This page is for other people's stories. They are reproduced in the correspondents' own words and reflect their own views only.
If you have an experience of travelling with Ryanair that would be of interest to other visitors to this site, particularly if you had a problem and found a way of getting recompense, please email info@ryanaircampaign.org, stating whether you wish it to be published (anonymously) on this site. For more interactive discussion and a wider range of advice and expertise, we have now set up a Google group at http://groups.google.com/group/ryanair-customers. All poetry is now gathered at the bottom of the page.
The views, opinions, statements and other written items contained within the following pages are published for information purposes only and are directly attributable to the respective authors of those items and in no way reflect the views or beliefs of, and may not be attributed directly or indirectly to the site host and are published by the host in good faith and without any representation whatsoever as to their accuracy or otherwise. Requests for further information about or comments in respect of any statements may be emailed to the host which may act as a forwarding service to said authors but may not be obliged to reveal to any other person or entity the identity of such authors in any event.
In the threatening letter, it is claimed that some of the stories are false or contain statements which are false. However, despite being asked to be specific and being given the chance to check all stories before publication, Ryanair has declined every effort we have made to identify and rectify anything which might be incorrect.
Site Languages
Submitted 30 March 2010
I’M SPANISH BUT I HAVE BEEN LIVING IN THE UK FOR 14 YEARS SO I CAN SPEAK AND READ ENGLISH, HOWEVER, MOST OF MY FAMILY LIVE IN SPAIN AND SPEAK ONLY SPANISH, NO ENGLISH....RECENTLY WE ALL BOOKED FLIGHTS TO VISIT MY BROTHER IN THE NORTH OF SPAIN, I BOOKED FROM THE UK, USING THE RYANAIR WEBSITE IN ENGLISH, MY FAMILY DID IT IN SPAIN USING THE SPANISH SITE, ALL OF OUR RETURN FLIGHTS GOT CHANGED, A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER THAN WE WANTED TO COME BACK, ANYWAY...... NO HAPPY ABOUT THAT BUT THE MOST INFURIATING THING IS THAT THEY HAVE SEND MY FAMILY AN EMAIL IN ENGLISH TO INFORM THEM ABOUT THE CHANGES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHY NOT IN SPANISH?
WHAT IS THE POINT OF CHOOSING THE SITE IN YOUR OWN LANGUAGE SO YOU KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING IF RYANAIR IS GOINT TO CONTACT YOU USING A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE TO YOURS? NO EVERYBODY HAVE SOMEONE TO TRANSLATE............WHAT IF OTHER PEOPLE IN THE SAME SITUATION MISS THEIR FLIGHTS BECAUSE OF THAT????????? I THAT LEGAL ?
AND THEN, YOU TRY TO CONTACT THEM AND OF COURSE YOU CAN’T, UNLESS YOUR ARE READY TO WASTE YOUR MONEY IN A VERY EXPENSIVE PHONE CALL THAT NOBODY EVER ANSWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THANKS FOR YOUR TIME
Thank You to the Captain
A big THANK YOU.
Please, send the captains at our flight - a great thank you for letting our youngest son see, sit and feel the feeling in the cockpit for a few minutes.
It was his first flight and since he was 2 years old (10 today) he had said he’ll become a pilot.
The captain made Richards day!!!
Once again – THANK YOU! For taking the time even if you had a scheduled time.
Missing Confirmation (addressed to Ryanair)
I recently booked a flight from Dublin to Rom, unfortunately during the booking process the email address I provided was somehow lost and I haven't received the confirmation email. It is neither in the spam folder nor in the bin. From what I have seen on message boards and forums this is not unusual, using a euphemism.
Furthermore, because you have to type your email address twice, I hardly believe it's a mistake on my part, I know my email, I use it regularly for booking and how could I possibly mistype "jonziepoo"?. But let's be reasonable and admit that it could also have been a mistake on my part, it is still extremely difficult to contact ryanair from Italy. This is simply because your premium rate numbers are blocked in this country and the activation process is somehow time consuming and difficult. I also tried to call abroad but with no success. I'm sure you get this sort of complaint all the time about the premium rates, the point is that one would gladly pay if only someone would pick up on the other side (I tried abroad as I said).
The online review of the booking does not allow to update the contact email, which is pretty lame.
Now, I am simply trying to contact Ryanair so that Ryanair can contact me in case of any changes to the flight. Or do you reckon I should just stroll to the airport and find out 2 hours prior to take off? I find it irritating that this simple task is taking up so much of my time. Even finding your email has been a great challenge. I have also separately emailed Michelle Penston, although with less complaints and a simple request of help.
Premium Rate Numbers from Italy
Just a few lines to tell you that the premium rates numbers to contact ryanair from Italy (899 018 880 and 899 28 99 93) are blocked for most Italians.
The funny thing about these numbers is that no one can call them because they are blocked by law (all 899s).
In order to be able to unlock these numbers and contact ryanair, you have to fax your telephone company a specific request and attach along a fotocopy of your ID document.
Another thing that appears to be pretty common recently is that during the booking process the website "tends" to store a wrong email address, forcing the customer to call the premium rate (because he'll never receive the confirmation email, neither communication about flight changes).
I'd like to stress that the number of people complaining about this is large judging from the various forum and boards and that I use only 1 email for everything. It's unlikely to be a mistyping thingy.
Cheerio.
Extra Payments Taken (letter to Ryanair)
I am writing a letter for four refunds needed on transactions taken from my bank account and submitting a letter of complaint about these transactions taken and your dealing with this.
On the 13th Feb I tried to purchase some gift vouchers from your website numerous times with great failings by your website none of these continued through to me confirming the item. Various error messages appeared. I prevailed however and bought some tickets to Valencia and committed to a date and flight time, the payments details went through with no issues. I confirmed the payment and as you would expect the transaction came out of my bank account.
What I didn’t expect was you Ryan Air to take FOUR consecutive payments of £55 also bringing me considerably overdrawn. I first rang about the payments on the 17th your advisor stated that the payments appeared on system but as declined transactions, and NatWest account would reinstate this money by Mon 22nd. It is now the 22nd of Feb; I have spoken directly to NatWest and can confirm these numerous payments HAVE been taken from my bank account!! I have been provided with the transaction codes as proof of this and told Ryan Air should check merchant services. After again speaking to your advisors I got no help in the matter, or more importantly a refund. Instead I got told to get MY money back I had to write this letter.
Flight Missed due to no Call
I arrived at Beauvais airport for FR29 to Dublin 16 January, scheduled to depart at 22.20, and went straight through to the departure lounge an hour and a half before departure.
A screen at the entrance to Porte D (which is down a corridor next to this screen) showed Dublin FR29 and I sat in front of it, periodically checking for news of boarding.
It never said it was boarding. A general call for passengers for this flight to go to "the departure gate" went out but I thought I was at the gate. No names were called.
At 22.15 I asked the staff at Porte C when the Dublin flight would board and they said it was already boarded. Myself and four others missed this flight. Even though boarding could have taken place at 22.15, as a member of staff later confirmed, we were sent to the Ryanair desk the other side of security and Ryanair staff tried to sell us new flights for €100.
The last coach back to Paris was called and I ran for this coach to avoid being stranded at the airport. The others stayed. When I made enquiries on my arrival for a new flight on 18 January I was told by airport staff that it is the airport's responsibility to manage the screens and call the flights, while Ryanair said there had been a police report.
I have received a predictably unhelpful reply from Ryanair stating that all airports are subject to the same rules and that it's the passenger's responsibility to appear at the gate.
As I believe it is Beauvais' fault I wrote to them. I received a letter back from the President of Beauvais. He repeated the same line about all airports being subject to the same rules and said "in your case an agent event went the Security Point to check if you weren't there" - which was pointless as the passengers were at the entrance to Gate D, watching the screen that still didn't indicate boarding. He hasn't specifically denied that the screen at the entrance to Porte D was misleading and that the passengers names were not called, although he says "Given the respect of the procedure, we cannot accept your claim for reimbursement."
I would like to trace the other four people (two Irish and two French) who were stranded by this flight so we can act as witnesses for each other that this did indeed happen.
If you want to contact the author, please email us and we will pass on your message.
Complaint to ASA
I recently complained to the ASA regarding Ryanair advertising £5 flights from Prestwick to Alicante on their site. Searching based on the criteria laid down by Ryanair for the flights, I searched and there were none. This is the reply I received from the ASA.
Dear Mr []
Your complaint about Ryanair website
Thank you for your recent complaint about a sales promotion appearing on the Ryanair website.
Unfortunately, the ASA is unable to help you further on this occasion as we do not regulate sales promotions appearing on this website. Let me explain. Our Code only applies to UK advertisers or advertisers with a UK based office taking significant advertising decisions. In this case, Ryanair are based in Ireland and they do not have any UK based office. Therefore, their website promotions are considered to be foreign media and this falls outside of our remit. However, there is an equivalent body to whom you can complain who may be able to help you. You can contact them using the details here. [http://www.asai.ie/complain.asp]
I am sorry that we have been unable to help you, but thank you for taking the time and trouble to contact us with your concerns.
Yours sincerely
Karen Harms
Care With Browser Windows
I discovered that buying single tickets, UK-Italy and then Italy-UK, would be slighlty cheaper than buying a return. After doing all the comparisons I started booking and I had two separate Internet Explorer screens open. I completed the booking for the outgoing flight, which would cost me ? 153; that was the figure that appeared on the page with my credit card details when I clicked. The final screen however, showed that I had booked a return flight for ? 309.60. I had no screen open for a return flight, as I had closed it previously; my other screen with the single Italy-UK flight was open separately and not yet completed. How did they do that??? Just as well I still wanted to come back – if I had decided to book my flight back later or with somebody else I would have instead got stuck with a flight I had only enquired about but did not want!
I then booked another flight, which also would have been cheaper as two singles, but I decided not to risk any problems and went simply for the return straight away.
I could have saved ? 15-20 (depending on the euro exchange rate at the time) overall on these two flights.
Error on Printing Boarding Card
We, me and my wife flew from Torp- Sandefjord to London Stansted in July 2009, and did excactly as the internet booking instructed us to do. However, everytime we tried to print out our boardingcard, a message popped up with the text "internal server error" so finally we gave up.
Once we came to the desk at Torp, we received our boardingcard and tickets and enjoyed our stay in London the coming weekend.
The real problem came at Stansted when we headed back home, we just could not get the boarding card from the selfservice machine, and after standing more than 30 minutes in a long line in front the Ryanairdesk the Ryanair-lady said we could not get it there, we had to buy it from a ticket desk, nearby at the airport.
At this time our level of stress started because the time was running out. Finally we manished to buy a new boardingcard for both of us, but manished to get 3 minutes late for bringing our main luggage trough the check in desk..
We stood if front of the same Ryanairdesk again, but obviously it was not correct Ryanairdesk. It was the Ryanair at our backside, eventough Ryanair staff told us to get to the desk in front. . After a painstaking discussion we gave up and bought new tickets the day after, paid for our luggage and spended the night at a local hotel.
Staff at the airport sympatized and confirmed our bad feeling about whats just happened to us. I just can't forget the lady who said " oh, Ryanair creates such a mess"
We came back after our night at the hotel and checked in with our referencenumber, and the new problem this time was we could not get the self servicemachine to accept our luggage, the very one we already paied for the evening before at the ticketsale office.
End of story is that we payed for our luggage twice, the evening before and the morning after. I have never experienced any airline with such a useless bookingsystem. It seems to create traps in order to make passengers pay twice, and where is the responibility when the actual journey is paied for. Should we end up staying in a foreign country just because we misses a peace of A4 paper, eventough we are booked as actual passengers.
Bristol Flights in 2010 cancelled
I have just been informed that ALL Ryanair flights via Bristol in 2010 are cancelled. The only reason I know this is that I today tried to book an extra flight for my daughter to fly from Bristol to Pau a week later that my flight (which I booked 2 weeks ago). When... I searched their website it said "No flights available"...odd, I thought so I then checked my own flight date instead and again the computer said no flights.
Unless there's some big nun pilgrimage to Lourdes, it was pretty unlikely the flights were all so out, so I checked my on line booking for cancellation notification (as the website says) and all was fine. I checked my inbox and spam box (as the website says) for a cancellation email and found nothing. I finally dug deep and called the rip off customer service line....after a while I got through to an operator who informed me that "yes, all flights to Bristol in 2010 are cancelled".
Well thanks a bunch for letting me know.....(he did say that they were going to let me know but couldn't say when (yeh right)). I feel sorry for the passengers that try to check or arrive at the airport only to find the flight's been cancelled and that alternatives are all sold out or mega bucks.
Me, I’m voting with my feet and flying easyjet from Biarritz (nearer) to Gatwick (further) instead. Oh, and if you are flying Ryanair anywhere in or out of Bristol in 2010, then I'd check (eg by doing a search for your flight) as they did say "all Bristol flights in 2010 are cancelled".
Sláinte Mr O’Leary!
Ryanair Monopoly in Internal Route in Portugal
Just got back home to Faro after our first experience of using 'Brianair' - a complete nightmare which will never be repeated by us.
Unfortunately, Ryanair have the monopoly on this new internal route between the north and south of Portugal. We booked and checked in online but my husband had to change and fly over to London instead of returning with me. We were unable to change the checked bag from his name into mine so had to 'buy' another bag for the return leg. To cut a long story short we have paid for a return fare and checked bag which were unused and were also stung for 80 euro baggage charge on the return flight as I had to bring more back for my husband than he was able to take onto London. I have left a comment at the Skytrax site and would love to try and warn everyone about this latest rip off on a route which could bring new people to the full horror of the Ryanair experience. The vast majority of the other pax were Portuguese and those who needed help getting into the aircraft were being reasonably well treated by the obviously hard pressed staff. I noted that there were only three suitcases on the baggage reclaim conveyor, everyone else had wisely chosen not to take any luggage except what they could stagger onto the aircraft with..... and the number of people carrying bags and handbags etc. was interesting too .....
I asked for the Livro de Reclamacoes (Complaints book) which all businesses in Portugal have to have, and was given a slip with the Dublin address on it, so I could not even complain in the same country I was insulted in ?? Surely against the law ??
The comments I have seen about the rubbish announcements and overselling all rang true on this trip, the flight is an hour, so no drinks or food was served as time was reserved for flogging 'gifts' !! and the toilet was also unavailable for most of the flight.
The staff at Porto airport were unhelpful, and totally unwilling to offer any alternative to sort our problem. We have used Easyjet on many occasions and, quite wrongly, thought Ryanair would be similar. I would now never ever use them again, and we will revert to our more normal practice of driving up to Porto from Faro. I would be fascinated to know if you have any other comments from this new method of torturing people known as flying with Ryanair from Porto airport.
Left Behind due to Passport Dropped in Plane After Checkin
Last April , due to cheap flights being available on ryanair, and hotels cheap too, i booked a holiday to seville with my 70 year old mother whos birthday it was.
We set off early in the morning clutching our printout boarding cards with a neighbour who came with us.
all fairly uneventful til it came to boarding the flight.
At first i got stopped for having too much baggage and when i repacked and had empty bags over , was told i couldnt even put them in the bin, so determined were they to get the 30 euro extra out of me. Meanwhile my mother and neighbour had boarded the plane , but once on board my mother somehow dropped her passport and started to panic, when the staff were alerted to the situation, they were not very sympathetic at all, and rather than do the sensible thing of asking all passengers to check under their seats, they marched her off the flight as they told her without her pass port she would not be allowed in in spain, but she clearly HAD had her passport in order to board the plane.
this was a bit of a shock as it was for her birthday we were travelling.
20 minutes into the flight the passport was found by a passenger , under a seat, and handed in. We persuaded the staff to take it back to dublin and managed to make contact with my mother when we landed in seville.
out of the goodness of their hearts, they offered her another flight to malaga that day for no extra charge, and we drove 3 hours therre to collect her, and 3 hours back. thus day one taken out of holiday.
i realise it could have been much worse , but even now i was considering booking another flight with them and for some reason the phone number will not load into the booking system , therefore necessitating some kind of phone contact as there is no email address to contact about the problem, and would therefore increase the price of the flight.
Aer lingus just announced they are to lose 1000 jobs. What a Shame if Oleary gets his hands on them too. even at twice the price of ryanair it still looks more attractive.
Booking Cards: Damned if you Print, Damned if you Don't
I wish to draw your attention to two issues.
Recently, I printed off my boarding cards prior to a flight to Murcia. Unfortunately, I had a heart attack several days afterwards and was advised not to travel. When I was out of immediate danger, my wife contacted Ryanair to be informed that we had lost all our money for the flights because:
a) Ryanair does not have a cancellation policy (a patent absurdity since flights have certainly been known to have been cancelled), and
We were also advised that to claim compensation through out insurers, we would have to pay a nauseating additional fee of £17.00 to be issued with a letter of 'no show'.
At the time of writing I have communicated with Ryanair requesting, perhaps naively, a gesture of goodwill since we have flown with them very regularly over the years but I have yet to receive a reply. It seems astonishing to me that I can be left £268 out of pocket for a service I couldn't possibly use.
My intention is to pursue Ryanair for full costs through the small claims court procedure.
Re Tricks for Refusing Boarding
I wanted to add to the other comments on your site about Ryanair requiring non-EU/EEA citizens to get a 'visa check' before boarding, the only airline in the world to do this.
On a flight from Birmingham to Trapani in September 2009, I went with my husband (a UK citizen) to the check-in desk since he was checking in one bag. I am a US citizen. I put my passport and boarding pass on the counter with his. She checked his bag, checked our boarding passes. We went through security with no problem and to the gate.
When we were boarding, I was told that I could not board since I did not have a 'visa check' stamp. I panicked, and ran back to security. A very kind security agent took pity on me, said with dismay that this happens very Ryan Air flight, the walked/ran with me to the Ryanair visa check desk.
The 'visa check' is done at the same counter as all other matters: rebooking flights, lost baggage claims, and now baggage check. The security agent waited with me for 10 minutes as one staff person helped the other passengers before me. Then stamped my boarding pass without even looking at my passport. Then the airport official ran with me back to security, helped me cut to the front of the queue and I just made my flight - with seconds to spare. My husband boarded before me and they wouldn't let him wait for me. But others aren't as lucky.
I cannot think of any other reason for this policy other than to increase revenue from missed flights. The reason given by Ryanair is that they would have to absorb the cost of flying passengers denied entry back to their destination. But for passengers that do not need visas to enter the country of destination, there is absolutely no grounds for this policy.
The check-in staff saw my boarding pass and passport and didn't say a word about the visa check. Her silence made me think that everything was in order.
The other issue - raised by the security official escorting me back through security, as he does daily - is that Ryanair's policy imposes costs on the airport and burdens its staff.
Thanks for letting me vent. I've tried to investigate whether this is legal. It seems from searching the web that many people are experiencing what I did. It would be great if we could organize a campaign to put pressure on Ryanair to stop this policy.
Disabled Passengers Unwelcome on Ryanair
[Dear Ryanair] I am sure you are used to the criticism regards hidden charges, rip-off food and drink prices and all the other essential ‘extras’
- after all most of the other airlines do the same to a lesser degree.
