One of the great themes I’ve absorbed since I joined this forum last fall, is to “pay in the local currency.” Usually referring to credit cards, I learned that again when buying my first FlixBus ticket. So for my first forum post, I thought I’d offer this money saving transportation tip when booking your first/next FlixBus tickets.
For the short version, skip directly to “TIP” below.
While booking my FlixBus ticket from Wroclaw to Prague I noted that my carry-on bag is a smidge over their carry-on dimensions. Despite the $9.99 fee, I decided to play it safe and purchase a 2nd checked bag. As I clicked through to checkout, I changed something (didn't know what at the time) and now my prices were showing in Euros.
As I compared prices …
The Euro price of the bus ticket wasn’t much different - $11.99 vs €9.99, less than a dollar, rounding to the nearest 0.99.
The $9.99 price for luggage was very different - €3.99 / $4.54. (Less than half, I loved this one!)
The $2.00 booking fee was only €0.37 / $0.42. (more than a 4X difference!)
The $4.99 seat reservation was only €2.99 / $3.40.
My $28.97 total pricing became €17.34 / $19.71.
While the difference of $9.26 is small relative to the overall cost of a trip, still it was 32% of the overall price of this ticket.
TIP: After some fiddling, I figured out what I had done to get the lower Euro pricing:
In the upper right hand corner of FlixBus.com choose your language. Instead of choosing the “English” option with a tiny American flag, choose the “English” option with a small green emblem, perhaps a tiny Euro symbol (too small for my eyes to see clearly.) Voilá, lower Euro pricing!
As is often stated on this forum in other contexts, pay in the local currency! And off I go to spend my $9.26 on something else.
PS – I checked the currency options on one US travel route - in that case dollars were again the more expensive currency.