TRAVELLERS FIGHT BACK AGAINST “0% COMMISSION” ADVERTISING
A recent survey of over 1,000 travel customers, showed 93% of them want “0% Commission” advertising to be banned, as they found it misleading. FairFX.com, an online currency specialist who conducted the survey, are now forming a twitter-based petition to the OFT to put the ban in place and are calling on holidaymakers to tweet to sign the petition.
“It’s evident that these misleading advertising tactics have hit a nerve with regular travellers.” said FairFX CEO and currency expert Stephen Heath. “People are fed up with the lack of transparency in this sector. They’re calling for a level playing field from which they can compare travel money providers easily. First and foremost though, we think the OFT should enforce the ban on 0% Commission advertising.”
Frequent traveller Jim Ford has previously been caught out with the “0% commission” buy-back schemes some travel money providers advertise. Referring to the advertising tactics used, Jim said -“It was and still is pushed at the stores, ‘Anything you do not spend, we will buy back at the original rate commission free’, Sounds great!”
However after his holiday, Jim approached the company again with the $1,800 he had left over- “I was then told that the upper limit for returning the money was £100, anything over that I had to return at the current rate of exchange. On returning them I got £236 less than I had got them for!”
Ann McCarthy, who manages the UK arm of charity ‘Let them help themselves’, had suffered at the hands of other travel money provider’s hidden fees and misleading advertising. “I have been sending out money to Uganda for several years now for our charity, and tried various methods.” Ann explained.
Ann found she was being charged high fees by her bank for small transfers and getting bad exchange rates as well – “Some are advertising as 0% but in reality there are additional fees taken from your card when using the ATM abroad and also they are giving a poor exchange rate.”
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Find out more about the Fair FX Prepaid Mastercard and other prepaid travel money cards at Prepaid365.