Some of what you are doing to ‘cut costs’ have the effect of making travel with Ryanair more stressful and less pleasant than with your competitors. 15kg of checked baggage - your passengers re-packing hand luggage at the check-in desk or paying £20 per kg. Passengers with your airline are stressed yet again at having to keep checked luggage to 15kg for maybe 2 weeks holiday and will be unable to buy souvenirs on their return.
Last week in Mallorca Thomsons were advertising 20 kg of checked baggage and no ‘extra’ charges - maybe they have ‘seen the light’ - and an opportunity.
As I said at the beginning you probably brush off such criticisms but apart from the above I was most upset by the treatment by your staff in Palma on flight 6611 on 7th October.
My wife was diagnosed with MSA (please look it up) a year ago and now has to use a wheelchair much of the time but can walk with assistance (mine) for short distances and needs to use the toile t on average twice on a 2 hour flight.
At Palma on 7th there were 2 disabled passengers - my wife and another lady. I was surprised when I was told that disabled passengers would be boarded last. By the time we entered the aircraft most of the other passengers were seated and all looking forward. I felt the humiliation for my wife as she stumbled to her seat in row 5 in front of a 100 or so strangers. We could not understand either why we were seated in row 5 when the other disabled passenger was seated in row 2 - rows 3 & 4 were completely empty making her 2 trips to the toilet unnecessarily difficult and embarrassing.
ARE DISABLED PASSENGERS NOT WELCOME ON RYANAIR?
OR DO THEY HAVE TO PAY FOR A SEAT AND PRIORITY BOARDING?
This treatment more than the ‘hidden costs’ will certainly be taken into account next time we book a flight.
Rant by Frequent Flyer
It’s time the travelling public stood up to Mr. O’Leary and his cohorts. Ryanair, the People’s Champion they would have you believe but what is it really all about ? Michael O’Leary the megalomaniac and highly controversial CEO of Ryanair would have us believe he’s doing us all a favour. I mean, he’s screwing all of his suppliers such as the Dublin Airport Authority and many other airport authorities for lower landing fees, he’s canned the check-in desks at Dublin Aiport resulting in job losses, he’s cleverly hedging his oil prices (most of the time anyway), and he’s eliminating certain costs in his business so that he can PASS on the savings to US in the form of lower fares. Well Bollox to that, does he really think we are that stupid ?
All Michael O’Leary cares about is his company’s bottom line, his P&L and ultimately his share price. He has amassed a personal fortune which has elevated him to the level of prime plonker. He’s in the land of the egocentric, herding his prize charolais cattle, giving you and I the two fingers as he whizzes up the bus lane in his “taxi” and quaffing fine wine and gourmet dinners as he watches his Gigginstown House Stud horses enthral the crowds trackside. War of Attrition, how apt. This mans brinkmanship knows no end, his head to head confrontations with the country’s politicians is all merely a distraction. How dare he think he is doing us all a favour when in reality he is lining us all up for a good scalping.
As a businessman myself, on a much more modest scale, I had always respected Michael O’Leary and often drooled at the thought of emulating his success. His ability to make things happen was incredible, his drive, his ambition and his dedication to the cause was equally incredible. Unfortunately he didn’t know when to stop and there’s only so far one can go on such a mission before the very people who helped him to build his airline (joe public) are the very people that he’s now targeting to line his pockets even more. We’ve all heard the term “robbing peter to pay paul”. Well what O’Leary is doing is tantamount to daylight robbery.
Picture this. I am a frequent flyer, clocking up 50 or so flights a year. I have it down to a fine art in terms of getting to the airport, checking in, baggage, security e.t.c. I recently went on a family holiday which was for two weeks with my partner and our young baby. So, I arrive to the Ryanair baggage desk having already checked in online (for a fee). We had two large bags to check in (for a fee) and two pieces of carry on luggage. I knew one of the bags was overweight but was levelled when the Ryanair “drone” behind the desk told me I had to pay €255 for excess weight. My reaction was one of total disbelief, I mean the fare for the three of us was €400 and this included baggage, checkin and various other fees. I tried to reason with the “drone” and I call her a drone because that’s exactly what she was like. She came out of the Michael O’Leary school of pomposity and arrogance. “Well sir, you packed the bag yourself and you agreed to our terms and conditions. You can remove some items from the bag if you wish sir”. Bollox ! Have you ever tried going on a two week holiday with a fourteen month old baby with 15kg in your bag ? Sure the damn bag weighed 5kg before we put anything into it!. “It states clearly in the terms and conditions that it will cost €15 per kg sir”. So, I duly read the itinerary and terms and conditions which I had conveniently printed out. Of course when I got to the section that dealt with excess baggage fees the text read “click here for details of charges”. Maybe Michael O’Leary will make his next fortune when he figures out how to connect a piece of paper to the internet. The document I printed out had everything else detailed on it, except the cost of excess baggage. Another smart arsed tactic by O’Leary. Anyway, I went to the payment desk to settle my excess baggage fee only to be met by another Ryanair “drone”. Once again I was met with the usual O’Leary-esque bullshit. Lead by example. O’Leary is spawning these people, God help us. Have a coke and a smile is what I say, to hell with these sour faces and dull personalities. O’Leary needs to teach his people how to deal with the public and would do well to stop putting them in a position of constantly having to defend his company’s rip-off tactics.
So, not long after I pay my €255 excess baggage fee I am strolling towards security. My blood pressure has just about restored to normal levels when I suddenly get a hot flush, palpatations and dizziness in my head. Jesus, I thought, we have to fly home in two weeks and we’ll have the same luggage to take back on the return leg. Another €255 to get our asses home. Oh My God I thought, €510 just for baggage on a €400 flight, €80 of which already covers the basic baggage fee. So, essentially I am paying €590 to fly two bags to Portugal and back but its only costing me €320 (including handlings fees and taxes) to fly myself, my partner and baby ? I somehow suspect it would be cheaper to ship the bags by DHL and meet them there. I can safely say, the first three days of my holiday were a non event as my blood was still boiling as I plotted to sort this guy out. The advertised cost of my flight was a total of €160 but I ended up paying a total of €910 - Why are these people allowed to do this ? I mean, can you imagine your local motor dealer advertising a new car for €2,999 but when you go in to buy it you have to pay extra if you’d like a steering wheel in it, a little more if you’d like seats and a little more just to drive it off the forecourt. I think you’re with me on this.
Bring back the days of the IR£150 air fare where at least you knew what you were getting. Who do you think you are fooling O’Leary ? Have you ever flown with your children ? Probably not methinks. You probably wouldn’t spend the money.
The next time you hear O’Leary ranting on about landing charges, oil prices, baggage handling costs and other anciliary costs, always remember all he is thinking about is his bottom line. He tells us all he is passing on these savings in the form of lower fares. Maybe so, but the Lord giveth and taketh away with the other hand. Of course we can all fly to Nice or Lisbon or Rome for €5, once we stump up the remaining handling fee, insurance, baggage fee, check-in fee, excess baggage in some cases and of course the priority boarding fee. God be with the days where a woman with a child was allowed to board a flight first. He is now running out of options. Apart from the €5 cup of coffee and the €5 soggy sandwich what about his failed attempt to rent personal DVD players on his flights. Now, after years of being told its not safe to use mobile phones or other electronic devices whilst airborne, its now suddenly OK on Ryanair flights now that they’ve figured out a way to charge us for it ! You can use your mobile phone but you can’t use an iPhone or Blackberry in Airplane mode – go figure !
Michael O’Leary you are a joker of the highest order. Whilst you have castigated your government and others, often referring to them as muppets, the truth is you are the biggest muppet of them all. You are deceptive in the extreme. You are abusing your position to take advantage of vulnerable people. You are a thief.
Welcome to the Ryanair HoneyTrap.
*My trip to Portugal was the first time I had flown with Ryanair in approximately two years and it was my last flight with the Honeytrap airline.
More Tricks for Refusing Boarding
I was booked on Ryanair flight FR113 to Dublin on Friday, October 2. Upon presenting my boarding pass and passport, I was informed I could not board as my boarding pass had not been stamped by the Ryanair check in desk to confirm my Australian passport had a valid visa for Ireland. This is in spite of the fact that Australians do NOT require a visa, and that I hold an Irish resident permit.
I attempted to explain this to the gate attendant, who then ‘phoned his manager. The manager apparently confirmed I must return to the check in desk. This was not possible as the flight was due to depart in five minutes.
By this stage, I had found and produced my British passport, which he also refused to accept as I had quoted submitted details of my Australian passport on the original booking!
I travel frequently between Ireland and the UK with Aer Lingus, and other carriers, and I have never been asked to produce “proof” of an Irish visa at check-in.
When I asked for both his name, and that of his supervisor, he refused.
I consequently had to book a later Aer Lingus flight costing £249.00, and missed two business meetings.
I have since learned, this is not a requirement of the Irish authorities and that Ryanair is the only airline with this requirement, which I understand they have on recently introduced.
This sits rather oddly with their lack of check in desks, and attempts to by-pass these by having passengers check in on-line.
It is worth noting I spoke with staff from Servisair and Aer Lingus at the time, and it seems the prevailing view is this is yet another cynical ploy by Ryanair to extract more money from passengers unnecessarily missing flights, and having to book another (far more expensive) one the same day.
No Refund of Taxes
A party of 9 of us were due from Stansted to Kerry in August but one member had to drop-out several weeks before we departed. We phoned Ryanair to tell them this and request a refund of taxes as they had charged us but would not incur these. We were told we could not submit a claim until we returned. We also noticed this person had by chance been allocated an item of baggage and asked for this to be changed to another member of the party. Again they said it couldn't be done!
On our return we wrote to claim back the tax and the baggage charge we had initially paid but been charged again at the airport. We got the usual response that the admin charges exceeded the amount claimed and the baggage charges were not refundable as per their terms and conditions. I really want to fight this on principle. The taxes and charges they listed on our invoice came to £49 per person and add the extra £20 for baggage we had to pay twice and Ryanair have taken £69 from us. How can they get away with saying only the government tax is refundable for a start - all the taxes and fees they have charged were not incurred as the passenger didn't fly, so they should all be refundable. Likewise the baggage fee - the passenger didn't travel so the fee should be refunded.
Do you think it is worth taking to a small claims court? I know their T&Cs appear to cover them but I feel these are unfair and need to be challenged!
True Cost of Flying with Ryanair
You compare flight seats on the Internet and Ryanair looks very good in comparison with SAS, KLM, Lufthansa etc. Ryanair also fly from city airports to city airports and this is of course good for environment, travel time and comfort.
So you start the online booking and add on just keep on coming and just everything is additional. You want to be covered so you buy the travel insurance to a reasonable cost. When the booking is finished it's still acceptable, but hen you have to check-in online in order to get your boarding card (not having this at the gate will charge you 40€ each way). The total fare that seemed to be quite competitive compared with SAS, KLM and Lufthansa turns out to be more expensive. SAS charged 5250sek for the same trip and Ryanair charged 3816sek when compared and as you can see the final cost with Ryanair exceeds the SAS price with nearly 1000sek.
PAYMENT DETAILS
Now the problem starts.
A slip on the desktop when one of the passengers works his online check in result in the booking number ending up in the passport box as well. Ok, the passenger should have seen this but the human error is present and the Internet site doesn’t react to a “must be common mistake” with the booking number in two places. It's like they want you to make mistake so that they can charge you money. Once the check in is done there’s no way to adjust a simple mistake and you’re in the hands of the heavy charge phone support. And you must solve this prior the check in at the airport or they will charge you 40€ each way to solve the boarding card issue.
There’s of course no Swedish support or local support centre.
You now have to call Ryanair on 0900 20 20 240 for a charge of 4sek per minute. They will let you know the charge of this phone call and then they will let the phone ring for a loooong time. You try again with the same result…After 5-7 tries you get through and the first thing they do is to ask if they can put you on hold. Before you even get a chance to answer you’re on hold. When you finally get through they tell you that they can’t help you on this number and direct you to 0900 20 20 245.
Calling 0900 20 20 245 will charge 15sek per minute!
Same thing over again and it will take many tries and waiting before you get through and can get support to solve the passport number issue.
To make things worse your business partner on the destination calls and state that there’s a problem with the agreed visit date and we ought to cancel the visit and find a new date.
You are now back to square one.
You are calling Ryanair on 0900 20 20 240 for a charge of 4sek per minute and hope that it will be enough to pay 4sek/min to get support. After 5-7 tries and some waiting on hold you are told to call 0900 20 20 245 for booking support.
You know the drill… Try until you get through, wait on hold and then they will tell you they can’t do nothing for you and that you money spent on tickets, luggage, check in fee’s, administration etc are not refundable.
When you state that you bought the Ryanair online insurance they will direct you to Ryanair website to find contact information to the insurance company. There’s just no help to get from Ryanair phone support.
You visit the insurance page and you print the insurance policy and the printer doesn’t stop until EIGHT pages later!Horrified you realise that most likely you’re screwed over by Ryanair and the insurance that you paid for is worth less than toilet paper. There’s no phone number to the insurance company.
So you once again call the 0900 20 20 245 number and spends another 150sek to the Ryanair support just to ask if they have a phone number to the insurance support. They will politely state the insurance company as if it is not under Ryanair wings, but you’ll get a link to an Email support. ryanair.refunds@axa-travel-insurance.com.
You write an Email to this address 11th September but you get no response. Two days later you write another Email and include the first Email.Still no response! A third Email is sent the 14th September but of course the response is none.
We have know come to the conclusion that we’re fucked by Ryanair and we will see our tickets and expenses as lost and a valuable lesson learned. We will never again use Ryanair and the Email sent to Ryanair will be forwarded to every person in our contacts and it is now published on our website!
“A satisfied customer will tell their family and closest friends, but a dissatisfied customer tells the world if he doesn't get support!” Maybe something small for Ryanair to consider in the future.
Thank you very much Ryanair!
Success in Reducing Change Fee
I made a booking yesterday evening for 4 people costing €160 in total. In my haste i got the destinations back to front; travelling from Eindhoven to Dublin return rather than what I actually wanted - from Dublin to Eindhoven return. I panicked when i saw that to change the booking online was going to cost me an additional €450!!!
Thanks to your website i used the number 00 3531 2480856 and got through to a relatively helpful woman who said she would change the booking to the right destinations for €113, Now that is still extortionate but a hell of a lot better than i expected. Not only that....but ten minutes later i realised i had entered the name of friend wrong. I called the number back and they changed it for me without charge. They told me that had i rang half an hour later i would have been charged full price for all these changes so I would advise anyone else who makes mistakes to get in touch with Ryanair as quickly as possible after they are made to try to avoid high charges.
thanks for all the helpful info on your website!!!
Rude Onboard Staff
I made a formal complaint against a member of Ryanair staff.
I asked her politely to see if the AC could be turned down soon after taking off from Ibiza, as it was blowing right over my head and I was very, cold, and so were other people who were next to me. About 30 minutes later it was still blowing the same cold air and I approached her again…..her response was utterly manner less and abrupt. This is her reply to me I have only got one pair of hands as you can see I am busy serving soon as I get a chance I will ask the captain……Oh no body else is complaining seems like you are the only cold one on board!!!!!!!.
At this stage she was about 4 rows away from the captain and was travelling towards the end of the plane……by the time she had finished it was almost time to land into England.
I am very surprised at the way in which she spoke to me I have never been spoken to in that way on any airline ever in my life.
It has spoilt my good memories and the relaxed feeling that I had on my holiday.
Excess Baggage Fee
This is my latest experience of flying with Ryanair, this morning from
Stansted to Genoa on the 9.50 flight.
I was travelling with my two daughters ages 9 and 12 and we had checked in
one suitcase each. At the baggage drop I was delighted to see that the first
suitcase weighed only 13,8 kilos and pointed this out to my daughter (speaking to her in Italian, as is our habit). The other two suitcases, I was told, were over the 15 kilo limit so that I would have to remove something from them or pay £15 per kilo excess. Hence I asked the "lady" if I could retrieve the first suitcase which sat at a distance of 6 inches from her elbow since, being underweight, I could swap around the baggage and solve the problem between the cases and our hand luggage the excess could be eliminated.
The reply came that the first suitcase was at its limit of 15 kilos and could
not be returned to me: pay the excess or remove something from your suitcases.
I contested the weight since we had clearly read 13,8 kilos but was denied
access to the suitcase in question.
At the boarding gate we were told repeatedly to "move on, move on, quickly,
move on" to which I pointed out that they were not dealing with cattle but
paying passengers.
True that it is a low cost airline, but we do actually still pay to fly
Ryanair. This should entitle us to normal good manners on behalf of Ryanair
staff, perhaps not the red carpet but general politeness would be good enough
to start off with.
Young Women Abandoned in Beauvais
Last night, my daughter and three of her female friends were cast aside by Ryan Air in Paris at the so called airport, Beauvais. I say 'cast aside' because that is most accurate description of how they were treated.
My daughter and her three companions are all 18 years old women on their 1st trip abroad, and until yesterday enjoying every minute. As I am sure you are aware, their late-evening flight back to Glasgow Prestwick from Beauvais on Thursday 13th August was cancelled by Ryan Air at the very last minute. Ryan Air representatives in Beauvais explained their options. A very limited financial refund or alternative travel with Ryan Air over the next few days and no assistance with either food or accommodation or travel to suitable & safe areas where they could find overnight accommodation.
Ryan Air's options of alternative travel were far from acceptable.
As you might imagine there were four sets of extremely concerned Parents at home in Scotland after midnight with no access to any Ryan Air contacts. Ryan Air's total lack of concern for our daughter's wellbeing left us with no option but to arrange alternative and definite travel home for the four young women ensuring they travelled together. This we have arranged through an alternative Airline.
While I appreciate that Ryan Air is a no frills airline and logistical problems can arise, I am shocked at the total lack of concern and responsibility shown by Ryan Air to keep young travelling women safe. I would appreciate an immediate response from you on this matter.
Refund of Vouchers
I purchased two sets of 200euro Ryanair vouchers on line in April of this year. I bought these cause a friends mum told me that by paying with vouchers you could avoid the credit card fee - i thought I would be able to pull a fast one on Mick O'L but to my horror I realised - after buying them that you could only use them to purchase flights for the person named - the flights i had intended to buy were 2x200 euro flights to spain, one for me, and one for my boyfriend. Although I was able to buy my flight I could not buy my boyfriends flight because the max number of vouchers you can use per transaction is 200 so I could not buy the two flights in the same transaction....bottom line was that I wanted a refund on one of the 200 euro set of vouchures. I phoned the ryanair line the next day and told them (at my expense) I wanted a refund under the online 'distance selling regulation' which is a law that gives a 7 days cool off period for any purchases made on the internet (except flights and perishable foods). The girl on the phone was pretty clueless and just said no she'd never heard of the a rule.
I called the consumer advice bureau who that since i had bought a VOUCHER and not a flight they felt I had the right to cancel and get a full refund under the distance selling regulation.
I wrote to Ryanair outlining the case in full and they said I was not entitled to a refund - the letter was blunt.
I spoke to the CAB again and they advised to consider going to the small claims court.
