Booking Aerolíneas in local ARS currency

[yonasl]

Hello,

Planing a trip to Argentina that may include flights with Aerolíneas Argentinas.

Their website prices the tickets in ARS and I will be buying the tickets from here in the UK.

Is there a credit card that would use the dollar blue exchange instead of the silly and fake government rate?

Thanks

[JDB]

yonasl wrote:

Hello,

Planing a trip to Argentina that may include flights with Aerolíneas Argentinas.

Their website prices the tickets in ARS and I will be buying the tickets from here in the UK.

Is there a credit card that would use the dollar blue exchange instead of the silly and fake government rate?

Thanks

Visa and MasterCard will both give you the MEP rate (minus probably 5%) which is close to, but not the same as the blue rate. Amex appears to offer this now as well. You will initially be billed at the official rate and then get a refund of the difference within a week. Someone has noted here not to use Barclaycard as you will pay FX fees on the purchase (at the full rate) and then on the credit as well. HSBC WE marries the transactions and refunds FX fees pro-rata. Curve works the best in terms of rate and speed of credit, but you won’t get s75 which is important for air tickets. The Aerolinéas site doesn’t always accept foreign cards; when it doesn’t, I use Despegar.com.ar which operates in a very different way to what we think of as OTAs here. AR is quite strict on luggage unless you buy premium economy which often is only slightly more expensive or you have status (thank you ITA). Eco queues at Aeroparque can be pretty bad.

Don’t get seduced by cheap fares at Jetsmart or Flybondi.

[yonasl]

Thanks. While I really would love to visit Argentina I really hate countries where everything is a struggle.

[JDB]

yonasl wrote:

Thanks. While I really would love to visit Argentina I really hate countries where everything is a struggle.

What are you suggesting is a struggle in Argentina?

Everything works just fine, the people are wonderful as is the food and wine. Buenos Aires is great city and there are so many extraordinary places to visit from cities to the semi tropical NE to the stunning desert in the NW, Patagonia/Lakes, wine areas, the glaciers and much, much more. Oh, and it’s all half the price of the US.

[yonasl]

My mother is from Argentina. While I have never been myself (never had the chance) I am very familiar with life there.

To have an official exchange rate the government tries to impose but just creates a black market for is a struggle.

To have to deal with inflation of 100% as they have right now is a struggle.

The fact most travel websites start with a whole paragraph on how to exchange money is a struggle.

Looking forward to organising this trip however.

[JDB]

@yonasi I understand. What is amazing is that changing money in Buenos Aires at the blue rate is an absolute doddle – far quicker and easier than getting currency here. The arbolitos/cuevas are everywhere and open long hours. They will do hotel delivery as well! Now that one can also use credit cards at close to the blue rate has made life easier than carrying bricks of money all the time as we did last year. Just got back and planning next year’s trip.

[Matt]

I’m trying to book flights with Aerolineas and getting the error message “Lo sentimos! Los datos ingresados no fueron procesados correctamente.” (“We’re sorry! The data entered was not processed correctly.”). Is that just them not accepting a foreign card? Anything I can do to get around that to book directly?

@JDB you say that Despegar.com.ar operates differently to OTA we know – what do you mean by that? It seems more expensive than the Aerolineas website for the first flight I look at ($49K v $40K)

Thanks

[JDB]

Matt wrote:

I’m trying to book flights with Aerolineas and getting the error message “Lo sentimos! Los datos ingresados no fueron procesados correctamente.” (“We’re sorry! The data entered was not processed correctly.”). Is that just them not accepting a foreign card? Anything I can do to get around that to book directly?

@JDB you say that Despegar.com.ar operates differently to OTA we know – what do you mean by that? It seems more expensive than the Aerolineas website for the first flight I look at ($49K v $40K)

Thanks

Sometimes AR allows payment with a foreign credit card – I have tried Amex Gold, HSBC WE, Curve and one of them probably works one time in three. Despegar appears to operate on an old fashioned commission model. When you pay say 100, you click to pay that single sum but it gets billed roughly 85/15 to AR and Despegar and you can do everything with your booking as if it were direct and as AR is on your statement you will have s75. I found that the price is maybe 5% – 7% higher but when you factor in how much more it would cost to buy on any international side and the MEP dollar rate that becomes a bit inconsequential. In order to complete your Despegar booking you need to enter a CUIT/CUIL number for the invoice you will receive – just Google that to get the right number of random digits.

[Matt]

Thanks, will try a few more cards and if that fails give Despegar a go.

[Matt]

@JDB After trying a few more times with various cards I’ve finally given up on booking directly. I appear to have managed to book the first flight I want through Despegar – it’s a fair bit more expensive than booking directly, and at official exchange rate more expensive than booking in £ – hopefully that will change when the MEP rate comes through.

A couple of questions though – in the booking process it wants “DOCUMENTO DEL TITULAR DE LA TARJETA”, which needs to be an 8 digit number. The CUIL number is generated automatically (“please check it’s correct”). Am I OK to put random numbers for the first and leave the second with whatever it puts in? And there’s no option for an address outside Argentina that I can see – no problems with that?

