How to pay NO Credit Card fees when buying Flights

By Garth Adams on 27/Aug/2012
High Credit Card fees are another way that Airlines make money from flights - but did you know that there is an easy way to avoid paying the fees? Most airlines offer POLi as a payment option. The cost of the flights is directly transferred from your bank account, and you avoid paying any fees. I had a Virgin Airlines flight coming up ( recently voted as your Favourite Australian Airline), so I decided to use POLi and show you how easy it is to use.

Before you begin
You must have internet banking enabled to use POLi - contact your bank if you do not have this set up already. You do not need a separate account at POLi, everything is done through your bank account.

The POLi technical Specifications state that the browsers supported are: Internet Explorer 6.0+, Firefox 2+,Chrome and you must be running Windows. It doesn't look as though it works if you are using a Mac or Safari (so I guess this doesn't work on your iPad/iPhone). I used Firefox 14 for this booking. Most Australian banks are supported. I paid with NAB and it worked fine.

One annoying thing was that if you want to pay using POLi, then you cannot pay extra to offset your carbon emmissions. You can either help preserve the Earth or pay by POLi, but not both it seems.

Once I starting the process of paying by POLi I was finished in a few minutes. If you have transferred money from your bank account on the internet before, then you will recognise the process and feel at home. For those of you that haven't, here are the complete steps:

Complete Steps to Paying with POLi
The payment step happens right at the end, so this is after you have searched for your flights, chosen the ones you want and been transferred to the Virgin Australia website for booking. Once you have selected your flights and entered your contact details:

1. Click 'Internet Payments' and then 'Pay with POLi'.

2. Select your Bank from the dropdown list of banks.

3. Login to your Bank

4. Complete a Funds Transfer (normal internet banking page)
- You just have to select the account you are paying from, the 'To' account already has the Virgin Australia details filled out.
- You must enter a 'Remitter Name' (this is a bank thing, POLI does not need it)

5. Success message from POLI.

Don't forget to log out or click the 'Finish' button at the top of the screen.

6. You are shown the itinerary confimation page from Virgin Australia. You've paid for your ticket without any fees!
By Garth Adams on 27/Aug/2012

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