The courts register contacted me last week saying that Ryanair decided to refund the full 200euro - this was refunded onto my credit card today (I wasn't gonna believe it til i saw i)
Anyway I am delighted - but naturally enough they have not put anything in writing to me - a refund is a sufficient admission of error for me!! Clearly ryanair should not be saying customers are not entitled to a refund with vouchers - the 7 day cooling off period clearly applies - I think people should know about this
Checkin Chaos
I flew from Liverpool to Treviso on a trip to Venice. The outbound check in and flight ran relatively smoothly.
The return flight was a nightmare. The airport bus from Piazza Roma was swift (as Italian transport can be) and Ryanair passengers alighted exchanging tales of their Venice experiences (in holiday mood).
Then the rot set in as unsuspecting travellers ascended the escalator to join a massive check in queue that spanned the airport. The 'baggage drop in', as Ryanair call it, desk area was like world war three. There was just one person manning the desk and around 300 people queuing.
We stood for one and a half hours with doubts that we would catch our flight. By some miracle we did. Travelling with Ryanir with checked in baggage is like entering a parallell universe. Concern for people is non-existent. It is patently evident that Ryanair is really a shuttle-bus service that cannot and does not cater or care for travellers who need to check in baggage.
People were on the verge of fainting in the heat of the queue. It was apparent that, had someone keeled over, Ryan air would have had a wheel barrow or large shovel to hand to sweep up the inconvenient passenger. No concern for humans or humanity whatsoever. Ryanair creates and appears to revel in chaos and misery.
Argument for Not Flying Ryanair
Recently flew Ryanair from Venice to Trapani in Italy. Not the horror story of some of your other letters, but definitely got the feeling I was being worked over - especially on the return trip. Their business model is clearly to rope you in with a cheap fare then set as many traps as possible to charge you extra fees.
The cattle car boarding process is a free for all to get to your seat with five consecutive passport checks (I was only checked twice on my international flight with Alitalia. Still don't understand the logic behind it. The priority boarding carrot they hold out is just another way to carve 10 euros out of you for nothing. It was a total scramble by the time we reached the plane.
Checking in on the return flight I exceeded their ridiculous weight limit by 4 kg. Had to scramble to transfer 4 kg of stuff to my carry on bag. Got that through their mandatory "fit it in the rack" check only to have the zipper get caught and the bag ripped open when the attendant forcibly yanked it out. Ruined a perfectly good suitcase, only to be told by the flight attendant on the plane that it was too big and would have to be checked.
Fortunately was able to stand my ground successfully on this as it had passed their own checking process and informed her that the contents were breakable. At least she backed down.
My wife, who I only recently was able to dissuade from washing out and reusing plastic wrap still thinks it is a good deal. I think it's a totally sleazy way of doing business. Enough so that I started looking on line and found your site and at least one other so was gad to hear it wasn't just me.
At least now I have the ammunition to argue against ever flying them again. My son took the train for the same trip and had a wonderful time.
Getting Through to Correct Mistake
Thanks to your web site I eventually got through to an almost humanoid
Most of the emails don’t respond and most of the tel. numbers are no reply.
However.
"More than one correspondent has had success calling the Irish Number 0818303030 (From the UK this would be 00353818303030). One has suggested that you always get through to someone if you try option 6. "
This one works.
Listen to all the options (that costs Money)
Then select and wait, in my case only couple of minutes (I live is Spain)
Then fairly helpful.
In my case our confirmation omitted my wife’s surname.
So Steven corrected and confirmed it, then sent a new confirmation (this cost me 20 euros for the trouble).
The new confirmation displayed only half my wife’s surname.!
Back to the Phone ,Andrea this time.” Yes the booking shows her whole name maybe the computer doesn’t have enough room to display the whole name”.
“Don’t worry when you go to the online check it will probably be alright”.
Good time to find out its NOT!!
On my Insistance a new and finally correct confirmation was sent.
So I will try now to get back my 20 euros!
£70 Fee for Mistake
Having spent hours trying to find cheap flights to get to Barcelona from Glasgow for a funeral, I finally got one with RA for 2 passengers. As i printed out my confirmation i realised I had booked the day after (I must have hit the button by accident to change date). I quickly remedied this though online through their site/link, but was then charged £35.00 per person for ammending the flight. Even though I made the relevant changes within 15 minutes. How can they possibly charge me an extra £70 for such a basic error. They claim it's an administration fee??? I CHANGED IT ONLINE AT MIDNIGHT WITHIN 15 MINUTES OF MAKING THE 1ST BOOKING!!! What possible HUMAN administration could have been done in that 15 minute window to result in £70 worth of extra fees??? i'd understand if it was days or weeks after and i had forced someone else to lose out, but I acted extremely quickly to avoid any harm.
I called the next morning to see about a refund, 0871 246 0000 and got a very unsympathetic and very rude Spanish woman (I kid you not, she just did not give a damn and actually seemed to get a kick out of my error which had cost me £70 of which I really cannot afford) who basically told me tough luck, it was my own fault and reluctantly then gave me a Refunds Dept number... 0035315081702. The Irish lady who answered this time was very helpful and pleasant and gave me an adress and told me that there was a chance they'd reverse the charge due to me realising my mistake so quickly and changing it...
Refund Dept Ryanair
She also gave me a fax number which I realised was the same number I just called her on 0035315081702 so my faxes didn't go through.
I used the fax on your page +35318121676 which did go through and hopefully they received it. I also sent a letter to the above postal address. i now lie and wait.
Update 4 August 2009
Gets worse... I've only ever printed off the page at confirmation of flight... so I got the 2 x £40 fee each for not having boarding pass obviously... (which is exact same printout info minus a barcode!!!), the amount of people at Prestwick paying this fine was ludicrous and unnaceptable... and extremely unfair. I am very internet savvy.. and even I didn't realise the tiny paragrape that asks you to print online check-in off.
Worst was at Girona airport in Barcelona... the number in the queue paying either £40 fines or baggage fee was disgraceful... surely that MUST tell them that it is not advertised well enough of their new policies. The £40 fee was the main one, and brits, italian, spanish... they were all forced to pay. I really felt sorry for the family of 6 in the queue at Girona.
What I'd love to know ... WHAT IS BEING SPEEDED UP. THE QUEUES WHERE THE SAME, THE SPEED OF THE QUEUES GOING DOWN WAS THE SAME... WHAT HAS THIS POLICY CHANGED???
You should have seen the confusion when 7 queues where merged down to 3 without ANY warning at GIR AIR lol
My experience cost me an extra £150 for cheap flights.
I'd love to know how much better off Ryanair are bussiness wise with the new fees added into heir profits... and don't tell me for a second that they are justified with "extra staffing" or "administration".
Falling Foul of Weight Limits
Ryan Air very much has the attitude that if you have a problem with its third-world business practices, you must be stupid. We followed all of their rules for online check-in and accessing boarding passes only to be told that we didn’t have a firm enough grasp of the English language to have done it correctly and therefore they were going to charge us 40 euros.
Then they claimed our bags were overweight and charged us 15 euros per kilo. This turned out not to be accurate — at check-in for our Delta flight two hours later in Madrid we learned our bags were only 1 kilo over the limit.
Given that even a bankrupt airline such as Delta prefers having customers as opposed to having no customers, pissing them off and treating them like idiots, Delta allowed us to shift out belongings from suitcase to suitcase so as not to be charged extra. We also were charged for two bags we didn’t have and were not allowed priority boarding, for which we had already paid.
All in all, it was a disaster, and I will never fly Ryan Air again, nor allow anyone I care about to be their customer. That would include all people who believe in human dignity and decency. On the flight, it was freezing, and even with my daughter’s teeth chattering we were simply told in a cold, dispassionate voice that they had no blankets.
Stranded in Nantes
I have just returned from a 2 week family holiday in France. Travelling with me were my wife who is 6 months pregnant my 2 kids aged 4 and 2 and both my parents mid 60’s .
After we had arrived at Nantes airport ,checked in and passed through passport control and security Ryanair informed us that our flight was unable to land in Nantes due to bad weather and had been redirected to poitier airport.
We were then informed that we need to make our way back to arrivals to collect our bags and we would be transported to poitier airport via bus. On collecting our bags we were then informed that Ryanair has now cancelled the flight from poitier to Shannon and that we would need to log on to ryanair.com to apply for a refund ...........
I now found myself and my heavily pregnant wife my 2 kids and my parents after a day travelling already stranded in nantes airport compliments of Ryanair.
We were not assisted in any way from Ryanair staff. We had to wait in line with the other 200 people for an internet kiosk to try and book any further travel arrangements.
In a nutshell what we had to do is as follows ,2 taxis to a hotel near the train station €70, Overnight accommodation €135, rail tickets €275, Aerlingus return flights from paris €1350, car rental from Dublin airport to Shannon airport €91. A total cost of €1921. €400 of which we may receive from Ryanair as a refund for the 1 way flight.
I am well aware that Ryanair will claim that this was due to bad weather but what reason can they possibly have for not delaying the flight from poitier (this flight left poitier airport empty ) until we had all been transported their to make our return flight home.
This surely can not be allowed to continue and Ryanair have to be made responsible to get people home as these people booked a return flight with hem and are now at their mercy.
Lack of Care During Delay
On July 16 when we were delayed at Ryanair’s Bezier Airport. Initially the announcement was that the delay would be for 2 to 3 hours but we received no other information for 6 hours when we were asked to board. We were told we could buy something from the bar at the airport but we had no euros and Ryanair did not provide us with opportunity or advice on changing money. Moreover the bar had sold out.
The airport did not have enough seating so our two toddlers had to lay on the stones in the airport atrium.
Eventually Ryanair announced that the problem was a ‘bird strike’ and we could board. We were not even provided with water on the flight and were told that water in the toilet was not potable.
Ryanair did offer their in-flight snacks for those with money and prepared to pay their exorbitant prices. No offer of compensation was every offered nor was there any advise on how do make a complaint about such an obvious abrogation of their duty of care.
Denied Boarding and Stranded
COMING BACK
From Barcelona Girona(GRO) to Aarhus (AAR)
Sun, 28/JUNE/2009 Flight 9385 Depart GRO at 06:50 and arrive AAR at 09:30
On the 28th of June 2009 we were denied boarding on flight FR 9385 of the staff from Ryanair. We arrived at the Girona airport 5:00 am. We could not find out what queue we should join, to get our suitcases on the plane, because of lacking information on the display panels. Later, one of us saw some passengers in a queue we had flown together with from Aarhus to Girona on the 21th of June 2009. We joined that queue because we thought it must be the right queue. The queue was very slow in progress and it did not help that the employee of Ryanair let several people jump over the queue. First 1 couple with whom she discussed some time before she let them pass. Then again 1 couple more. And in the end she discussed a lot of time with a black man and his family but she did not let him pass. The next thing we discovered a little later was a family with children who was denied access to the plain. Then another family was denied access to the plain. They had one child of 2 years old and a baby of 6 months. And I and my family 6 persons got the same treatment. A that time the clock was about 6:25. We tried the best we could to get on the plane that left Girona Airport 6:50. But the staff of Ryanair was very rude and denied us to board the plane. A lady from Ryanair claimed that she had called out for Girona – Aarhus over the speaker system. But neither I and my family had heard it. And also the other families did not hear it. Because she did not do it. And if she had done it, it was not very helpful. Because when she said: “I have called out for Girona – Aarhus”. She could not say it in proper English nor Danish.
On the 1th of July 2009 before I and my family left Girona Airport, I discovered that the last passenger boarded the plane at 6:41, just 9 minutes before take off. So on 28th June 2009, there was sufficient time for me and my family and the two other families to board the plane. The reason why we were denied boarding, must simply have been overbooking.
PS. All families was treated very rude of the staff of Ryanair. We got no help at all. We were all just stranded in Girona Airport. Had to overnight there for 3 nights, if we did not find other solutions. A cheap flight became a very expensive flight, extra costs was about 14000 DKK
Ghastly Experience
I had a terrible experience using Ryanair from London, Stansted in June 2008.
I live and work in Australia and had to fly from London to Holland (return) to help unveil a War Memorial to a relative of mine killed during World War Two.Obviously flying from Australia to Europe is a long journey and I knew how much planning was involved. I organised the trip several Months in advance and after having paid for the long haul flight, I tried foolishly to cut costs by ordering a cheap on-line ticket for my trip to Indhoven in Holland. Ryanair being cheap carrier seemed like the right choice at the time and the location meant that few carriers actually flew into Indhoven. I think from memory Air France was the only other possibility. How I wish I had chosen them.
The flight number was FR9273 departing from Stanstead on June 13th. I walked up to the check in desk and watched the lady weigh my suitcase...too heavy she exclaimed..over 5 kilos over the accepted weight and as a result I would have to pay for that.
In addition to this, I also had to pay considerably more because they claimed I did not declare my extra luggage when bokking the ticket. I thought that was odd given that I had travelled all the way from Brisbane, Australia and had planned this trip with text book precision...like a military exercise. I had to as I was on my own and this was a very special trip. Well, it didn't matter how long or loud my protests were. They didn't budge and were doggedly unwilling to make any concessions on my part. After having my bag weighed and being given a slip of paper, I then had to shuffle over to the Ticket desk Agent where I was to discover how much I would have to pay. Well, the shock of the charge, which was well over the cost of the entire return flight, for just one bag, threw me into a tail-spin. I must confess to muttering an unpleasant four letter word under my breath and the clerk astounded me by asking me if I was going to apologise. I honestly felt like I was back in primary school. Apologise? What on Earth for?? I couldn't believe it. First of all the comment was not even directed to her, nor was it out loud. Well, I must confess to being stunned at first. I did refuse partly because I am unaccustomed to being spoken to like a small child and then being chastised so publicly. She then crossed her arms in dismissal and told me that she 'could not be bothered' to serve me.....!!!!
The rulebook on customer service had obviously been thrown out off the window here and this glorified clerk seemed to know that she had absolute authority to treat me as she wished and that there would be no comeback. No politneness, no discretion and no attempt to handle the situation professionally.
If the trip had not been so very important to me, I would have simply ripped up the ticket on principle and thrown the pieces at her...57 pounds was hardly a kings Ransom. But 60 extra pounds for 1 piece of undeclared luggage?? That was absurd.
I later went on to the web-site where I had purchased the ticket to see if I may have failed to declare my additional luggage. The option is quite clear and is already ticked when you make the booking, which means that I would have had to deliberatly untick the option. Why would I when I had successfully booked several domestic and Internationial flights and travelled halfway around the World without any difficulties? My Father is a retired airline crewman with 40 years experience and my Brother is an airline pilot in the U.S. so I'd like to think I know a thing or two about commercial flying.
It took me a long time to recover from that experience. I did write in to Ryanair to complain but it was a complete and utter waste of my time. They don't seem to accept any responsibilty for their actions and tried to give me the company clap-trap on high levels of training and customer service...of which there was evidently none on that day at Stanstead.
I don't know who that woman was but she and the airline she works for, has my complete and utter contempt. I would never, ever use them again, nor I hope would any other member of my immediate Family.
The moral of this story is to be very, very careful about the airlines you use and the amount they charge you...it may seem like a good idea at the time but the old adage still stands...you get what you pay for....
Refund of Checkin Fee
We booked flights with Ryanair in April to fly on 11 July. As we will be travelling with an infant under 2 years old, airport check in (rather than online check in) was at the time of booking mandatory but the Ryanair website advised us that we would be entitled to a refund of the airport check in fees (which amount to £40 for return flights) by applying to head office after flying. I checked this with Ryanair customer services by telephone and was advised that we would indeed be entitled to a refund.
in May Ryanair changed its rules so that passengers travelling with children under 2 can now check in online. The website has been amended and references to the refund of airport check in fees as been removed. As we booked before the rule change, we believe that we are entitled to a refund because we were obliged to pay for airport check in at time of booking.We have therefore contacted Ryanair customer services by phone to check the position. The first time I called the person I spoke to (Maria) denied that refunds had ever been available and refused to put me through to her supervisor to discuss this. I called again a little while later (this time I spoke to Andy Viesco) and was advised that we should check in at the airport and I could apply for a refund by writing to the head office explaining that we had booked and paid the airport check in fee before the May rule change. Andy Viesco didn't commit himself by saying we'd definitely get a refund, though, so I'm still worried we won't get the refund.
I am flagging this because it may catch other readers of your site. Any suggestions as to how we can be sure of getting our refund would be very gratefully received. In particular I'm not sure whether we should check in online now, because I don't want head office saying we could have done so but as we checked in at the airport we won't get the refund... I know it's only £40, but it's the principle as much as anything!
i'll never use Ryanair again.
Delay and Diversion from Zaragoza
just found this page and would like to explain what happened last
year in a Ryanair flight to Zaragoza (Spain).
Since them, I really boycott this company by telling my friends not to use or just using alternative ways, even if that coast me little more money and time, but peace of mind!!
Thanks and keep complaining to this bad company!
Change in ID Requirements
Ryanair have now changed their terms and conditions in such a way that there will no longer be any check-in allowed at the airport, as well as withdrawing the ability of passengers to use driving license for internal flights. Although this wasn't made completely clear at the time of reservation, as I had booked my flights with Ryanair a week after the new terms and conditions had kicked in, with no warning on website or otherwise until my flight confirmation had come through. When I spoke to the reservations team they were very unhelpful stating that there was nothing they could do. When I asked for customer service department contact details they refused to give me anything other than fax/post details, even the supervisor was unable to do this (I pushed him, and apparently he was the most senior person working in that building which was a blatant lie). I have sent an email and am hopeful, but not expectant, of a reply.
This change in policy regarding ID will hurt Ryanair a lot, as most of their internal flight passengers would use driving license as ID and not bother taking their passports with them. Another case of Ryanair sticking the finger up at its passengers? I believe so.
Successful Call About Boarding Pass
I’ve just managed to speak to an actual person at RYAN AIR – called Kathy – at phone Number 00 353 12480856 ( a Dublin number I believe) from Spain. Using a phone card the call cost me about 20 cents. This is a Monday morning at about 11.30 am – I tried to call earlier also on Saturday and on Sunday but it was always a machine.
My query was about my name on my boarding card and my name on my passport. I’ve booked my ticket with my first name and my second name and didn’t use my middle name – which I’ve never used but it’s on my passport. I also now have Spanish nationality so have a Spanish surname ie I have my normal surname (from my father) but have a second surname which is my mother’s maiden name. Of couse I never thought to include that when I booked my ticket. This has never ever been a problem – even flying to Miami last November with American Airlines - So when I received an email from Ryan air about printing my boarding card and the information on my boarding card matching my ID I was a bit worried.
Kathy has assured my that there is NO PROBLEM – ‘the information on your boarding card must be on your passport but not the other way round’ she said. So anyone worried about this should be OK. I’m flying next Saturday (6th June 2009) and will try to remember to email again to confirm this! So good news!
All the best to everyone reading this
More Success: Hotel Bill Reimbursed
I have managed to get a refund from Ryanair for a hotel bill that they initially refused to reimburse for an overnight delay
On February 7th 2009, all Ryanair passengers Grenoble to East Midlands were put up in the Novotel Grenoble (arranged by Ryanair), because the plane had technical problems. We were told by Ryanair's agent to pay our hotel bill and reclaim the cost from Dublin. When we submitted our receipts, Ryanair refused to pay initially but after a strongly worded letter followed up with a fax, I have been paid and so have some friends
Keep on at them and Good luck !
