Online travel agency Opodo has been ordered by advertising watchdogs to include its handling fee in headline prices following a complaint from a customer.
The complainant challenged whether Opodo’s website was misleading because its initial fare for a return flight from London to Nice did not include the handling fee.
Opodo claimed the fee was not included because it was applied to only a "relatively small proportion of bookings" and it was triggered when the supplier levied a fee for bookings paid for by certain methods.
Opodo claimed the processing cost incurred by Opodo for these bookings was considerably higher than other transactions, forcing it to add a handling fee.
However, the Advertising Standards Authority upheld the complaint because it found that the handling fee was added to every flight booked with a particular airline, regardless of the payment method.
"We therefore considered that the handling fee was unavoidable and as such should have been included in the initial price claim," said the judgment. "Because it was not, we concluded that the website was misleading.
"We told Opodo to include all non-optional fees in their initial price claims."
By Linsey McNeill
