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Costa Rica will include airport tax in ticket prices

Costa Rica will include airport tax in ticket prices

Old Oct 25, 2015, 6:28 am
  #46  
 
Join Date: Feb 2015
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Originally Posted by TacaCopaFlyer
If you purchased your ticket after about May 1, 2015 you should be good to go.
Yes, we already paid for it, I was curious to know how the airport will know. I guess it'll be on the boarding pass when we get those there. Will see in a few hours!
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Old Oct 25, 2015, 8:19 am
  #47  
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No, it's not on the boarding pass. The airline check-in agent at the counter will have to look in the computer. The people at the tax counter will not know. They'll just take your $29.
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Old Oct 28, 2015, 12:52 pm
  #48  
 
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Originally Posted by SJOGuy
No, it's not on the boarding pass. The airline check-in agent at the counter will have to look in the computer. The people at the tax counter will not know. They'll just take your $29.
Thank you. It was a lot smoother than I anticipated.
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Old Nov 3, 2015, 5:28 pm
  #49  
 
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So it sounds like this isn't so smooth yet? I bought my ticket in March of 2015 and it doesn't look like there's a $29 tax on it. It's not the end of the world if I have to pay it, but I just wanna make sure where I'd have to go or who SHOULD tell me? As long as you can use credit cards then can ask me at the gate and I'm still fine, but I usually try not to carry foreign cash on the way out of the country.
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Old Nov 5, 2015, 1:54 pm
  #50  
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If you bought your ticket in March, the tax won't have been included. Is this SJO? When you walk into the terminal, go to the far right and you'll see the bank of counters where you have to pay the tax. Do this before you get in line for check-in, because they'll send you right back there if you haven't paid the tax.

You can pay with a credit card (Visa or MasterCard only) but the transaction will be processed as a cash advance, and interest will begin being charged immediately. Or you can pay the $29 in U.S. cash, or the equivalent that day in colones (today, about 16,000 colones).
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Old Nov 5, 2015, 3:56 pm
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Crap, that's a stinker about the cash advance thing. I'll try to save the cash I suppose, I just don't like doing that. Thanks for the advice though.
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Old Nov 13, 2015, 5:17 am
  #52  
 
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WN not on the system yet

Southwest doesn't seem to be with the program yet. Ticket purchased Nov. 4, 2015.

Base Fare $ 129.00
U.S. Excise Taxes $ 17.70
U.S. Security Fee $ 5.60
U.S. Passenger Facility Charge $ 4.50
U.S. Customs User Fee $ 5.50
U.S. APHIS User Fee $ 5.00
U.S. Immigration User Fee $ 7.00
Costa Rica Security Fee $ 1.50
Costa Rica Common Area User Charge $ 5.69
Costa Rica Transportation Sales Tax $ 6.45
Total Air Cost $ 187.94
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Old Nov 13, 2015, 9:34 pm
  #53  
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From the SJO website, Southwest is por incluir (yet to be included). It has not announced a date for going live with the new system.



Aeromexico (Dec. 1) and Air Canada (Dec. 5) will be the next to join.
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Old Nov 19, 2015, 4:06 pm
  #54  
 
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Just flew AV out of SJO on Tuesday. I had bought my ticket in March, so my tax wasn't included.

I got to the airport at about 4:05am to find there was a line of about 25 people and only 1 guy working. Not moving quickly I might add.

I went over to the AV counter hoping that I could pay it there...which to me makes more sense...but you can't. You've got to wait in this stupid line. I get to the front and she's like "oh Avianca, no you're fine". I said "no, I was just told to come back here as I bought the ticket in March". "oh...ok, credit card then."

This process is pretty sloppy. The airline know if you need to pay it, so why they can't just collect it and funnel it to the airport is beyond me.

Just as a heads up, it's payable in cash...or via credit card, EXCEPT they charge it as a cash advance. I've never been 100% sure how CC's work all told, but I know that cash advances come with a much fatter interest charge, so make sure you pay it off asap.
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Old Nov 19, 2015, 4:29 pm
  #55  
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For many years, there were three tiers to the exit tax: one for citizens, one for tourists, and one for foreign residents. Since the airline could not be sure which category you fell into when you bought the ticket, the tax was collected separately at the airport. That was always the rationale for not including it in the ticket price. Thankfully, it's uniform across the board now.

SJO airport check-in lines move slowly enough as it is. If the check-in agents had to handle the tax transaction too, it would be even slower. That's the rationale for not having them collect the tax.
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Old Nov 20, 2015, 12:13 am
  #56  
 
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Originally Posted by drvannostren
Just as a heads up, it's payable in cash...or via credit card, EXCEPT they charge it as a cash advance. I've never been 100% sure how CC's work all told, but I know that cash advances come with a much fatter interest charge, so make sure you pay it off asap.
I flew out of SJO on Monday and it was a pain. The line was out the door wrapping down the sidewalk. By the time we got through we were given departure forms and then the ticket counter said we will be closing in five minutes. Luckily we didn't have any checked bags coz it sounds like they were just gonna .... it down.