Recruitment "Scam"
hi,first your website is so great and thank you.Please come on board my site and petition against ryanair recruitment scamming our children in uk and europe for the training fee.Probation cabin crew are terminated to keep course level's high.2300 Euro for one student training.60% OF PROBATION CABIN CREW GET TERMINATED TO KEEP TRAINING COURSE FULL.Big recruitment scam..O'Leary and David Bonderman make millions each year just with cabin crew scamming,they do many scams as you know.Pilot traing is even bigger scam but im only fighting for probation cabin crew because my 18 year old daughter was scammed by ryanair and their agents,hope you can help.
kindest regards
www.gopetition.com/online/26531
www.ryanairdontcare.blogspot.com
facebook group
Success in Getting Through
Hi, may whatever Deity you believe in (or not) heap manifold blessings upon you and your site! Thank you so much.
I booked a ticket with RA online last night and there was a glitch. I really didn't want to pay the £1 a minute fee to talk to them. But needs must... so I phoned the 0900 Internet Helpline number. First attempt I got told simply that this number was "not accepting calls at the moment, try again later" and on my second attempt it just cut off.
Third time lucky I got through and was told I would have to wait. Wait at £1 a minute?! I think not! However I noticed that the recorded voice had not welcomed me to "internet help premium rate" nor anything like that but to the "Ryanair Booking Centre"
So after checking your site I dialed +353 12480856 for the Ryanair Booking Centre. However much a daytime call to Eire might be I'm sure it will be nowhere near £1 a minute! Worked like a dream and barely a minute later I was talking to HUMAN BEING who dealt with my problem within seconds. English may not have been his first language but he managed well enough.
Typographical Error Costs £119
I recently booked a couple of "cheap" flights with Ryanair from Hamburg (Lübeck) to Frankfurt (Hahn), with an on-line advertised price of under €10.00 for two people.
Of course this was not the case and with the 'add-ons', the tickets ended up at €93.06, even though we opted to take only one bag between us. The second bag was eventually to cost us €23.80.
I noticed afterwards, that I had entered my partner's name incorrectly, and went on-line to correct it. Although the system is totally automated and you have to do everything yourself, I was forced to pay an extra €119.00 to correct the error.
It is not as if I was substituting with another passenger, merely correcting a typographical error. I could not phone Ryanair to complain, but I arranged a fax to be sent and sent a letter, but there has been no response from them.
I am upset at the excessive charge, and bearing in mind Banks are not allowed to make excessive charges, why can this not be applied to carriers like Ryanair.
I have written to the OFT and just hope it is able to help, as we have ended up paying over €235.00 for two flights advertised at under €10.00. How long is Ryanair going to stay in business if they treat passengers this way?
Small Claims Success
My original complaint agains Ryanair is titled missed funeral, indiference and lack of information posted 3/8/09 so I thought I would update you and pass on some very useful information.
I took my case up against Ryanair in the small claims court, it was easy to do on-line and I then travelled to Dublin to the court for the hearing (cheap aer lingus flights)
Ryanairs lawyer approached me and said he had advised them to settle my claim and when the case was shouted he would stand up and inform the judge of this. There were other claims against Ryanair but none of the others turned up so their case was struck out. Why after paying to lodge the claim they didn't turn up I don't know, the only reason I can think is they thought that Ryanair would settle out of court and didn't make arrangements to attend, however what they do is wait and see who turns up before making any offer, so follow it through. A cheap flight and one day off work is worth it, it's easy to fly into Dublin in the morning and back out at night!!
Searching for information to back up my case prior to going to Dublin I came across the following:
Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11th February 2004 establishing common rules on compensation and assistance to passengers in the event of denied boarding and of cancellation or long delay of flights.
This was an eye opener to me I had never heard of it, it most definately covers many of the complaints on your website, I would have it highlighted and kept permanently at the top of the first page.
I would urge everyone to have a read and if you fit into the categories send another letter to Ryanair quoting the Regulation and informing them if they do not settle you will take them to court-and do it.
Small claims courts do not give any money for anything other than actual losses, so when calculating do not include anything for stress or inconvienence just the actual losses, meals additional transport costs, loss of wages etc. the claim must be lodged Dublin as that is where Ryanairs headquarters are.
Double Booking
I thought would bring to your attention an annoying online error with Ryanair bookings:
when rushing to meet a midnight booking deadline offer via Ryanair’s website (East Midlands to Budapest) I had two browser windows open with 2 different bookings. One for myself and girlfriend the other for her parents. The first went through and the other didn't work and stayed on an error page. I received a booking confirmation but for a combination of the first windows passenger details and the second window’s flight details! Also additional checked in baggage at £20 was included from the other booking.
I managed to get through via the call centre on option 9 after a 3 minute introduction and 2 minute wait, at 10p/min.
The lady I spoke to changed the names for a cost of £10 (she said it should be £100 each online) and referred to their terms and conditions where such a ‘double window booking’ incident is mentioned. This seems a regular recurrence, have you heard of it? She also said, “Ryanair do not do refunds” ...when I asked to cancel the wrongly included checked in baggage I was told I could but would still have to pay for it!
I feel it was completely their technical error, and they could have simply wavered any additional fee.
Information on Fees (addressed to Ryanair)
I wish to have a refund on the check-in charges that Ryanair imposed on my outbound and return flights to Eindhoven from Bristol 31/03/09 – 05/04/09 of £80.
When booking the tickets on line on the Ryanair website, on the Confirm Flights page NOT ONE SINGLE LINK TO FEES WORKED: not the For a full list of Ryanair fee, please click here nor the Terms and Conditions, nor the Website Terms of Use nor the Click here for information on handling fees : ie> when you click on them THEY DON’T DO ANYTHING.
I ticked the Terms and Conditions box as I wished to progress my purchase. I didn’t know that Ryanair had decided to impose fees for check-in – online or airport as it was not made clear on any pages of the Ryanair website. No where on the Confirm Flights page does it offer the facility to choose on-line or airport check-in. Ryanair has a responsibility to inform passengers of all charges prior to purchase, and they failed to do that. Having returned from my trip, I find the website still does not allow the purchaser to peruse the terms and conditions of purchase prior to confirming the flights anywhere on the website as the links do not work, therefore I surmise this is a deliberate attempt to hide additional charges.
Once I had confirmed my booking, the 9 pages of my Ryanair Travel Itinerary had no reference to my having to book online prior to departure. Page 4 has a paragraph entitled BEAT THE QUEUES AND SAVE MONEY – USE ONLINE CHECK-IN. Nowhere within this paragraph does it inform me that I will incur charges if I do not check in on-line. It does not state that I will be expected to pay £20 per passenger if I check in at the airport.
With 9 pages covering all aspects of my flight, from insurance to baggage allowance no where does it say I will be expected to pay £20 per passenger for airport check-in.
Even in the AIPORT CHECK-IN section it says I need to present my confirmation number and valid photo ID. Nothing about being required to pay £20 per passenger at check-in.
On the web-page Airport and Online Check-in it states that “Passengers who check in at the airport are subject to Airport Check-In fees at the time of reservation” At no point during the on-line booking process was this facilitated. If a passenger is subject to this fee at the time of reservation, then Ryanair have a responsibility to include this at the time of reservation on the Confirm Flights page. At no point did Ryanair do this. My Ryanair Travel Itinerary makes no reference to this so how could I have paid this fee at the time of reservation?
I would like Ryanair to:
I have sought legal advice in this matter and have been advised that should Ryanair decided not to reimburse these charges that I have a legal case. I will progress action in the County Court under the Small Claims procedures should this matter not be resolved.
I look forward to your reply.
Never had a Problem
Myself and my fiance were scheduled to fly out to Venice from Stansted late April.
Got to the airport about 25 minutes before check in closed. OK.. not ideal but hey, well within the time to get ourselves registered on the flight.
Rock up to the electronic check in machine. Followed the process and just before the end, it demanded £40. Now I was a bit confused thinking I had paid the full fair online. Spoke to the bloke attending who informed me its a check-in charge... I know I know should of paid more attention to the T's and C's.
Its not like I refusing to pay it, I just wanted to make sure there wasn't a mistake or something. he instructed me to go to the sales desk. Seeing the queue I made him aware of my flight check in closing time and how I didn't think I was going to get to the front of the queue by then. He assured me that the roaming woman operator would shout out the flights.
Ok, so I am in the queue now watching the women like a hawk. Thinking "should I go and speak to her", "should I go and speak to her" with another eye on my watch. Even my fiance said that I was acting freaky and how I should calm down and wait, after all the woman would call out the flight.........right?
Got to the Sales desk and informed them that I just want to query the extra £40. As you can imagine I was completely in shock to here that its £20 per person each way to check in (overall £80 on top for both legs for two passengers). I informed them that I was not checking in any bags since I knew it was £20 per bag check in. Again, if thats the way it is, then thats the way it is so got my card out ready to pay.... you guessed it, I only missed the check in time!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My god, I could of killed someone. I did proper lose my cool and shouted and screamed!!! No surprise how they did not accept any responsibility for not calling out the flight. Although cutting it fine, I was there within time and even managed to get to late check in stages on the self check in terminals. Don't forget this is at 0630 in the morning.
The next flight was at 1900 on the same day!!!
The only reasonable option was to catch the next flight to Verona and bus + train it to venice.
As you can imagine I completely lost it again when I was informed it cost £100 per person to transfer the flight. Right, i thought F**K this! We went to ever budget airline desk to find that Ryan Air were the only carrier to Venice.
In the end, we had to pay the extra £200 to transfer... Only silver lining was that they Sales woman dropped the £80 when I told her it was my fiances birthday.
All in all, the total flying cost to venice £440 all in. Don't forget the bus and train journey to Venice from Verona which cost another 40 euros on top.
What a joke. We had to see it as an adventure and walk away. Is there any point going to Ryanair about this???
I bet the customer support team would just give me the standard... read T's and C's.... arrive early etc etc
Ryanair..........never again!!
Never had a Problem
I travel ryanair a huge amount. i'd say in excess of 30 times a year for my self. My sister and family combined probably make in excess of 200 flights annually.
I chose Ryanair ahead of ba, aerlingus and bmi why? Two words: Heathrow + Prices
I really dont see why there is a website about ryanair. I got delayed 4 hours in EWR due to high winds. Meant I missed my connection had to pay $600 for hotel room and change flight fees. Continental didn't pay and why should they? Not there fault!
Us Airways lost 7 out of our 12 bags on a trip from DUN - MCO via PHL. The point I am making is airlines screw up. every company screws up.
I have never had a problem with Ryan Air which is more than I can say for BA. The dreaded terminal 5.
VISA Confusion
A friend of mine who is disabled, asked me if I would go online and book a Ryanair flight to Spain for him, giving me his VISA card details. As someone who purchases many items online (including flights with other airlines) and actually takes card details for my own mailorder company, I thought this would be so easy.
However, when the list of card options came up, it gave two different VISA possibilities, VISA CONNECT and VISA DEBIT'. I therefore phoned my friend and asked him which one it was. 'What's the difference?' he asked. 'Well, as far as I know' I said, 'they both mean they come straight out of your bank account. In other words, you are not borrowing on them.
'The money comes straight out of my account' he told me.
So I tried booking with VISA CONNECT and the page told me I had done something wrong (about 8 possibilities actually) So I tried with VISA DEBIT and the same thing happened. Then I put his card through my own machine (for £1) and it was accepted, so I knew there was nothing wrong with the card.
I tried twice more, trying DEBIT and CONNECT, with no luck. Then I noticed, way down the list, long after the original VISAs, was an option which just said VISA - and it worked, confirming a price of £81.75. Now why can't Ryanair put all VISAS together? Or would that make it too easy for us?
So I printed off his tickets and saw that they'd added an extra £10 for a 'handling fee' Now whether that is for my friend's assisted wheelchair to the plane I don't know. But the 'fee' certainly wasn't there before, and there was no indication of one for a wheelchair anyway.
Then, noticing on the tickets that my friend would have to give Advance Passenger Information before arriving at the departure airport (or risk being denied boarding with no refund) I went back on line and searched for how to do it. It took me a very long time to find it but, being a bit of a computer buff, I managed it. But how many others could do it and thus risk being turned away at the airport without a refund.
A friend of mine claims he lived in the same town in Ireland as Michael O'Leary (boss of Ryanair) where the local paper used to give a weekly prize of £10 if you were circled in one of their photos. One week it was actually Michael who, although he had already started Ryanair and was making a fair bit of money by then, made the trip all the way to the newspaper office to collect his £10. Which just shows how mean he is and why he charges an absolute fortune just to phone his company.
He also told me that when he and Michael were at school together, the local lads used to visit the golf course to collect the balls which had been lost and sell them back to the members. However, it seems that, even at that age, Michael made more of a business of it, taking the balls back home and cleaning them until they were spotless - then selling them back to the members for more than the other lads did.
Refused Boarding for Domestic Flight
Two months ago, I was denied to board a Ryanair flight between Reus (Barcelona) and Sevilla, which is a domestic flight, on the basis that I didn''t have the required documentation with me. I am not a European Union citizen, but a Spanish resident. The company asked me for a passport, and refused to accept my residence card, an official document with photo and identification number, issued by the Spanish Authorities. I wonder if a transport company, like Ryanair, has a right to ask for a passport on Spanish domestic flights.
I have travelled many times on Spanish domestic flights with other companies, both national and international, and have never been denied boarding before.
Also, they offer free check-in online ONLY for EU nationals. All other nationals, have to pay a checking fee at the airport.
I could'nt find the way to get recompensed yet.
No Free Water On Board
I could no buy water at the airport because the water dispenser in the tinny airport was out of the vital resource, so on board I asked for some water they said that it cost £3, I was with no money, as far as I know water is a vital need, in most countries, bars and restaurants HAVE to give free water to customers, on air we risk strokes and other health complications if we have no water. Anyway , I was refused free water and the hosts gave very ambiguous answers when I asked if tap water on the toilet was fresh running water. They refused to give me their name and surname and were extremely rude.
I will avoid Ryanair as far as I can from now on, even if I have to apy a bit more money for my flight, at least I know I won't risk anything
Inconsistent Application of Baggage Policy (addressed to Ryanair)
My husband and I have just returned from a brief necessary trip to Spain to bring back the personal effects of my late father. We booked to go out with your company on flight 6652 from Edin to Malaga on Sat 14th Feb, and returned on flight 6653 on Tues 17th Feb.
At this emotional time and under the circumstances, we thought we would limit the amount of excess baggage brought back by paying for extra baggage each way. On our outward journey it was made very clear to us that there was only ONE piece of hand luggage allowed per person, as in your booking conditions.
However, on our return flight it was obvious that this was not the case. In fact there were very few people with only one piece of hand luggage and very few people booking baggage into the hold. We were charged an incredible 450Euros to bring in the baggage we thought we had covered the cost of by paying in advance for two extra cases. When booking in at Malaga , your attendant was rather rude when we looked shocked and pointed out to us that, if we had 'read the small print', we had payed for extra bags but not extra weight. I cannot conceive what the advantage of booking in more than one piece of baggage would be if the extra weight is not a consideration as well. In this light, I would hasten to ask why fellow travellers were allowed to take extra hand luggage at no extra cost - which is also 'in the small print' in your booking conditions.
In actual fact I would take it further and say that no hand luggage was weighed. We witnessed several people trying desperately to get their suitcases into the overhead lockers. Not only ware cases too large but they were also very heavy. This weight was unaccounted for and unpaid for!
If your booking clerk had had any heart, she would have told us that we could have bought, at the airport, a smaller case, and transferred some of the contents of an extra case into hand luggage (to the tune of 20kg for two passengers) and so greatly reduced the cost of our excess baggage. She failed to illuminate us to this advantage. I was clearly very distressed and upset at the desk, since there were personal belongings in the cases holding precious memories of my father and I was not in a position to leave any of them.
I object strongly to this excess charge and the way my husband and I were spoken to at the booking in desk. Why were we not informed that we could have taken extra hand luggage on board? Other passengers were heavily laden down with cases, bags, camping equipment and the ilk for which they did not pay. There were few passengers travelling on that flight to which the 10kg hand baggage allowance would have permitted.
If your cabin baggage policy can be changed to suit the traveller, why were we charged in such an excessive way, and when it was so crudely pointed out to us that we had misread the policy, why were we not told then that we could transfer some to the contents of the case into hand luggage as others were clearly allowed excessive cabin weight and baggage?
If you insist on implementing one half of your 'baggage' policy, why allow extreme and obvious neglect of the other?
In this respect I feel we have paid dearly for our flight. We are very unhappy with the way we were spoken to, very unhappy to find on boarding that there was an alternative (i.e. extra hand luggage allowance) which was not mentioned to us, very unhappy to be charged for extra baggage on both flights, which was, as it turns out, useless since no consideration was made regarding weight, and considering the emotional upset and nature of the trip, I personally feel that we have been penalised in trying to do the right thing.
Under such circumstances, I'm sure you will reconsider this excessive charge for baggage and reimburse us.
Should it be necessary for any other distressed passenger to be travelling with your airline, I would like to think they would be treated more fairly and just that I think we were.
Two Days of Holiday Lost
At the end of December I booked a Ryanair flight from Stansted to Jerez, departing on April 11th and returning on April 20th. On January 17th I received a notice from Ryanair informing me that the date of my outward flight had been changed to April 12th and asking me to acknowledge my acceptance of the change. Very unwillingly, but knowing how difficult it is to penetrate the barriers to human communication set up by Ryanair, I did accept the change.
On February 19th I had a further notice from Ryanair informing me that the date of my outward flight had been changed again, to April 13th. As before no reason was given. Angered by the loss of two days of a nine day holiday at the behest of an airline I did not accept this immediately but tried to contact Ryanair both by phone and via their website to challenge their action. This proved unsurprisingly impossible so I wrote a letter complaining about their action and insisting that my outward flight should be changed back to April 12th. I have finally had a reply to this letter which is no more than a standard response reminding me that the terms and conditions to which I agreed allow Ryanair to change flight schedules ('occasionally due to airport and air traffic conditions' - by two days?!) and advising me 'well in advance....to review .. booking details on our website in order to confirm .. flight reservation and departure times prior to departure'! They go on to say 'In these circumstances, we are not in a position to offer compensation in respect of this matter'. I did not of course ask for compensation but for the restoration of one day of my holiday. I have with extreme reluctance, however, now agreed to the April 13th date.
To add insult to injury, when I sought to change my Hertz rental car booking to reflect the change in date I was informed that - as a result of Ryanair's unilateral decision - the cost for seven days would be £100 more than the £83 which I had been charged when I made the original booking at the end of December. I cancelled this booking - even though I had to pay a £30 cancellation fee!
Is there any way in which Ryanair's high-handed behaviour can be challenged or - given that the financial benefit of using the airline is increasingly marginal - do we just have to wait for market forces to have their effect?
36 Hour Flight Change at Higher Price
On the 3rd of December, I booked 3 tickets for flights to Venice from Liverpool with Ryanair for Monday 6th April, arriving at 9:55 in the morning. The same day I booked accommodation.
