Opodo has been told by the advertising watchdog to include all non-optional fees in its initial pricing after a compliant was upheld over a flight handling charge.
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ASA upholds Opodo complaint
Opodo has been told by the advertising watchdog to include all non-optional fees in its initial pricing after a compliant was upheld over a flight handling charge.
The Advertising Standards Authority said the airline surcharge for the return flight from London to Nice should have been included in the headline price which was advertised at £208.45 return.
The ASA ruling came after it received a complaint that the website was misleading because the initial price did not include the non-optional handling fee.
The ASA said: “We understood that the handling fee referred to in the complaint was applied to every flight searched for with a particular airline, regardless of the payment method selected.
“We therefore considered that the handling fee was unavoidable and as such should have been included in the initial price claim. Because it was not, we concluded that the website was misleading.”
Opodo argued that the handling fee was applied to a relatively small proportion of bookings where the supplier levied a fee for bookings paid for with certain payment methods. This meant the processing cost incurred by Opodo was “considerably higher” than other transactions.
