.3% to VISA and the rest is paid to the payment processors.

deaglan169

yes it was an irish company its quiet annoying i used to have a laser and never had such surcharges, what annoys me more is that they gave me a quote then added this surchage on, i would have preferred if they said nothing and just added the surcharge in to the overall quote but then that would probably be completly illegal. Do any banks still use the laser card?

BuffyBot

NIB, AIB and BOI (but are changing to Visa Debit soon). Expect the others to follow.