On the 21st of January I received a notification of a change to Ryanair's schedules: they had cancelled the Monday flights and had moved our flight to Tuesday 7th April arriving at 15:55. This was a delay of 30 hours. We chose to accept this delay as we had limited options with other carriers and had paid a deposit of £300 for our accommodation, although it meant:
1) We had to re-arrange our booking with our accommodation
2) We could no longer meet my mother who would be arriving on the Tuesday and would now have to make her own way to Venice and wait around for at least three hours for us to arrive.
On Thursday 12th February we received a further notification from Ryanair. The scheduled arrival time had been bumped to 21:45 a further 6 hour change. This would mean an additional payment to the owners of our apartment for a meeting out-of-hours and that my mother would be seriously inconvenienced, having to wait around in Venice for 12 hours.
We immediately declined the flights offered by Ryanair and booked with Jet2 as an alternative. This was not ideal as it meant a much longer journey to the airport. A week after we declined the flights we has still not received confirmation of this cancellation from Ryanair or a refund of the money paid. The website states it may take up to 7 days to process our claim ONCE IT HAS BEEN APPROVED (no timescale provided) and between 5 - 7 days for a refund. We are unable to contact Ryanair via telephone unless during working hours (10p per minute) or from home in the evening at £1 per minute. There is no email address supplied. There has been no explanation of why the flight has been moved twice. The most annoying part of this story is that the flights they moved us to have been reduced to a third of the original cost, which wasn't offered to us in the last re-scheduling. So basically we paid £565 for three seats, they moved our flights twice, a total of 36 hours and then reduced the price to £200 but did not offer the reduced price to us.
We are very disappointed about the irresponsible behaviour of Ryanair in selling a product and then withdrawing / changing said product and the inconvenience caused. Ryanair has had £565.75 of our money since 3rd December, taken immediately from my credit card, and yet cannot refund said money when they fail to meet their commitments.
I am sure there are many other Ryanair customers who are in the same situation.
Needless to say, I will NEVER use this company again!
Catastrophic Results of Cancellation (letter to Ryanair)
I am writing to complain in the strongest terms regarding the treatment I have received during a recent trip using Ryanair .
We are a family of two adults and two children (aged 5 and 7) and booked four (4) return flights leaving from Luton airport flying to Marrakesh
Departure date xxxx time
Return date xxxxx time
Our return flight home was turned into a complete catastrophe.
We arrived two hours before the departure time at xxxx and checked in as normal.
Only 4 hours later and over two hours past our scheduled departure time were we informed that the flight had been cancelled due to poor weather.
Apparantly our incoming plane had landed at Cassablanca and flew back to Luton from there.
Given all other airline carriers flew into and out of Marrakesh that morning (including easyjet) Why was it ryanair could not.
If indeed "poor weather" conditions prevented the initial incoming flight from Luton landing at Marrakesh why was it that other Ryan air flights and ALL other airlines were flying out of Marrakesh. I witnessed planes leaving from 9am that morning. I am sure there is very accurate data confirming the departure times of the day.
Why could the flight redirected to cassablanca not have come back via Marrakesh to pick us up.
We were not given any information from ryanair or indeed anyone at the airport until several hours after the scheduled departure time.
At approximately 12pm a member of the airport staff informed us that the flight had been cancelled and that we would have to make alternate arrangements to get home.
After several hours queuing I was informed at the information desk that the next available flight would be on March 2nd 2009. I was absolutely astonished.
No help was forthcoming other than to say there was an Easyjet flight leaving that evening at 6.50pm - destination Gatwick!
I had no other choice but to book this flight.
The cost of the flight was xxxx plus xxx in local currency taxes. I have kept all receipts as proof of purchase.
Having landed miles away from our original arrival destination we had to then take a taxi to Luton airport where my car was parked. The cost of this was another xxxxx.
In summary we arrived home at 3am in the morning, some 14 hours after we initially anticipated and at an additional cost of xxxxxxx
We had to endure a whole day in Marrakech airport with little money, poor facilities, and a total lack of any meaningful information.
Not once did we have a conversation with any representative from Ryanair.
In short we were left completely stranded and left to make alternate arrangements without any help or advice. Nobody from Ryan air would talk to us.
I would like to make absolutely clear that we were informed the flight had been cancelled. I understand from an email I have just received that you now state we cancelled the ticket and asked for a refund. For your record I willing to state in a court of law that we were in fact told the flight had been cancelled. I now understand that from your perspective if it is deemed that "we" cancelled the flight then this affects your duty of care towards us and possible compensatory disbursements.
To my mind this is just semantics.
Factually our scheduled flight from Marrakesh to Luton was sent back to Luton via Cassablanca and was therefore never going to have taken us home.
There is no other reason to use the phrase "cancelled" or "delayed" other than to possibly mitigate against the claim that I am now making against you.
For a socially and morally run organisation this should not be the key requisite for dealing with my claim.
You certainly had a moral obligation to at least try and get us home in another way. Just a little information would have gone a long way in helping us to deal with this.
In any event and for the record; I was actually told that the flight was "cancelled" - not as you have now stated in an email to me, that I "cancelled" the flight. You further assert that your obligations therefore extend only to refund me the cost of our initial return tickets.
This whole episode has been extremely stressful to both me and my wife.
It has been both time consuming and costly to us and although unpleasant the outcome need not be totally as distasteful as currently is
My wife works part time on a freelance basis and had to cancel work for the day at her daily rate of £150. This is income which I can not afford to loose.
I have written to you on two separate occasions already and have yet to have a reply.
This is now the third time!
It is absolutely incredible that a company of your size and standing within the market place can act with this apparent impunity and arrogance.
It demonstrates a total lack of respect to your customers!
Can someone please explain what customer service procedure you have to deal with such instances?
Currently my experience is that it is woefully lacking.
I am now writing to xxxxxxx all (the directors at Ryanair) and will continue to do so until I have a satisfactory respoce to my grievence.
I have copied this letter to the OFT, ABTA, and Watchdog
I will also send this and all future correspondence to all other UK based airline directors/ head of PR/ head of customer services for their consideration and use in whatever means they may deem appropriate
It is worth noting that "easyjet" actually offered to arrange alternate transport to get us from Gatwick to Luton at their cost. I declined on the basis of time (we would have had to wait a further 2 hours before leaving the terminal) and the fact that I believed Ryanair would reimburse our costs incurred.
Although impecibly behaved my children were absolutely exausted from this ordeal - as was the whole family.
I am asking you to refund us xxxx
To date we have not received an explanation relating of these events or even an apology for the disruption caused. As stated I am still awaiting a reply from my initial correspondence sent to you.
I am considering legal action in the event this incidence is not resolved to my satisfaction.
Credit Fee Charged for Debit Card
I booked a flight today with my debit card and it was only when I had completed the booking that I noticed they had charged me £18-00 credit card fee. I wasn't given the option of not accepting the fee and wonder where the £18-00 comes from??????? I have sent several e mails to different addys that were given on your site and I am awaiting any response from Ryanair.
Recession Makes Ryanair Care About Customer Service?
Recently I have booked twice the same flight. However the ryanair booking system worked very poor that day I managed to book the flight and received email with confirmation. Next day ........... to make story shorter ............ I booked the same flight again. My wife wanted to kill me (the cost was almost €400). I believe that the booking system should have prevented from booking exactly the same flight, by the same pasenger having the same contact and billing details but it didn't.
I tried to contact my bank to cancel transaction but it was too late. I tried to contact Ryanair but it was too late. Next day I rang Ryanair.....I tried all different numbers like 01 8121212 / 01 2497791 and others from that webpage but was unsucccessful. Finally without any other choice I rang 1570 224499 (€1.70/minute) and solved problem within approx. 7 min. Preper for a lot of spelling ;) I said that due to the fault of Ryanair booking system I booked the same flight twice. I was offered a full refund for the second booking without any discussion.
I was surprised. I asked wheather I was going to receive an email with confirmation but was told that not. Despite that next day I received email from Ryanair:
Dear ,
Following your recent refund request for booking confirmation number XXXXXX.
We confirm that your refund request has been processed back to the form of payment used to pay for your booking. Your issuing bank will take 5-7 working days to process this refund amount back to your account.
The amount refunded to your credit/debit card is EURxxx.xx
Yours sincerely
Ryanair Customer Services
Just to summarize it seems that in the time of recession Ryanair started to care about customers. That's good news.
A happy customer.
"Cancelled" Flight?
A 'cancelled' flight?
Not actually true. All the passengers had gone through security and the incoming flight was due to land on time (if not a bit early). Other flights (including Ryanair) were landing albeit the weather was cloudy and had been raining in Granada. The notice board suddenly flashed up 'Cancelled', with no explanation.
The flight 9604 approached Granada, then promptly flew off to Malaga, where it dumped all its bemused passengers without explanation, and presumably headed of back to Liverpool empty.
The ground staff at Granada were inefficient, hostile, and totally incapable of dealing with the two hundred or so passengers at Granada. I have reports of the same at Malaga.
I asked whether they would provide a bus for persons to transport them to the empty plane in Malaga, but 'Dublin Operations usually do, but this time they said no'
I have spoken to a number of person who had been on the inbound flight, who state the despite the pilot stating that the plane was circling Granada ( for a second attempt), it most definitely did no such circling and seemed determined to head straight to Malaga.
This is a company with ruthless cost cutting in pursuit of business without customer care.
Ryanair Travel Insurance Useless
Just a quick story it might be worth posting to warn anyone what they aren't covered for under this insurance:
Basically I bought a 1p flight from Paris to Glasgow which was canceled due to fog. The flight was supposed to leave at 22.50 and was canceled at 23.20. Ryanair quickly re-booked everyone for a flight at half two the following day, arranged hotels and a free bus to get us there.
Now for 1p I didn't ever expect Ryanair would pay up for the hotel so I emailed them for confirmation of the cancellation so I could claim the cost on my Ryanair insurance that I had bought with the flights. Of course I got the standard copy and paste reply going on about how they owed me no money (which I had acknowledged in the letter - being nice to try and get a quick reply). They also informed me that had I purchased their insurance, it would cover me.
Of course they know full well that their own insurance requires written confirmation of how long after the scheduled departure time the decision to cancel was made. This might seem like an irrelevant requirement - but it's not because their policy has one of the most outrageous get out clauses I can imagine.
You are only covered for cancellations made at least four hours AFTER the scheduled departure time. Now I'm willing to bet that well over 99% of Ryanair cancellations are made well within this time limit - and hey presto they are almost never liable to pay up for such events.
A further perusal of the policy reveals other get outs, like the lack of cover against industrial action unless, as far as I can make out, your transfer bus driver is part of a sudden, unannounced strike and pulls over half way to the airport. Uner 18s are covered to have up to 50 cash stolen - with a 40 excess. And the list goes on. So it's not much more useful than an inflatable pin cushion.
I know I should've read the terms more carefully, but I'm sure many people like myself wouldn't bother. I am aware most policies have tricky bits in the wording, but I think it's well worth drawing to the attention of people the need to really have a look at the terms here.
I plan to write to the insurance department (which is in the UK!!!) and ask for justification of this policy, although no doubt, as the lady on the phone said, they will just pass the blame on to some other, harder/impossible to contact division of Ryanair.
Customer Service Attitude
I would like to report a yet very annoying story about my booking from Ryanair Airlines.
On Wednesday 28th January 2009 I was booking tickets for my mum to come and see me to UK. My total payment for the tickets was in Euros 174.28. The amount taken from my account was £174.35 not exchange rate from Euros. They somehow forget that I paid in British Pound and that they needed to exchange it for Euros accordingly. On that date Wednesday 28th January 2009 was the rate of the Euro - GBP 0.95656 approx.
This was not the end of the case. I was checking my bank statement 06 February 2009. There was another payment of £168.00 ready coming out of my account. I searched for this amount as this payment I never made to anyone. And it was again - Ryanair trying to get second payment for the same tickets I already purchased
I have been in touch with the company for long time spending my money for the phone calls. I questioned them why they are trying to take the money again they promised that they will not be taking the money out of the account. I am quite concerned about this statement whether I can trust them that they will not do it. When I asked why they did charged me the amount for £174.35 instead £166.70 as the equality of GBP currency conversion with the rates on that day they just hanged up on me. I tried to speak with them again but the hanging up on me story happened again and again.
I would like express my very bad customer experience with Ryanair and complain about the way they did try to take money from my account twice for the same tickets but also because the have awful and rude attitude towards their paying customers.( Especially the lady I talked to on Ryanair helpline on Friday 6th February 2009).
Fantasy About Good Customer Service
Ryanair provide budget flights, often the cheapest available on some routes. They also deliver one of the most truly unhappy, frustrating and unpleasant customer experiences on this planet. It's even more unbelievable when you think, "Ryanair could be delivering the cheapest flights AND THE BEST customer experience in this industry".. But no, right from the first moment that you type www.ryanair.com into your browser, your world turns a bit grayer.
First up is the lurid website, which design brings to mind spammy porn sites from the 1990's. Found your flights? great, time to be tricked and confused into paying for services you don't need - insurance, priority boarding, check in bags.. hang on, check in bags? you have to pay to take your possessions and clothes with you on holiday? right, well that's odd but let's continue.
Time to pay for my 'cheap' flights. great! they accept all major credit and debit cards.. but whats this? why am i being charged extra to pay with all my cards? except visa electron, but what the hell is that anyway? I have to say I'm not feeling quite so excited about my holiday now that this company has so far tried to fleece me on at least three occasions and I don't even have my confirmation yet. Gosh, that's ironic, the poor people who hold Ryanair credit cards don't even qualify for fee free payment ... and yet this could all read so differently.
Imagine, if you will, a ryanair website that states clearly right from the off how much your flight will actually cost. you see, a happy customer starts with a happy booking experience. Call me old fashioned but i like to call the shots when I'm spending my money..
But some might say "Damn, it's more than 1p"! Of course it's more than 1p you fool, this is AIR TRAVEL. "i may as well just go easyjet, they are cheaper, i mean they are bad, but they can't be as bad as ryanair." But haven't you heard? Ryanair are honest with their pricing now since they listened to their customers and changed things for the better. You won't find any more dour-faced, irritable, irritated members of staff because Ryanair realised that customers are important and now they only employ intelligent and understanding individuals who really want to help.
And those planes are so nice and relaxing! no more neon signs 12 inches in front of your face, no more stupid sales announcements every 2 mins just to prevent you sleeping so you'll buy the coffee. and you can actually have a seat number allocated so that no one gets injured or stressed in the scrum to board the plane!
wow, ryanair have really done something miraculous here. somehow they have become the most admired and popular airline in the UK. I mean, they are cheap and they offer good service, and my holidays are great right from the start now because the whole experience has been just lovely!
nah.sorry, it was just a stupid fantasy. Well i'm going to cast my vote. I'm going to spend double on my flights from now on and use a reputable airline. Ok, half as many holidays, but at least they will all be good ones.
Wheelchair Booking
since three days i try to call the special telephone number for persons with wheelchairs, but there is no chance to speak with anybody.
I have just spent a lot of money to get someone from the internet support before booking, because we wanted to know if it is possible to travel with the wheelchair of our daughter.
Now we have booked and again i have no success to speak with anyone on the special number. Again i spent a lot of time and money without success.
I don´t understand why it can´t be easier for people with handicap to book a flight with Ryanair. They have just enough problems.
Our dughter is handicapped she use a wheelchair and we fly to london from Fra Hahn and back.
Online Checkin Problems
I booked with online check in, but had various problems with it. When i did online check in, nothing went through and it just simply couldn't find my details. So I had to go and ask at the airport at which point I was charged for check in as well as the use of a debit card. I was told there was nothing that could be done, that I had not checked in and if I wanted to fly, I had to pay and wait. I will be writing a letter of complaint.
Wasted Money on "Priority Boarding"
We booked priority boarding on 27th December 2008 and paid the fee requested. We checked through and waited for the screens to tell us which gate to go to departure lounge. When it did eventually change there was then a last call tannoy.
When we got to the gate my partner tried to complain that we had wasted our money and the stewardess very rudely said she was not prepared to speak to us and that the gate number was on the ticket. This was not pointed out to us when the ticket was handed over. I begin to think there are so many people paying priority boarding it makes a nonsense. Its taking money under false pretences.
Successful Refund
May i just say without your webpage i would have been in for a unhappy time in call charges.Trying to get a refund on a duplicate booking at the fault of Ryanair's website. However, i took the advice of calling the 08712460000 number and pressing ##, to my shock a person answered straight away and after i let them know what had happened they are refunding my account. Horray
Thanks once again.
Refused Boarding
It happened on Sunday night 12th January 2009. We had traveled from Dublin to Manchester that morning to go to the Man Utd v Chelsea match. Our journey out was ok, no problems and we arrived on time.
We were due to depart Manchester on Flight FR559 at 21:40 but the flight was delayed. This was the last flight to Dublin that night. (By the way this is the third time in recent months I've taken the last flight out with ryanair from Leeds, Bristol and now Manchester which were all delayed and all arrived nearly 2 hours late). When we eventually started to board and it came to our turn to hand in our passport and boarding cards my brother was asked to step aside for a few minutes. I noticed the 2 female officials exchange glances with each other for few seconds and one of them asked him if he had been drinking. This is a loaded question as 90% of the passengers had been in the bar. He said only a couple of pints and then I was ushered through while my brother remained behind, his son had already boarded the plane. When I boarded the plane we enquired as why my brother was not on board. We were told he was denied boarding due to excess alcohol. His son disembarked to be with his father and he was told he would not be allowed back on board.
I can state categorically that he did not have an excess of alcohol on him nor did he act in any way aggressive, boisturous, unruly nor did anyone else on the queue to board the plane. It was after 22:00 and everyone was too tired from a long day.
My brother and his son spent the night in Manchester airport and had to pay for a flight out the next morning. Talking to him later in turns out two other passengers (female, no connection with us) were also denied boarding.
Now my point is:
This has to be the most despicable action taken by ryanair crew I have come across (in my opinion) and I hope we can take this further but I won't hold out much hope.
From Inside Customer Services
I live in Dublin and just thought that I should let you know that I worked with a girl who used to work for Ryanair "Customer Services".
She hated the company and her job and said that the phone and email that complaints came into were NEVER answered (phone was on silentor call forward to voicemail).
Just thought you might find that interesting.
Three Times in One Flight
Recently been skanked by Ryan Air not once but three times on one flight booking and two check ins. On booking a flight to Dublin from Manchester (returned the same day) at a cost of £122.00 on seeing total cost of flight
I inputted my visa debit card number and on proceeding and seeing it being process online. On acceptance I was then told the total was £132.00 and not before (£10.00 for using a visa debit).
On arrival at the airport check in after queuing and a early start I was informed that because I had not checked in online 4 hours before arrival at the airport I would have to pay £10 to get on the flight. I was a little upset but hey - I needed to get to Dublin (I didn't even have hand luggage).
At this time the check in guy did not make me aware that if I didn't check in online for the inbound I would have to pay £10 to get back and as you can imagine being skanked for £30 is a little harsh.
But in the grand scheme of things whilst I was in the queue there were another 5 people having to do the same. Nice work if you can get it eh
Innocent people are being had over - this was a business flight for me and my company will pick up the tab. But the five people in front of me were not travelling alone and some were families of 4 having to pay £40 (£10 each) to get on a flight they had booked and paid for in advance.