I found out about the cash advance fee when I checked my CC balance. I called and complained and barclay's agreed to waive the fee but said to pay it off asap to avoid heft interest charges. They claimed I only had to pay off the amount considered CA, but I paid it all off to avoid any surprises. Barclays told me its coded as cash advance and I asked why I didn't have to enter a pin and how it can be when I never received any cash.

Another shock was that I kept saying to charge me in Colon only to find out that a number of merchants converted the transaction to dollars. Dollars are accepted everywhere but are a pretty bad exchange rate.
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Old Nov 20, 2015, 12:50 am
  #57  
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Check-in for flights to the United States closes at the one-hour mark. Period.

There's a sign at every post at the tax counter informing you that if you pay by credit card, the transaction will be processed as a cash advance. They're up front about it. No one should be surprised after the fact.

The tourism industry here quotes its offerings in dollars. If you pay in colones, it will be at the current exchange rate. It stems from all the years that the coln was notoriously unstable. A hotel that charges $100 will submit the credit-card charge as 53,153 colones at today's rate. Next month, it'll still be $100, but the coln amount could be different.
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Old Nov 20, 2015, 6:55 am
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Originally Posted by SJOGuy
Check-in for flights to the United States closes at the one-hour mark. Period.
I was sharing my experience so others allow a little more time especially if their airline didn't collect the departure tax. It's also true that if you've never missed a flight then you've spent too much time waiting around in airports :-). I would recommend dropping one passenger off with all passports to pay the departure tax while returning a rental car especially if time is going to be under 2 hours to pay depart tax and check in.

Originally Posted by SJOGuy
There's a sign at every post at the tax counter informing you that if you pay by credit card, the transaction will be processed as a cash advance. They're up front about it. No one should be surprised after the fact.
Had I seen this sign then I wouldn't have been surprised. All I saw was V/MC accepted.


Originally Posted by SJOGuy
The tourism industry here quotes its offerings in dollars. If you pay in colones, it will be at the current exchange rate. It stems from all the years that the coln was notoriously unstable. A hotel that charges $100 will submit the credit-card charge as 53,153 colones at today's rate. Next month, it'll still be $100, but the coln amount could be different.
As for dollar/colones I was referring to when they listed prices in both colones and dollars. Even though I would sign for colones some merchants would still process the charge as dollars. I'm well aware that the colones is a floating exchange rate. Generally, prices posted in dollars went from an exchange rate of 500-518 colones vs paying in colones would've been exchange between 531-536 for the period I was there. A good number of merchants decided to put a transaction through as dollars.

Last edited by Chelski; Nov 20, 2015 at 7:15 am
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Old Nov 20, 2015, 1:56 pm
  #59  
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After 20 years of flying in and out of SJO, I find the airport to be unpredictable. I've flown out midday on a Wednesday in October, the lowest of the low season, and lines have stretched out the door and down the sidewalk. I've flown out early morning the weekend before Christmas, and have breezed through tax payment, check-in and security in under 10 minutes. My advice is always to allow plenty of time.

Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of the announcement of the change in collecting the airport tax. The system is still not entirely up and running.
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Old Nov 20, 2015, 4:19 pm
  #60  
 
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Originally Posted by Chelski
I found out about the cash advance fee when I checked my CC balance. I called and complained and barclay's agreed to waive the fee but said to pay it off asap to avoid heft interest charges. They claimed I only had to pay off the amount considered CA, but I paid it all off to avoid any surprises. Barclays told me its coded as cash advance and I asked why I didn't have to enter a pin and how it can be when I never received any cash.

Another shock was that I kept saying to charge me in Colon only to find out that a number of merchants converted the transaction to dollars. Dollars are accepted everywhere but are a pretty bad exchange rate.
I had no checked bags either, so I was fine on that front.

I knew it was a cash advance, I read it right on the sign...what I don't know to this day is exactly how one gets THAT specific item off their CC. I'm just gonna pay it off in full, but if I have a cash advance of $30 on a balance of $300 and I can only afford to pay $270, do I get killed cuz of that cash advance? Also I wasn't aware that Visa was gonna charge me $5 for a cash advance fee, so that was lame...oh well.

The cash advance sign was the big sign at the base of the desks with all the rules/explanations on it. So you just plum missed that bud, sorry, but in fairness the sign was pretty big and it wasn't fine print or anything.

Originally Posted by SJOGuy
The tourism industry here quotes its offerings in dollars. If you pay in colones, it will be at the current exchange rate. It stems from all the years that the coln was notoriously unstable. A hotel that charges $100 will submit the credit-card charge as 53,153 colones at today's rate. Next month, it'll still be $100, but the coln amount could be different.
This is what bothered me that I still can't really explain. As a Canadian there's a BIG problem with this. Because when someone says "$5" it's really $6.50 to me. So I feel like the arbitrary amounts quoted by people just get worse and worse. I paid for everything in Colones, I don't know what currency my CC got charged in, I can only see the final price in CAD.

If I were a US citizen I probably wouldn't care, but having to add 30% to whatever random price people quote doesn't work for me.

At least the tax thing is getting sorted out. For MOST airlines it showed as long as you had purchased after _______ (whatever date is was) then you were good to go. I figured out that I had to pay, but I tried to pay it at check-in where I was informed I couldn't that's what bummed me out.
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