Credit/debit Card Numbers

[iloveglee]

can anyone tell me whether a merchant's website should be able to differentiate between what is a credit card, and what is a debit card, from the number of the card. if the wrong selection is made, and the card does not accord with the selection, surely the system should reject the payment until the selection is corrected

[bhg481]

I think the first 4 numbers define the bank and type of card.

[ToraToraTora]

oh yes.

[iloveglee]

So i wonder why, on ryanair's website, when i inadvertently selected VISA instead of VISA DEBIT, the payment was not rejected if the card number did not correspond with the selection. unless, of course, ryanair's website is deliberately set up to take advantage of this kind of error

[ubasses]

Just had a look at my Amazon account both my visa debit and credit cards show as Visa/Electron/Delta. Pretended I was going to add another card and only the 1 option came up for both. So Visa must identify from the card number you enter.

[woofgang]

I am not sure how it helps Ryanair?

[iloveglee]

i think if ryanair's website is set up NOT to reject payment with an incorrect card (which this was as apparently i had selected visa, but used a visa debit card). by making this error, and not having the payment rejected, ryanair can charge me a credit card fee, even though i didnt actually use a credit card.

[ToraToraTora]

Ryan air charge a fee except for their "free" card which changes all the time, nothing to do with credit/debit.

[iloveglee]

i contacted ryanair on twitter and they assure me they dont charge for use of regular debit cards. but they said i selected visa, instead of visa debit, and my argument is their system should have recognised the payment selection and card number were incompatible and rejected the payment. given that a credit card was not used, ryanair will not be charged the fee the credit card companies charge merchants. so they have charged me a fee which they will not then be passing on to the credit card company. therefore they have money which is rightfully mine. customer services are on to it but dont hold your breath. this is ryanair after all.

[TheChair]

I made a mistake, and it's someone else's fault.
Seems like a good philosophy.

[SpikeyBush]

yes but we are all human, we make mistakes. the point is that Ryanair's system should have detected that the incorrect card type was selected. If it didn't, what is the point of having it?

Ryanair seem to be experts in tripping the consumer up in order to provoke mistakes and therefore levy penalties. Therefore if I had to travel to an airport only served by Ryanair I would rather walk there.

[iloveglee]

Absolutely. Ryanair's system should have detected the discrepancy and invited the customer to correct it. It does beg the question, if you intended to pay with a credit card, but actually used a debit card, would it notice and NOT charge when it should have. Perhaps someone would like to give it a try. In any case, after a rather long and involved twitter conversation with ryanair, they did accept, once i had demonstrated that i actually paid with a debit card, that i was indeed due a refund of the payment fee. ryanair are still guilty of trying to screw, by fair means or foul, as much money from customers as they can. i accept their prices are good, but actually when you take into account the price they charge for checked bags, and also that their cabin bags are smaller than anyone elses, sometimes other airlines are cheaper. to give them their due, they have solved the problem, to my satisfaction, pretty quickly, and they have improved their practices, to be more in line with other airlines. personally i would rather not travel with them, but sometimes the alternatives are less convenient, if not necessarily cheaper. any by the way, being tripped up into making an error, with no facility for the error being picked up, should not be considered necessarily the responsibility of the person making the error. i do not believe i said it was someone elses fault that i initially made the mistake, i accepted that i had inadvertently selected the incorrect payment type. i said that i believed that a payment system should be able to pick this up, prior to the payment being made. and seemingly, ryanair have agreed!!!

[237SJ]

Then again, if Ryanair`s or anyone else`s website can detect which type of card is in use, there would be no need for the user to click on the card type

[iloveglee]

All i can say is that, i have made this mistake before but the other way around (yes i know, i should take more care), but i also think that if they are offering the option of visa credit, it should say so, rather than just visa. it is easy when there are so many choices. in the case before, the website declined to take the payment, and returned me to the card details, with the error highlighted. I guess that if ryanair had truly believed it was all my fault, and they bore no responsibility to me, they would have declined to refund the credit card payment to me. a payment system should always be able to tell when an error has been made, whether choice of payment type not being compatible with the card number, address not corresponding with the card, and other errors which it is possible to make when entering information online. i have never come across one which does not. in fact, if these systems cannot recognise errors, it goes to make fraud much easier.