What's the logic in having to check in twice - online and then at the airport? I was in Munich airport two weeks earlier where I had printed my ticket off complete with a barcode (Lufthansa). Arrived at the airport - scanned my ticket on a automated machine which proceeded to print my boarding card - this is the future.
Going back to Ryan Air, you can imagine when the trolley dollies came seeking extras on the flight back they met with tightly sealed wallets and purses. I waited till I got back to Manchester airport to by my refreshments!!
Coach Cancelled and Ryanair Staff Hide
On 31 December 2008 I flew from Stansted to Dinard with Ryanair on flight FR514. The flight was due to depart at 15.35 and left 10 minutes late. We we unable to land at Dinard and after two abortive attempts and we diverted to Nantes approximately 180 km away. We landed at 19.15 and were advised there would be a coach to Dinard Airport at 20.30.
At 20.00 an announcement was made that the coach had been cancelled. The Ryanair staff promptly disappeared! I and many other passengers ran to the bus stop to catch a bus to the station to catch the last train of the evening to Rennes which is approximately 1/2 way to Dinard. Only about 20 passengers managed to get on the train. It arrived in Rennes at 21.50.
I telephoned the friends I was spending New Year with from the train and they arranged to meet me in Rennes. They told me that at Dinard Airport the Ryanair staff had locked themselves into a room to avoid questions from the passengers trying to return to the UK and people meeting the flight from Stansted, they also said that an earlier flight from East Midlands was delayed by 6 hours due to the weather. I am writing to Ryanair but I do not expect a satisfactory response. I would like the following points answered
£100 Vouchers Not Redeemed
An Italian friend kindly sent both my wife & I £100 each in Ryanair vouchers.
I have been trying to redeem our vouchers against flights to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Both flights are priced at just £1.79 per person and yet the final price is £174.52 ! How misleading is that!
When trying to redeem them against the booking I get a message listing about 6 possible reasons the vouchers may not be redeemed but not actually saying why or offering any help.
Trying to ring 08712460000 (10p per minute) gives another number to ring 0905 566 0000 (£1 per minute) which merely says that calls cannot be answered on this number. The vouchers validity expires in a few days and I can see that Ryanair will not honour them even if I do manage to make contact.
I find it unbelievable that Ryanair can get away with trading in this way. Not only is the price very misleading but them seem to be deliberately making it difficult/impossible to help customers. Strangely you have no problem making a purchase (ie giving them new money), only in contacting them about an existing problem (ie they've already banked your money).
Ryanair Experience
Ryanair confirmed a return flight for three months later than asked for [there was difficulty contacting the service number].
After correcting my wrong booking, at the higher price, the flight to Rome Ciampino was diverted to Fiumicino, because of fog, and the transport by bus from Fiumicino was badly organised. Ciampino seems to be foggy very often in autumn. Anyway, I arrived in Rome two hours late.
The flight back started a bit late and the plane had to return to Ciampino for maintenance. Solution of technical problem lasted two hours with outside help. I was looking forward to eating something hot from the card, but the stewardess announced that unfortunately all hot things had been sold out on the previous flight, sorry. Bad provision. Two hours late I arrived hungry in Brussels South. After all I paid a fairly normal price for a poor flight and for my next trip Ryanair will not be my first choice, to say the least.
Complaint to OFT by Customer
To whom it may concern:
An Office of Fair trading press release of 28 February 2008 claims that "The OFT is aware that Ryanair has now changed its website to display prices on the first page of its booking process that include fixed, non-optional costs."
This is effectively untrue for the majority of Ryanair customers who do not pay using Visa Electron. A Guardian newspaper article of 25 October 2008 quotes a Ryanair spokesman as saying "almost 20% of our customers book with Visa Electron" - which of course means that more than 80% of its customers do not.
So therefore more than 80% of customers booking through Ryanair's web site get nabbed with fixed, non-optional "handling fees" because they use more common methods of payment. Checking Ryanair's web site this morning, it seems not even holders of the "Ryanair" branded Visa or Mastercards escape these extortionate fees. In fact the Visa Electron exemption from these fees is advertised as "for a limited period only."
No reasonable person would suggest these handling fees are well advertised on the first (or second) page of the Ryanair booking process. A tiny "Ryanair Fees" link in the middle left of a very crowded and busy home page simply doesn't cut it.
There is a link buried underneath the airfare and taxes/fees on the third page of the booking process saying these charges are "Excluding handling fee (if applicable) / click here for information on handling fees". Clicking this link results in a pop-up message that says:
"To defray the substantial administration costs we incur when processing transactions a handling fee applies to each passenger per flight segment. There is a £5.00/€5.00 (or local currency equivalent) handling fee for processing transactions. There is no charge associated with Electron card transactions and no handling fee for infants. Even allowing for these small charges, our fares still represent the best value for money."
£5.00 per passenger per flight segment is completely misrepresentative of their actual costs, given that Ryanair does not submit multiple card transactions to bill for a typical return flight. Even at Visa's high 0.7% fee on international payments, a £5.00 fee would only be appropriate on a single-leg flight costing over £700. I have never heard of anyone paying anywhere near that much for a Ryanair flight. The fee is even more usurious when booking flights for multiple people, as Ryanair would only submit one credit/debit charge yet charge customers repeatedly for the same transaction.
I have no issue with a firm recovering its costs of doing business, but the Ryanair payment handling fee is simply deception and robbery.
Ryanair also has a very unreasonable and unfair practice of not allowing non-EU/EEA citizens to check in online, and then penalising them for not checking in online at £5.00 per flight segment. Ryanair claims that they must perform more checks on non-EU/EEA citizens. However this is not supported by my experience over the past four months flying with other airlines in Europe, including BA, Air France, Germanwings, Lufthansa and VLM, who have all allowed me to check in online with absolutely no issues. Once again, another Ryanair fixed, non-optional cost sprung on the customer after a deceivingly attractive advertised price.
I would ask the OFT to investigate Ryanair again, as their practice of hidden and unreasonable fees obviously continues.
No Online Checkin for non-EU Citizens
Dear Ryanair,
I have been your costumer for more than 3 years now, having traveled over 30 times on the flights you offer. Last Friday (Nov. 21st) I planned a trip from Paris-Beauvais to Pisa, and was so surprised when I was told that I could have not checked- in online using my Residency Card. For that reason I would have to pay a fee of EUR 10.00 each way, and proceed with the check-in again.
I was even more astonished when during the flight, reading the Ryanair Magazine (Issue 21; Nov. 16 - Dec. 15), your Chief Executive , Michael O'Leary, highlights the abusive practice carried out by other airline companies by saying: high cost fuel surcharging airlines are ripping passengers off by imposing unjustified fuel surcharges when oil prices are plummeting.
Furthermore he says: There is no doubt that these airlines continue to use these unavoidable fuel surcharges to scam money unfairly from passengers.
Thus, what do you call this disallowance of non-EU/EEA citizens to proceed with the online check- in?
On the same article, Michael O'Leary affirms that "Ryanair's September passenger numbers were up 20%". If the numbers are rising, meaning the company is making even more money, why would non-EU/EEA citizens have to pay more for something that is free for all the others?
Now that I have become an official member of the EU, I will probably not have any trouble with this scheme, but as a world citizen, I do fight for equal rights for everyone, regardless of the skin color, sex or race. I hope you stand against all inequalities, and right this wrong by reimbursing all passengers that have been unfairly charged.
No Change Given
I flew on November 13 from Haugesund to Stansted, 16.10 to 16.50.
Aboard I bought a bottle of water. It costed 2 ponds fifty, and I gave the waitress 10 pound 50 pence.
She said she was temporarily out of change and that she would give me the change back in just a second.
But she never showed up.
After the flight I talked to a couple of women behind a Ryanair baggage-desk who said it happened to passengers on their flights all the time.
I just wanted to let you know about this.
Successful Name Change
Having stupidly booked a flight to Portugal in my married name instead of my maiden name - the name on my Passport - I spent the following hours agonisingly googling to try and find out what I could do about it.
The Ryanair website clearly states that it costs £80 to change a name - a new passport would cost me £72. My flight was £29 return. I was absolutely sure after doing my research that there was nothing else for it but to buy another flight.
Just in case I could appeal to anyone's better nature, I used the email addresses which I found on your website - thank you! And fired emails off to every address you had listed. Siobhan O'Neill's email sent me an "out of office" message stating that all mails received would automatically be deleted and Michelle Penston's email sent me a message saying that the mail would be deleted without being read. I realised I wasn't going to get much joy out of this route.
I rang the Reservations Line this morning - It had just closed yesterday evening when I realised my mistake and the internet support line was unobtainable. Despite a recorded message warning me that their lines were very busy, I was put through after only a few seconds. I spoke to a very helpful person who was happy to change my booking. She warned me that there would be an £8.00 admin fee. I said "Don't you mean £80?" but she said that as this was only part of my name they would only charge £8.00. She also advised me to pay for this charge on my Visa Electron as it would incur no charges.
In short, I'm extremely pleased that Ryanair allow this facility but wonder why it isn't in their "Frequently asked questions" section under change of name as I'm sure the majority of slip-ups are from recently married women who haven't yet changed their names on their passports.
I fly with Ryanair several times a year and have picked up phenomenal bargains - My husband and I are flying to Pisa from East Midlands shortly for a total of 4 pence including taxes and charges! Sure this must be a record!
I do not incur a booking fee as I have taken out a Visa Electron card.
I never check in a bag but buy shampoo etc at my destination. 20 kilos is enough for us both for a week if we are disciplined about the packing.
I always check in online.
I find their flights are usually on time or early and maybe I'm lucky but I've never yet had a flight cancelled or delayed - touching wood furiously as I write this. I used to use Flybe who were constantly cancelling or delaying flights.
I realise Ryanair are "No Frills" and rarely buy food or drinks on board but HAVE been known to buy 3 for 2 miniatures of Bombay Gin at the airport and tip it into my Ryanair tonic!
The only thing I have a real problem with is the piped music!!
Unruly Behaviour on Flight
My wife and I together with another couple had a lovely weekend in Rome recently but it was totally ruined upon our return to Stansted by the unruly behaviour of a number of passengers onboard who were bound for a Champions league fixture at Chelsea the next day.
Ryanair flight FR3013 left Rome (Ciampino) on time at 21.05 local time and during the entire two hour flight we were subjected to chanting, signing, and minor scuffling which eventually led to a brawl in the aisle involving at least 12 no (twelve) other passengers.
The cabin crew made only light hearted requests to stop this mindless fighting and seemed only interested in fuelling the situation by providing more alcohol to the perpetrators. The captain made similar requests without success and we had to abort our original landing. However it did eventually calm down after further requests from the cockpit although a number of passengers at this point were screaming and crying for our landing fifteen minutes later and the flight was met my armed and uniformed police officers.
Only two arrests were made according to the Sun newspaper under the heading 'Terror flight' and when I enquired with Stansted airport police in writing (after they refused to discuss the incident over telephone) they assured me that the matter had been dealt with to their satisfaction!! I am still awaiting a response to my letter of complaint to Michael O'Leary. Why were these passengers allowed onto the flight in their condition, why were the Italian authorities not alerted at security at Ciampino and why should the safe passage of both UK and foreign nationals be subjected to this behaviour after passing through 'SECURITY'.
Coincidentally Michael O'Leary was also in Rome that day promoting two new slots gained by the airline under the advertising campaign 'LOVE ITALY, FLY RYANAIR!!'
Was this a publicity stunt perhaps?? I have spoken to a number of Ryanair personnel in my local area about this incident and the response that I have been given is they have not been advised or alerted.
Henceforth I believe that Ryanair passengers should be issued with boxing gloves and read the forthcoming football fixtures prior to booking a flight
No Explanation for Delay
Flt.no.4076 from alicante on 28 oct.08.
All passengers preparing to board at 0530hrs 3 ryanair aircraft on pans.flash notice flt.delayed until 1315 hrs.
Alicante info.desk cannot contact ryanair for explanation.(not their problem).
1030 hrs.free drink plus small snack.(still no information or reason for delay).
Take off 1300hrs.(still no info.on why)
Crew tannoy (no goods or services available on flt.
I questioned cabin crew with all passengers concerns and was informed that they had been called in on extra flt.with no food provided and no exta pay.i was beginning to fell sorry for them and got the impression they were doing us a big favour..
We were all offered a free cup of lukewarm water.
I am still waiting an official reason for delay and lack off basic care or consideration.
Successful Claim
In November 2005, Ryanair cancelled a flight of mine. Basically the plane had a fault, they fixed it, but failed to board everybody in time before the airport closed. At 1am, after waiting an hour on the plane, we all had to get off. Ryanair said the flight would go at 11am the next day. As it was "extra-ordinary" Servisair informed us that they had been instructed by Ryanair to offer no compensation other than a refund. Everybody was furious, it was the early hours, cold and at a small secondary airport with no facilities. I decided not to pointlessly argue at 2am, applied for a refund that night and would pursue the expenses another time. I was forced to take a taxi to the area's primary airport, buy a hotel for the night and get a new flight on a "proper" airline first thing in the morning (I had to be back for work). In all about GBP400 of additional cost.
The next day I wrote to Ryanair and requested they reimburse the hotel, the flight, the taxi and pay the compensation as ordered under EU Regulations for delayed flights. They refused claiming "extra-ordinary circumstances". I objected on the grounds that failing to achieve regular operating procedures (ie boarding in a timely manner) and operating hours of the airport were not "extra-ordinary circumstances". After Ryanair refused again, I took it up with the AUC. The AUC demanded Ryanair pay. Ryanair refused claiming that passengers had been offered overnight accommodation, but I had not requested it! Maybe this occurred at 3am, well after I had given up arguing! Ryanair also claimed they had offered an alternative flight, which I did not take up (the 11am postponement). However the AUC wrote back and said they could not require the alternative to be Ryanair or even an airline (it was a domestic flight). Ryanair failed to respond and the AUC urged me to take it to small claims court as they have no enforcement powers (a toothless regulator).
I made the same mistake many do and applied through the UK system and was rejected on grounds of no jurisdiction. I then applied through the Irish system. Ryanair refused to concede and therefore I was required to appear in person in Court in Ireland. However, at this time I had moved to Australia. The court delayed the hearing for 2 years until I had moved back. Two days before the court date, Ryanair wrote to the Court with an offer of settlement (the full additional costs excluding the cost of the Ryanair flight that was refunded, but no EU compensation). I agreed as it was preferable to appearing in court and the costs of travel, etc.
I urge anyone who feels that they are rightfully due compensation from Ryanair to take it through the Irish court. Do not back down. Ryanair expects this. I would have gone to court if they had not settled.
Booking Change Saga
On 31st July 2008 I booked a return flight online with Ryanair from London Stansted to Carcasonne, leaving 11th August at 1305 and returning on the 13th. Everything was confirmed and I was ready to go, but the night before I was due to depart I was taken severely ill and was diagnosed with Tracheitis, an infection of the trachea which affected my breathing. A doctor was called and told me that under no circumstances should I fly.
As it was 1.25am Ryanair's Customer Service line was closed, so I started ringing them at 9am. At about 9.03am I got through to someone to let them know I wasn't flying and to re-arrange the flight for another time. When I asked them to change the flight to a date in April 2009, they said they were unable to do so because 'the route was being discontinued for operational purposes'. She asked me to hold the line while she found another date, but instead of putting me on hold she cut me off. I called again and managed to get through to someone at 9.08am, who told me she was unable to do anything about it because it was less than 4hrs before departure. I argued that it was them that cut me off but she was not having any of it: 'I'm not going around in circles with you, I can't and won't change anything on the phone. You will simply have to travel to Stansted today and sort it at the desk', she said and put the phone down on me!
I should tell you that a trip to London Stansted from my home in Reading, Berkshire is a round-trip of 178 miles...and when you're ill that's a long way to travel! If I was well enough to travel to the airport I would have checked in and then boarded the flight. This all happened on the day that thousands of passengers who had booked through third-party websites were having their tickets denied! It would have been chaos, and I would have probably ended up in hospital!
I decided that I would complain to Ryanair directly and found the email address of the Customer Services Director, Caroline Greene through your website. I sent her an email detailing all of the problems I had incurred, but by the end of the week I still hadn't had a reply. I then faxed a complaint to Ryanair's Corporate Headquarters in Dublin, but after 10 working days STILL hadn't received a response. In desperation, I submitted a formal case to the Irish Small Claims Court. Ryanair's first response was the standard refusal, so I replied:
I have read Ryanair's response to the claim and while I accept that when I purchased the ticket I accepted the General Terms and Condtions of Carriage, I do not agree with Ryanair's view that the ticket is fully flexible.
On the date of departure, I tried to change the date of the flight in my first telephone call to the Customer Response Centre to a date in April 2009, however I was told by the customer services representative on the telephone it was not possible to change it to that particular date in April as the route was being discontinued. Afterwards I was cut off the telephone by Ryanair, and during the second telephone call I was told there was nothing that could be done at all over the telephone - the only alternative given by the Customer Response Centre was to travel to London Stansted and resolve the situation in person, which I refuse to spend time and money doing.
April 2009 is the only other time that I am in a position to take this flight again as being a Secondary School Teacher means that I must work within the confines of the school vacation. If the company are planning to discontinue the flight after this time this does not make the flight '"fully flexible" as suggested by Ryanair. I would be more than willing to discuss an alternative destination with Ryanair, however even their lack of decency to even contact me after making a formal complaint through their own complaint procedures would mean that I would refuse to pay any "applicable fees" as a matter of principle.
Ryanair came back soon after:
We wish to advise that Mr [name] by contacting our Reservation centre would have had to pay 88.00 GBP for the flight change fee and any fare difference.
Therefore, as a gesture of good will, we are in a position to offer a Travel Credit for the future travel to the value of 21.26 GBP (which is the difference of the original price of the ticket and flight change fee). Hence when Mr [name] makes a new booking using the travel credit, he will only have to pay the same difference as he would have had to pay on the 11th August 2008 when he contacted our call centre (we wish to inform that the special rate of changing the flight on our website would have not been applied in this case, as the change should have been done 12 hours before the scheduled departure).
In summary, as a gesture of goodwill Ryanair were only going to let me pay almost the same again instead of more than the £109.26 I paid for the original flight. Perhaps it's just me being greedy, but I'm not seeing the goodwill gesture in paying for your flight over again! I also don't ever remember reading anything that says the flight change rate would have increased if you changed your flight less than 12hrs before departure (Ryanair's website says you can change it up to 4hrs before departure!)
Having considered the options carefully, I replied:
I do not feel that the offer being made by Ryanair is the best they can offer given the circumstances. To be honest, I am failing to see Ryanair's 'good will gesture' in asking me to pay almost the same again for a flight which they cannot offer at a later date because the route is being discontinued. I find Mr Wasiak's 'gesture of good will' a total insult to me as a consumer. I have also checked Ryanair's General Conditions of Carriage and see nothing in there that tells me that special web rates do not apply when the change to a flight is made less than 12 hours before departure - perhaps Ryanair should clarify their policy in regard to this.
Once again, as set out in my previous complaint I do have medical evidence to support the claim that I was not fit to travel on that day, and feel that this has been totally ignored by the respondent at every point in the complaint.
