sfogate

Attempted to purchase my flight twice tonight and each time my purchase would not go through. I received an error message with regards to my credit card. The numbers were correct.

Can anyone give me a suggestion on how to solve this? I really don't want to call Ireland from the USA. Thanks.

Wexflyer

I would suggest that you first call your CC company and see if the "foreign" transaction has been blocked as a security measure - happens quite often.

WillTravel

Have you only the one credit card? If possible, try another. I can't remember which of my credit cards gets rejected, but I know I have had that problem with Ryanair.

Romelle

Does Ryan do Paypal? It seems to be cropping up all over, and might be an alternative.

Romelle

alanR

You've got to be joking - Ryanair picking a popular method of payment where they couldn't add a fiver per person per flight to the bill.

As others have said

a) check with your CC company
b) try a different CC
c) try a different airline

oiRRio

I believe the OP's problem may be caused by Ryanair's website rather than his CC. IME they have been having issues since they migrated to their new website a couple of weeks back. Looking at fares I have been unimpressed by its sluggishness compared to its predecessor. Now today I have been unable to check a relative in using OLCI despite trying both the email address/itinerary and CC options.

A pity as I've gained a fairly favourable impression of Ryanair on a series of low fare flights over the last 6 months.

sfogate

I contacted my credit card company and there is no problem with me spending my money worldwide.

Hopefully this is a RyanAir website issue and will be fixed soon.

I found some phone numbers and email addresses posted by another that I will try using to get some live help.

sfogate

I managed to get ahold of a live person (after a long wait) at the following phone number: 353-1-812-1228 and learned that US Based Credit Cards will NOT work of their website.

Thanks for your help.

Romelle

You might have gotten bad info from Ryan. My son bought 2 different round-trip tickets from them (each for two people) a couple months ago, using a US credit card. Although a new web site or policy change could be causing your problem now?

Romelle

FYI - we also learned you can't do on-line check-in when you have a US passport, and then when you do it at the airport they charge a 3 or 4 Euro fee for each leg. One member here said the fee was supposed to be waived if you only had carry-on luggage, but we didn't know that at the time so just paid up.

WillTravel

Lots of Americans buy Ryanair tickets, and are currently buying them everyday as reported on budget travel sites, so that seems highly improbable. What type of credit card did you try to use?

sfogate

Phone call number one said that the issue was with their website and to try again.

Phone call number two said website will not accept US based credit cards.

I tried both Visa and Mastercard, neither would take. This attempt to book and pay for a ticket was not my first time in not being allowed to complete the reservation. The first time was several months ago, for this upcoming trip in July, with the same error message regarding problems with my credit card.

I have no idea which is the right answer.

WillTravel

Maybe you can find a friend who will try with his/her credit card (just be sure to have the right passenger names), and you can pay him or her.

Although it costs extra, and there's an extra fee for phoning, can you buy the tickets through the call center?

sfogate

Our second phone call to Ireland was successful. We spoke to a live person, made the 29 reservations (boy's soccer team coming back from the Gothia tourney in Sweden), had to fax the names and paid with one US issued credit card.

Interesting that the card was accepted over the phone but not via their website.

Thank you to everyone who provided suggestions and insights.

Refuse Toulouse

It seems that you will be using Ryanair for the intra Europe portion of your trip and that you will be getting to Europe on another carrier.
I hope that you realize that because your trip will involve two completely independent itineraries (USA-Europe, Intra Europe) if anything happens on either leg of the trip that affect the other one, ie.: late arrival of an aircraft, cancellation etc. then you will not have the benefit of being re-booked on another flight.

This is especially true for the return portion of the trip. If, for whatever reason, the FR flight out of Gothia does not arrive in time for you to catch your flight back to US then you will be in a real pickle.

There are enough case stories like that on www.ryanaircampaign.org as well as on www.airlinequality.com.

I would suggest that you:
1. double and triple check the spelling of each one of the 29 persons who are travelling on the confirmation you got from FR and make sure that they match letter for letter how their names are written in their passports. Even a single letter difference will mean that that person will not fly on Ryanair even if the mistake is due to their typo.
2. consider buying travel insurance, especially trip interruption insurance, that will help you in case you can not make either connection.

I would estimate that you have about 90% chance of successfully completing your trip, ie.: getting to Sweden and returning to US on the planned dates and the question is whether you are willing to take the 10% chance that you may get stranded in the connecting city.

sfogate

Hi, Refuse Toulouse

Good suggestions. We are purchasing insurance and we have a one day separation between our return to Ireland via RyanAir and our flight home to the US.