Thanks

[JDB]

For the ‘documento’ they’re expecting to see an Argentinian DNI/ID and this is fairly standard for buying anything online there. I just put as many digits of my passport number as will fit and if a local address is required put a hotel address. It used to be the case that ARS fares were only for locals (and that was made very clear), but that is no longer the case; it’s just that systems aren’t designed around foreigners.

[Matt]

Thanks, that’s very helpful.

[Vit]

JDB wrote:

yonasl wrote:

Don’t get seduced by cheap fares at Jetsmart or Flybondi.

@JDB do you mind sharing a bit more on the quote above please? We are looking at flight from FTE into AEP and Flybondi timing work for us greatly. I have seen good reviews from them on here.

[JDB]

@Vit both are fundamentally fine but they operate incredibly tight and often complex routings/schedules, so they can pick up severe delays for a multiplicity of reasons, one of which is weather which can be unexpectedly extreme, even if sometimes briefly. Obviously these risks increase during the course of the day and as their schedules are both quite thin (ie often one flight on a given day and not daily) they also don’t have the capacity to sort you out that AR does and is actually quite good about.

[JDB]

Vit wrote:

JDB wrote:

yonasl wrote:

Don’t get seduced by cheap fares at Jetsmart or Flybondi.

@JDB do you mind sharing a bit more on the quote above please? We are looking at flight from FTE into AEP and Flybondi timing work for us greatly. I have seen good reviews from them on here.

Both are fundamentally fine but they operate incredibly tight and often complex routings/schedules, so they can pick up severe delays for a multiplicity of reasons, one of which is weather which can be unexpectedly extreme, even if sometimes briefly. Obviously these risks increase during the course of the day and as their schedules are both quite thin (ie often one flight on a given day and not daily) they don’t have the capacity to sort you out that AR does.

[DTraveller]

Have just booked an Aerolineas flight earlier this week. Booked in ARS using Chase. ~3 business days later refund came through on card for the MEP rate. Meant an effective discount of 55% vs. the original ARS quoted airfare.

One thing to note, kept getting an unexplained error on the final payment page when booking, which meant payment didn’t go through. Eventually realised that the cause for the error seemed to be leaving a space when entering UK postcode. Once I removed the space it worked.

[Vit]

@DTraveller Thanks for the datapoint. I will need to book mine rather soon. Interesting regarding the refund, I plan to use either amex or mbna. Not sure if these will be the case too….

[JDB]

Vit wrote:

@DTraveller Thanks for the datapoint. I will need to book mine rather soon. Interesting regarding the refund, I plan to use either amex or mbna. Not sure if these will be the case too….

Yes, you will get the discount as described further upthread with Visa, Mastercard and Amex. Using a credit card will give you s75, worthwhile in case you have to cancel. The gap between the official rate and the MEP/blue rates has widened, so the ‘discount’ is now greater than it was when the MEP was first introduced for credit card transactions.

[Matt]

JDB wrote:

Vit wrote:

@DTraveller Thanks for the datapoint. I will need to book mine rather soon. Interesting regarding the refund, I plan to use either amex or mbna. Not sure if these will be the case too….

Yes, you will get the discount as described further upthread with Visa, Mastercard and Amex. Using a credit card will give you s75, worthwhile in case you have to cancel. The gap between the official rate and the MEP/blue rates has widened, so the ‘discount’ is now greater than it was when the MEP was first introduced for credit card transactions.

Is there anywhere easy to see what the current MEP rate is?

[Vit]

@JDB thanks for this. Very good to know as I am looking to book the ticket rather soon as I don’t think it will get any cheaper for early March 2024. Just one thing to confirm please that I have to book through aerolineas website using with ARS currency, correct? As I think it also gives option to switch to GBP as well.

[JDB]

Yes, you need to book in ARS to get the MEP refund. If you were to book in GBP you will get a DCC type exchange rate and no rebate!

[Matt]

Is there a reliable site to see what the MEP rate is currently?

[Scott]

See here: ARS – USD

BNA is the central bank rate, Blue is what you can get on the street, MEP is when paying with a foreign card.

[Matt]

Thanks. Is there anywhere you can see what the Visa/Mastercard MEP rate for £ is?

[JDB]

Matt wrote:

Thanks. Is there anywhere you can see what the Visa/Mastercard MEP rate for £ is?

There is no Visa/Mastercard rate for the rebate that comes via the MEP, so the rate you get is not published – it is based on actual market transactions for electronic payments. You will get around 10% less than the published MEP rates – there are several different ones. You just have to be grateful for the huge discount you get, even on US$ hotel rates and if you don’t like the uncertainty, you need to pay cash exchanged at the blue rate which is oddly enough a much more standardised rate. However, if you pay cash for your hotel, you will pay and additional 21% VAT which you don’t pay if you use a foreign credit card. Quite a few restaurants offer discounts of 10-15% for cash.