By this point I realised that I was fighting a losing battle, and that this was going on for too long. The complaint had been going on for nearly two months. Then Ryanair soon delivered the final blow:
Whilst we sympathise with your view, we regret that our position as set out in previous correspondence remains unaltered.
Our Terms and Conditions, however, state that flight dates, times and routes are changeable (subject to seat availability). If booked online the rate of £28/€35 per one way flight/per person applies or if booked at an airport or reservation centre the rate of £44/€55 per one way flight/per person applies.
In addition, to these flight change fees, any price difference between the original total price paid and the lowest total price available at the time of the flight change is charged. Please note that if the total price on the new flight is lower, no refund will be made.
Furthermore, flight changes (subject to seat availability) can be made up to 4 hours prior to the scheduled flight departure time either online or via a reservation centre (subject to opening hours). Internet/web only fares cannot be booked when flight changes are made through an airport or reservation centre. No flight changes can be made to a reservation once a passenger has checked in for a flight.
There are a couple of discrepencies in this statement. Ryanair said they charged a different price for a flight change if booked online. The £88.00 charge would have only been applicable for those flight bought over the phone or in person, so why were they charging me more?
By this time, I had had enough of the bat and ball game that was crossing the Irish Sea, so I withdrew my claim, but not without giving Ryanair a piece of my mind.
I am still of the opinion that the offer currently being made by Ryanair is not the best they can offer given the circumstances, especially when they are charging me £88 as a flight change fee when I should be charged £56 as I booked the original fare online. To be honest, I am failing to see Ryanair's 'good will gesture' in asking me to pay almost the same again for a flight which they cannot offer at a later date.
I find Mr Wasiak's 'gesture of good will' a total insult to me as a customer. I have also checked Ryanair's Term and Conditions as well as their General Conditions of Carriage and see nothing in there that tells me that special web fares do not apply when the change to a flight is made less than
12 hours before departure - perhaps Ryanair should clarify their policy in regard to this.
It seems clear to me that Ryanair have got 'moving the goalposts to suit themselves' down to a fine art, and that there is always an answer to a tricky question lurking somewhere around the corner. Quite frankly I have no more time to commit to this ridiculous 'bat-and-ball game' with a company who obviously wouldn't know a good will gesture if it leapt on top of them. I cannot agree to the offer Ryanair have made - even if I booked another flight with them with the offer given I would begrudge every moment of the journey knowing that I have had to pay nearly £200 for a flight which is almost half of that in value. As a matter of principal I intend never to send my custom towards Ryanair again.
Once again, as set out in previous complaints I do have medical evidence to support the claim that I was not fit to travel on that day, and feel that this has been totally ignored by the respondent at every point in the complaint. Neither have they addressed their lack of Customer Service, both when the line was cut off when trying to change the flight in the first telephone conversation, when they refused to change anything in the second telephone call or when they failed to respond to two direct written complaints made to their Head Office in Dublin, which completely goes against their Passenger Charter of resolving complaints within 7 working days.
It is with sincere regret that I withdraw this claim, not because I agree with Ryanair's decision, but simply because I am fed up with trying to work with a company who have ultimately taken my money without offering any suitable recompense. Ryanair's Customer Services should take heed of the statistic that one consumer tells four others about a good experience with a company, but tells ten other consumers about a bad experience. I feel Ryanair have had ample opportunity to bring this to a mutual solution, however they have failed to do so.
This is how it has been left. I feel Ryanair have won, and I'm £109.26 out of pocket. I know this is a small amount to some, but as a Newly Qualified Teacher this is a big deal and there is also a matter of principal, something Ryanair are clearly lacking which they showed on their last BBC Watchdog appearance a few weeks ago. Michael O'Leary's interview said it all: "We don't want to take the moral high ground, we want to take the low cost ground", showing just how money hungry they are. I hope Ryanair go bust and he loses the lot, something I don't normally wish on my enemies.
In amongst all of this, they still haven't addressed the original problems of poor customer service and the refusal to reply to the email and fax complaints I sent. It goes without saying I won't be flying with them again...not that I got to fly with them in the first place!
Still Awaiting Refund Due to Cancellation
My mother & I booked return flights from Edinburgh to Berlin, one of their new destinations due to have been launched at the end of September. When making the booking, I saw that, as my mum is visually impaired, I was obliged to notify Ryanair of this fact. I subsequently found out that this was because an entire group of blind/visually impaired passengers were unceremoniously taken off their flight - Ryanair's lame excuse being, "due to health & safety issues". I believe the group successfully sued Ryanair and were awarded damages. Now Ryanair limit the number of blind/visually impaired passengers to a maximum of five per flight.
So, I looked for a number to call them and it was an 0871 number, which, when called, gave an automated message to call a premium rate number (09) at £1 per minute. Thanks to the saynoto0870.com website, I found it cheaper to call their Dublin number where I was kept on hold for a staggering 27 minutes before I got through to advise them that my mother is visually impaired and would require assistance on the return journey only. An hour or so later, I received another flight confirmation email stating, "Passenger visually impaired, travelling with companion, DOES NOT REQUIRE ASSISTANCE". So, another lengthy wait to get through to them only to be told in a very patronising manner that my mother's request for assistance was, "in the system" to which I requested an amended booking confirmation, which was not forthcoming. Two calls at an average of 25 minutes on hold, 10 minutes for some incompetent fool to deal with the request would have entailed a staggering phone bill in excess of £50+ , most of which would go into Ryanair's greedy hands and all of that for nothing!
On the 10th September 2008, Ryanair announced that,
"Dear Customer - Ryanair sincerely regrets that due to a strike by Boeing staff (our aircraft manufacturer), it has been necessary to cancel some flights departing between the 23/09/2008 to the 04/11/2008. Please see below for details of your flight(s) which has been cancelled.
Please also advise any other passengers who may be travelling in your party of the cancellation of this booking.
Please note that this flight booking will be automatically cancelled and all monies paid for the unused flights refunded within 7 working days. The refund will be processed back to the original form of payment used to pay for the booking.
Ryanair again sincerely apologises for the inconvenience caused by this cancellation. This cancellation which is outside of the control of Ryanair falls under the extraordinary circumstances clause of Article 7 of EC Regulation 261/2004."
One week later I received this email from Ryanair.
"Following your recent refund request for booking confirmation number ......
We confirm that your refund request has been processed to the form of payment used to pay for your booking. Your issuing bank will then take 5-7 working days to process this refund amount back to your account.
The amount refunded to your credit/debit card is GBPUnknown!!!!!!!!!!!!! "
It is now October 8th and to date, no refund has been received from Ryanair. I wrote to them on 27th September 2008 demanding that the refunds be made immediately - no acknowledgement, no payment, nada!
Dumped in Biarritz
FR747 BIQ to STN 09:50 16th Sept 2008.
My wife and I together with about 150+ other people successfully checked-in and passed through security to wait at the boarding gate in Biarritz - an hour passed and the 'Boarding' message changed to 'Delayed' - then 'Cancelled'. A tannoy announcement told us that we should collect our bags and visit the Ryanair desk in the check-in area.
Despite the fact that some flights were actually leaving, we were told that the flight was cancelled due to Adverse weather (in which case Ryanair aren't responsible under EU261 to compensate passengers) and given a slip of paper with an Irish telephone number if we wanted to rebook or get a refund. That phone number didn't connect for me, though another passenger said they did get an answer and it was a recorded message.
That was it - 150+ people dumped, no prospect of another flight anytime soon as Ryanair don't fly everyday and their customer service line wasn't working.
On my eventual return to the UK (Two days later - not via Ryanair!) I phoned for a refund, to be told by the customer service staff that they had no record of that flight being cancelled and could I ring back later..?
I could almost hear that arrogant ****** O'Leary 'You paid **** all for your flight, what do you expect?
Charged after Site Malfunction and no Confirmation
Whilst I was booking a flight on Ryanair.com, the website malfunctioned after I entered by credit card details. I waited until the next day but as I didn't receive any booking confirmation, and as the flights had increased in price, I made a second booking attempt, this time successful.
The next week I found that I had been charged for the unconfirmed flight.
I commenced faxing Ryanair daily explaining the situation and asking for a refund. Each day, I changed a line to note the dates that I had faxed them. Usually it took several attempts for the fax to go through (and a Eur16 phone bill) and I kept all the fax receipts, successful or no.
After 7 business days without response, on a Friday, I referred the matter to my credit-card issuer. They asked me to fax all the support paperwork, so I sent them all the faxes I had sent to Ryanair, along with a cover letter.
That Sunday, I received 2 template emails from Ryanair saying that I was not entitled to be refunded for either flight.
I printed out the emails, and faxed Ryanair back complaining that no-one had actually read my request, which was to refund the flight which had never been confirmed. I also notified them again that I had referred the matter to my credit-card issuer.
That day they appeared to process the refund, and I was able to contact my credit-card issuer and let them know that the dispute had been resolved.
I have received NO communication from Ryanair apart from two template "You are not entitled to a refund" emails.
So it appears that persistently faxing does work, but it takes time, at least 1 negative response from Ryanair, and referral to the credit-card issuer.
Missed Funeral, Indifference and Lack of Information (addressed to Ryanair)
Flight FR 9805 Gerona-Stansted (delayed)
This letter is to complain re the above delayed flight and the total lack of customer service experienced by ourselves as we were kept waiting in the airport for 13 hours.
As soon as we arrived in the [Gerona] airport we were informed that there was an 8 hour delay, how the first flight of the morning could be delayed and such a specific time be given is completely beyond me, unless there was no aircraft to fly us home in the first place.
A fellow passenger called his wife in Scotland and asked her to phone your call centre in Dublin to try and find out what the delay was, a ridiculous situation but we were being given no information at all from your staff.
She did this and called him back with the response she was given -adverse weather conditions, now considering we were looking at clear skies and no other flights delayed this was obviously the first of many lies that day.
A group of us approached the service desk and asked to be put on other flights that were leaving on time-this was refused we were told we would have to pay the full price of 200 euros to get a seat on another flight. Once again the passenger called his wife who called back to Dublin to be told that wasn't true, we should be allowed to transfer, who was right and who was wrong didn't matter, the staff weren't listening to reason.
We were treated with total contempt, there wasn't even the slightest inclination to move off a chair and phone Dublin to have the information/procedure clarified.
Sadly this didn't surprise me I fly regularly with Ryanair and on other occasions I have been faced with the same level of intransigence from your staff when faced with lengthy delays.
Our 8 hour delay was soon changed hour by hour with no explanation volunteered, we eventually were informed on constantly asking that it was a mechanical fault on a wheel that couldn't be fixed.
It is to me highly suspicious that a delay of 8 hours could be predicted so precisely, I do not believe there ever was a flight for us.
I did actually have other flights booked with yourself from Gerona-Paris-Prestwick, I tried to get my partner booked on these but was told that it couldn't be done as there was not enough time for connections in-between flights. I explained I had booked them and also had friends on these-to no avail, I was constantly told it couldn't be done.
My friends did get these flights and had no problems whatsoever, we could have been home 12 hours prior to when we did arrive if once again your staff had not given the wrong information.
The reason I had booked other early morning flights after booking my originals was because my brother was terminally ill, we didn't have any timescale on how long he would survive so I thought it best to book first flights incase he passed away.
Sadly he did and his funeral was arranged for the 5th allowing me time to attend.
Due to the sheer stubbornness of your staff and their refusal to even try and assist me to get home I missed his funeral. There were other flights we could have been transferred to which would have allowed us to be home in time but despite constantly asking this was refused.
There was only one member of staff who showed the slightest bit of empathy and was prepared to try and help get us home, by this time I had missed my brother's funeral and just wanted to get home to be with my family.
The woman in question a supervisor was horrified and was willing to get us on a flight to Prestwick, however this was full and it meant going on stand-by, by this point the flight to Stansted was due to board, as there was no guarantee of seats being available on the Prestwick flight we thought it best to travel to London and transfer from there to Glasgow.
We had asked constantly throughout the day if there was any way we could go on a standby list for alternative flights to be told no, Ryanair don't do standby you will have to pay the full price of seats.
On arrival at Stansted we were informed there were only 13 seats available and we could transfer to these for £50, considering the delay and it being a mechanical fault I thought it ridiculous but would have paid anything to get home. I was extremely stressed and approached a supervisor-explained my situation and asked him for assistance to get us on the flight home as I knew there was not going to be any seats left by the time I got to the front of the queue.
Once again I met total indifference, infact I would go as far as to say I was treated with total contempt.
To shrug your shoulders at someone who is obviously under extreme pressure is totally unacceptable. I asked for his name to be told he didn't need to give it, how are you meant to complaint about someone if they don't give their name?
I must point out that at no time was I abusive, raising my voice or being insulting. I work in a call centre and have previously been a supervisor in call centres I know how frustrating it is to be spoken to like that and would never stoop to that level.
Needless to say we didn't get on the flight, as I wasn't willing to sleep on the floor at the airport all night we had no option but to get the overnight bus to Scotland.
This cost us £42 each, plus we then needed to get a taxi home an additional £10.
We should have arrived in Prestwick at 11.55 on Wed 5th March but had infact to endure the delay plus an overnight journey meaning we were travelling or waiting to travel for 27hours, not arriving back in Scotland until 8am on 6th March.
Throughout this experience I tried to phone your call centre from my mobile to plead with someone to see sense and get us on an alternative flight and kept getting cut off I dread the arrival of the phone bill.
I asked the staff at Gerona to let me use a phone to call you to try and get some assistance, to be informed their phones are for internal use only, and couldn't make external calls.
Another lie as earlier in the day they had informed us they had called your head office and we couldn't be put on another flight.
Today at 14.55 I again phoned your call centre eventually speaking to a girl called Fiona. I explained the situation and was advised complaints have to be faxed. I informed her I wanted to speak to a manager and asked for a call back as I had already spent a fortune trying to reach the call centre.
Fiona informed me they wouldn't call me back, never have I heard of a customer service department that doesn't do call backs and I have worked in a few.
By this point I had had enough and advised that I would infact be taking the matter further.
Your company can never compensate me for missing my brother's funeral or for me missing being with my family on that day, or for the sheer failure to demonstrate any customer service skills at all.
As I said previously I myself work in customer services and I was horrified at the lack of any sort of empathy or even willingness to try and assist us.
If I or any of my team treated our customers with that lack of service then we would be out of a job, and rightly so.
I appreciate there are guidelines, every company has them, but they also have the ability to bend them and on this occasion I would have expected that to happen.
Any company I have worked with would have ensured a solution was achieved as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately my past experience with Ryanair has proved the company to be the exceptions to the rule.
A copy of this letter is being sent to my MP, MSP and also to Air Transport Users Council as I am not willing to just leave this.
If your complaints department show the same level of indifference as your staff on the ground then no doubt a reply will not be forthcoming.
You should maybe look at Virgin for how to operate a public service with good customer relations.
Two family members were delayed on one of their services for 2 hours, they were provided with free refreshments on their journey when it resumed and then had first class complementary tickets for another journey sent out.
That is what you call customer service.
No Response to Refund Request
I am from Glasgow and was travelling to Newcastle to fly with Ryanair to Barcelona on Sunday 2nd March. Me and my brother arrived in Newcastle and on our way to the airport when my Mum phoned to say that my gran had passed away. We travelled back home so therefore did not use our flight.
A week later, I faxed over to Ryanair a letter explaining what had happened and a copy of my grandmothers death certificate. The next day I received an email from Ryanair asking me to resend the letter and certificate as they could not make out the flight reference numbers. I did this and I never heard another thing from them. At the end of March I sent another fax asking them if they could acknowledge that they were dealing with my request, surprisingly I heard nothing.
Now and again I would try and fax over another letter asking them for an update but I could not get through on their fax machine, in fact it was an absolute impossibility. I was about to give up, which I am sure is what they hope most Customers will do when I decided to write to them.
I wrote to them at the end of July and within 7 days I received a letter stating that they have never received a request from me, they never received a death certificate and could I resend this to them. They have 2 copies of the certificate and they obviously have just disregarded it!
As you all know a death in the family is a very traumatic experience and I absolutely disgusted by how they treat people. As of yet I am still waiting to see if they will refund me and my brother but I will not give up and I will take this to the regulator if they do not refund me as I know I am entitled to this. It would be very interesting to know how many people have been in the same situation as me and simply gave up!?!?!?! That must add up to another couple of million that Ryanair can steal from their cutomers!
TOTALLY DISGUSTED and I will never fly with Ryanair again! I will update you when I get their reply!
Why Pay for Priority Boarding?
I recently flew back from Rome with Ryan air and had booked a priority boarding pass - although we board the bus first (as we had actually paid for this) once all priority boarders were on the bus everyone else joined us that had an ordinary ticket.
We got to the plane on a journey not dissimilar to a cattle market and everyone jumped off the bus pushing everyone else out of the way and ran to the plane like we were leaving a war zone.
my mum and I managed to get seats together which was a relief as the only reason I booked and paid extra was for the privilege of guaranteeing we would sit together as I am a very nervous flyer -
So what is the point in paying extra money for this ticket when everyone else that pays the standard fare can get on the plane first anyway?
First Ryanair Experience
To give 1 star to this airline is very generous indeed. We (4 adults + 4 kids), travelled from L'pool to Murcia 26/7.
The journey started out well (even though 3 hr ferry to L'pool + taxi to airport). Mayhem started when we went to check-in to be told that we would have to pay £16 per bag (eight in total) as we hadn't checked in online - yes we were caught out by the cr*p website too! We thought we could save £32 by taking the two small bags on hand luggage - forgot that all the sun cream and expensive (Clinique!) stuff was in the case - bye bye approx £50 in the security bin!
Ah well, that was that so onwards we went to the bar for a quick brandy to calm ourselves... Quick shop (£25 down) in Boots for essentials (sod the good stuff) and through to the gate.
Oh my god! We had never flown with a 'budget airline' before but boy did we get a shock when we got on the plane! I thought the check in staff were rude but the trolley dollies took the biscuit! "SIT DOWN NOW" I was told as the plane began to taxi down the runway... "I can't leave my children", I protested. "We are about to take off so just find a seat" she said.
Get the picture, my brother is down the front of the plane after being barked at. My husband is 3 seats up, I am near the back with 4 kids all standing and my sister in law was told to "SIT DOWN" on the back seat. The children aged 12, 13, 9 & 9 are all looking around wondering what to do until a very kind fellow passenger allowed me and my 9 yr old son to sit together (he was crying and upset). The 3 other children managed to get seats but the whole time I just kept thinking... is this all actually legal?
Well, we arrived at Murcia airport safe and sound but a bit shell shocked at the whole Sh*tair experience thinking we wouldn't be caught out on the way back! We tried all week to check our bags in online (is this a big fix?) as we kept getting an error message that it was a 'restricted' airport.
Not wanting to pay another £100 for taking our bags home with us we decided to try and call the number on the website. Don't bother! The number it gives you tells you to call another number and the other number then gives a recorded message telling you that the number is not available. We unfortunately did not get the 'cheap' flights that some do (£149 return per person) add to that the £200 we ended up paying for our luggage both ways and we would have been cheaper to fly BA.
To add insult to the injury the staff at Ryanair have to be the rudest people I have ever come across (and I travel often for work). I said to one of the check in staff at L'pool airport that they must get an awful lot of complaints about the check-in fee, she looked at me like I had two heads and said "I don't care"
All in all we ended up spending a fortune in phone/internet calls from Spain trying to get in touch with this bunch of cowboys and still ended up getting conned - we were not alone, half the airport were in the same position. On the plus side, we decided to be ruthless when boarding, stuck out our elbows and ran like athletes to get a couple of seats with the kids and it worked (apologies to anyone on the return journey 2 August!!) we had no choice!
Extra Fees and Charges
Hi there, I just wanted to e-mail in regarding the debit-card fee I was levied with after booking my flight recently.
I'll confess that the problem is partly due to my own inattentiveness - I think in the rush to get my flight paid for after I made the booking (you know, "LOW-COST FLIGHTS, SALE ENDS TONIGHT!!!"), I didn't even notice that, while entering my card details, I was being charged another fee. I only realised once I received my e-mail invoice, after I'd already paid it. I used a maestro debit card. This is what the e-mail read:
PAYMENT DETAILS
It's just a warning to all those booking a flight to be more attentive than I was! Not that it would have made much of a difference for me - I know now that they don't charge for Visa Electron users, but I'm 17-years-old - I only have one card.
Cheap Flights Don't have to be as Unpleasant as Ryanair
After a series of typical Ryanair experiences, no worse than many in your forum, we now reorganise holidays so as to avoid Ryanair wherever possible, and have cut our exposure to them down by 80%. In doing so we have discovered that cheap flying does not have to be actively unpleasant, even on little known Italian airlines.
Our experiences for the record are:
- 3 calls to their expensive call centre needed to get a refund from Ryanair when Ryanair cancelled a flight (Rome - Alghero) due to Italian Govenment action two years ago. On the final call we were told that they assumed we would be rebooking and had left the money for that. I don't know if you can make a booking on their web site and navigate to pay from an amount they are holding?
No Warning Before or Customer Service After Flight Rescheduled by Two Days
I am so glad to have found your site and to find that I am not the only person to have been in tears and nearly gone bald after a nasty Ryanair experience.
Our story starts last year when myself, husband and children were due to go to a wedding in Italy. The flights we were booked on were re-scheduled and (as I had just taken up a new job) decided not to take the re-offered flights but instead to accept the travel vouchers and use them at a later date.
My husband and I then decided to go away on a long weekend to Budapest, flying on Friday, coming back Monday. We organised care for the children, booked time off work, booked accomodation, traveled down to East Midlands Airport from West Yorkshire to find there was no flight to Budapest. They had 'rescheduled the flights' to fly on Sunday and come back Wednesday - we had had no email stating this would be happening and they even admitted they had not sent us one. As you can imagine we were incredibley angry and dissappointed (although the girl at the service desk was very helpful). As there were no other flights we were forced to go home, having lost a whole day in travel to the airport and back, the cost of parking at the airport, the cost of exchanging our currency etc etc.
Having followed this up we have found the resulting customer care even more infuriating than the loss of our trip away. We have written to the head office in Dublin and have had no reply. The conversation we have had on the number designated for GB have been the worst I have ever experienced as well as the most costly. The last conversation we had I was actually shouted at by one of their Manager - which was completely unprovoked. ( The only call centre we seem to get through to is one in Milan where their grasp of English is hit or miss and I don't speak Italian). All we keep being told is that they will give us a travel credit back - as if we are going to travel with them again after this fiasco!
I am now waiting to see if I get any reply from the email addresses that have been suggested by yourselves. Can anyone recommend a Regulatory body I can write to as I am determined not to let them win.
Charged After Cards not Accepted
We have lived in Spain for 6 years and travel regularly back to the UK. This is our first time flying with Ryanair from Valencia to E Midlands. We were trying to book a flight for my husband only to visit his mother who is not in the best of health.
After following the procedures for booking, on coming to payment details, we completed the details using my husbands' Visa card but it came up that it was not accepting this card details. After going back several times to try again, as instructed, we had no success. We then tried my Visa card. Again we went through the whole procedure with exactly the same negative results, i.e. it was not accepting the card details. After 2 more attempts without success, we tried using another of my Visa cards. Again, with the same negative result. At this point we gave up and looked at other airlines.
However, on going into our email, Ryanair had sent 2 emails with different confirmation references. Therefore, taking out double the amount of money out of our bank account for 1 flight after not accepting any of our earlier attempts!
On contacting my bank, they confirmed there were 2 amounts of the same sum taken out and that we would need to contact Ryanair.
FROM THIS POINT WE ALL KNOW WHAT A FRUITLESS EXCERSISE THIS THEN BECOMES. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO EITHER CONTACT THEM BY EMAIL OR PHONE. ALL THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICES NUMBERS DO NOT EXIST AND THERE IS NO EMAIL ADDRESS.
IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING THAT WE WILL NOT BE USING RYANAIR AGAIN.
Cost of Missing Flight due to Wrong Information
My son and young family missed their flight to Spain because of wrong info given to them by ryanair desk. They had to book another flight for next day and a hotel overnight, which cost £250.
I tried to ring Ryanair absoloutely waste of money and time, I tried to ring head office Dublin, and London, could not speak to a human voice, just waiting in queues forever, pressed all different nos, waste of time, it must have cost me a fortune on my phone bill, I would never nor my son use ryanair ever.
The taxi driver said Ryanair never call gates or names hoping you will book another flight and pay again .I have threatened them with the Ombudsman I dont suppose that will worry them.
Card Fees, Payment Refused, Crashing Site etc etc (addressed to Ryanair)
On the afternoon of Wednesday 30th July 2008 I tried to book a flight with you from London Stansted to Limoges outbound on 1st August and returning on 4th August. My reason for booking was to fly out to France to join a group of friends visiting a former university colleague who now lives near Limoges. I was motivated to fly with your airline because the return fare (including booking fees etc and allowing for online check in and hand baggage etc) appeared to be around £135 (allowing for quoted taxes and airport fees etc and knowing that I would be taking only hand luggage and checking in online). This was still significantly more than an amount of £70 I had been offered to travel with some friends as a 5th passenger leaving by road early on the morning of Thursday 31st August. However as two children of 10 and 12 would also be in the car it would probably have been a squashed and taxing drive and I decided flying would be better. However as I live in Capel in Surrey 7 miles south of Dorking and 10 miles by road from Gatwick the prospect of either road or rail travel to Stansted (a journey time of around 2 hours 30 minutes by road or rail compared to only 20 minutes by taxi from here to Gatwick) and your failure to match Easyjet in operating to most of your EU destinations from Gatwick Airport was still a major disincentive to travelling with you. Sadly Easyjet do not fly to Limoges or anywhere near to it.
Allowing for all of the above on Wednesday afternoon I nonetheless ploughed through your booking screens and reached what appeared to be a final screen to Book Now where I discovered you were trying to charge me £8 for using a Maestro debit card on a £134 fare, even though the amount you have to pay NatWest for that transaction undoubtedly amounts to well under £1. I carefully checked all the card options but found only a Visa Electron card had no card fee. I have about 12 credit and debit cards but this does not include Visa Electron but does include Visa Debit and Visa Credit plus Maestro, Mastercard and American Express. There was no explanation on this card payment selection screen as to why you were now charging precisely the same for debit cards as credit cards, especially bearing in mind that if I use my Egg Money Mastercard or Shell Citi Mastercard credit cards they both give me 1% cashback (or around £1.34) for using it to make the booking unlike my Maestro debit card.
My feelings about Ryanair's action here is that it amounts to nothing more than a blatant scam and deliberate extortion as the charge made does not reflect the real costs of the customer paying you by debit card in particular, while the £8 return fee charged for credit cards is also grossly excessive and disproportionate for all but your most expensive fares. It is also clearly a quite deliberate attempt to circumvent EU rules requiring you to disclose all taxes and charges up front. You deliberately offer a nil card charge only on the Visa Electron card to provide an excuse as to why you cannot show the £8 card charge earlier on in the booking process but of course you know perfectly well that next to nobody holds the Visa Electron card (neither NatWest or Nationwide who I bank with even issue them). I should also point out that I previously terminated a longstanding Natwest Gold Plus Mastercard account specifically because its full travel insurance (in return for an annual fee) relied on using the credit card to book and Easyjet, Ryanair and others did not then charge extra to use a debit card. This only adds to my anger at your latest scam action over debit cards. Why don't you just fairly charge 2% of the price for credit card use (the actual cost) on the booking as a major tour operator like First Choice does is beyond me. Similarly you are not entitled to charge more than the matter of pence you are actually charged by the banks for a debit card transaction.
Incredibly despite all this I still pressed the Book Now button on Wednesday afternoon as I wanted to visit my friends in France for the weekend but after about 4 minutes of waiting for your website to dissolve itself in to a large heap on the floor I received a message that my booking had not succeeded but with no explanation as to why and with only an indication that I should start all over again from the Home page where I was either not getting any fares quoted at all or having to wait 2 to 3 minutes or more for fares to come up. At this point I contacted Egg Money using a normal geographic phone number on the www.saynoto0870.com website and got through to a person in less than a minute. They told me they had declined the card payment due to extra security measures on their part but could authorise it to be allowed in about 15 minutes time on the Ryanair website.
After all this I sat back breathed heavily and considered the following points:-
Due to the contemptuous attitude towards your passengers so frequently exhibited by Michael O'Leary you will undoubtedly take no notice whatsoever of my views but at least I will have felt better by making it clear how you managed to lose my business and why I have ended up spending the weekend in the UK when I would probably much rather have been out in France.
Sent to the Wrong Country
here is my story, it took place last month, on the 24th of June.
I was suppose to fly from Madrid to Paris Beauvais. I gave the woman at the check-in desk my passport, booking confirmation number and my name, the woman was first confused and said i was not on her list with a very bad attitude, and finally made a few phone calls after i insisted. So it appeared to be they have found me on their system so she just scrumbled down my name on the boarding pass, not even printed, and sent me to the boarding gate.
Since i would never think they would actually give me a wrong flight and everything, i followed the time and information printed on the boarding pass to the gate that i was SUPPOSE to be boarding at. someone even CHECKED my boarding pass, and without questioning anything they let me through.
And the next thing i knew was standing at this tiny airport and found out that I was actually at OSLO, NORWAY!!!! Instead of Paris. I was asking for help from the Customer service desk by Ryanair but the woman told me that i had to find another alternative from other companies as they did not have anything to fly to Paris at all.
It was a nightmare trying to find a flight to leave the country as i was suppose to go to Belgium on the 26th. I had no more time to lose so i had to spend 3000 norwegian money in order to get myself out of there! I had to take a shuttle bus to get me to the train station, in order to cross half of the city to get to the main airport in Oslo. It was a total nightmare and i was all shock.
I'd like to publish my story to anyone who's suffered the same service as me. I just sent them emails and hopefully i will get replied soon.
No Response Over Smashed Suitcase
On april 8, I flew from ciampino airport in rome to charleroi in belgium, on flight FR 6106. My suitcase, which they charged me € 80,00 for 3kg overweight for, arrived completely smashed on all sides, ready to be scrapped. I filled the report at charleroi airport, they gave me a damage report with file reference no. which I had to send within a week by fax to the baggage claim office in dublin, together with a copy of the passport, boarding card, baggage tag, blablabla, which I did and I've never heard again of this matter. After checking online, where it says that the claims are attended within 14 working days, I checked in the luggage session and it says my claim reference no. does not exist. I talked for half an hour with charleroi airport and in june they don't have access to april claims anymore, they tried to pass me with some ryanair representative, another 15 minutes of music with no result, in rome, no joy, they don't know where to reach anybody from [Ryanair] and on [the] web page there is no useful phone number whatsoever.
The Full Ryanair Experience
I have just returned from Cork and I had an experience with RyanAir that I think your readership should be aware of. Actually the whole experience from booking the trip Online to arriving home left a lot to be desired.
I have not had the time to read all of the donated comments listed on your website and apologise if this is repetition of any.
Regarding the Online Booking process: - Does anyone find this process as painful as me? Its been turned into the Spanish or in this case, Irish inquisition. So many questions. So many possibilities to screw more money out of you. Obviously this means open to a lot of Online errors from failing to tick or untick a box. Surely that is their plan?
I was arranging a long weekend for my wife and myself and after finding the flights; Outward cost £3.99 and return cost £39.99 I thought what a pleasant surprise. But I'm no fool. This is without all the airport charges and taxes of course. I then recall a further series of questions about how they could fleece more money out of you, well, thats what it appeared.
We were travelling light, so only cabin luggage. I was quite surprised at the cost of being able to take one item of luggage into the hold, but I could ignore this as we had no further luggage. We also have our own insurance so this was also ignored.
Finally I get to the penultimate screen and could see the total, with all the charges and taxes. Blimey! £185! But what else could I do but accept this? Took me so long to get to this point, so I felt I had to continue. Once I did and reached the final screen, I spotted another 'tax' of £6.40 per passenger being stealthily added. If you click on the 'details' tab it just says something like 'airport tax'? Well, how does this tax differ from the previous tax and charges?
I wanted to know so I found the 'helpdesk' number and noticed that it was £1 a minute. Dilemma. Do I take the extra tax charge hit or do I run the risk of sitting in a £1 a min phone queue for God knows how long? Daylight robbery. The press coverage was true about RyanAir but no one has mentioned these extra final screen taxes.
When I told my wife the news that we had the trip booked I told her the flight times and would you believe it, due to work commitments, she could not make the outward flight time now and I therefore had to change it. If things were not expensive enough, I had to take a further £75 hit for changing the outward flight time. Classed as an admin fee? Online? What administration? No person was involved. Is this legal? Smells bad to me! But again I had to take this on the chin as I chose the wrong flight. My fault at what cost!? Lesson learned!
Fast forward now to Stansted Airport and the outward bound trip. No major problem here only that the flight was delayed 90 mins and no explanation given. On the subject, it never ceases to amaze me that RyanAir announce 'Final Calls' to the gates when the plane has not actually arrived in yet. Anyone else noticed this? On a previous visit to Stansted, we all stood around incredulously while the lady with access to the tannoy system in front of us asked for the remaining passengers to come to the gate as they were holding up the boarding... but we were standing there and there was clearly no plane landed yet. Images of lemmings cascading off the end of a gangplank come to mind.
Now to the homeward bound leg and what could go wrong? Well, it was clear to all in the queue at Cork airport that things were going wrong for a lot of people. Every couple/group in front of us was being re-directed to the RyanAir Service Desk with a piece of paper which indicated what extraordinary fine/charge the airline had chosen to hit them with. I could see the favourite 'excess baggage' card being played mostly but in their defence, their website does explain implicitly how they will screw every penny out of you if you dare turn up with a) a bag to load in the hold b) the weight is too much over their maximum allowance (which we all know is very low). God help the guy with his wife in a wheelchair who was in front of us. The check-in lady was baffled. Seems she had never seen one before!
It came to our turn and the check-in lady behind the desk took our details and then shook her head very negatively and said something inaudible about failing to check in Online. She spoke very low and it didn't help a lot that her Polish accent was still quite strong. (I've been to Poland and she was clearly from there).
Apparently she could not find a way to inflict more costly damage to us on the baggage allowance or a whole host of other things obviously on her 'primary list' so she went to the 'reserve list' and found that we had not checked in Online. Is this a crime? Well, as it transpires, it is! She made us feel like idiots!
So I explained that we actually had tried to check in Online but were prevented from doing so as my wife holds a non-European passport and RyanAir Online checking only allows acceptance from European passport holders. Racist? Probably. But surely she was kidding that she was going to make us pay a fine for that!? No. She was serious. There was no room for negotiation. So, beware! Ok, it was only €10 but it was the principal.
She said it was compulsory for everyone to check in Online or face this fine. I was gobsmacked! When we queried this at the Service Desk we were met with equally blank expressions. They would not reason with us. How can you be fined when the website will not allow you to check in?
Fortunately every cloud has a silver lining and mine is that I will never travel with RyanAir again. I have a choice and I choose not to use them. They are a joke. I am sure that what they are doing is illegal. The press coverage about them agreeing by a court order to advertise the 'full costs including charges and taxes' seems to have not been adopted but watch out for the other taxes and fines they can impose also.
For the two 'ladies' I dealt with at Cork, I would be so embarrassed if I was them. Virtually every traveller had to make the trip from the main desk to the Service Desk and was fined about something pathetic. I was speechless at the time. Perhaps this is why the airline has lost all of its locally employed staff and gone to eastern europe. That is not a racist statement - that is fact! They are willing to work for less and up to a point will endure the 'illegal' policies imposed on them from their employers to extract more money from their customers.
Change of Flight Time and Can't get Through to Cancel
im not a english native speaker..but i also would like to publish my experience with ryanair.
I booked two flights. One from granada to london stansted and one 7 hours later from london stansted to berlin. I booked them 5 months in advance. After one month they changed the flight time of the first one to 24 hours later, so that i also couldnt get the second one and just offered me a travel credit that also just could be used by phoning ryanair client service.
i tried this many times and i just didnt reach nobody. so i worte a cancellation and sent it by fax to dublin. Nobody answered me while i was waiting 2 months. Now i tried again to phone and 2 times they just hang me off after 30 seconds when i started to speak and explain my situation.
So now I am very angry and I am sure I wont use Ryanair no more.
Excess Baggage and Stolen Phone (letter not responded to)
Dear Ms O'Neill,
I am a regular customer and am writing to complain about the service I received on flight FR1707 from PSA to EMA on July 3rd 2008.
When I checked in at Pisa airport I was informed that one of the bags was 2KG overweight and that I would have to pay a charge of €30 before I would be allowed to board. The other bags in the party including the hand baggage were sufficiently underweight to allow the weight to be redistributed, but this was not allowed by the operator at the desk and we were effectively held to ransom until we payed the fine. Our bags were taken away, but not loaded onto the plane. We payed the fine under protest and returned to the desk and were given our boarding cards and our bags were retrieved and placed onto the flight.
On arrival at EMA I checked my bag that had been placed in the hold and discovered that it had been opened and my mobile phone stolen. The phone was in the bag when I handed it to the care of Ryanair. The phone was used in Italy by the thief until the remaining credit was spent.
I believe that the excess baggage charge of €30 is unfair, especially given that the other bags were under weight. I also suspect that the phone was stolen while the bags were held to ransom. It was in my bag when it was checked in, and calls were made from it to mobile numbers in italy within minutes of check in.
I would like to request Ryanair to refund the €30 excess baggage charge and compensate me for the loss of my mobile and the cost of the calls that were made. I would modestly value this at an additional €30.
I can provide baggage labels, the receipt for the baggage charge etc if you need to see these.
I look forward to hearing from you, or one of you colleagues soon,
One and a Half Day Flight "Time" Change
Just spent an interesting morning arguing with Ryanair.
I had booked a return flight to Lubeck some three months ago and had an e mail from Ryanair saying that they had changed my flight times so that I would be returning approximately one and a half days later than i had booked. this was not acceptable for me as this would have meant loosing just short of 1000 pounds income.
I checked flight availability and noted that I would be able to return late on the evening prior to the the original morning flight and though this would create problems in itself I accepted this as I am aware that situations change and am happy to accommodate this.
So on ringing Ryanair (after five attempts where I was cut off before connecting to the protracted message that they have, and then waiting for more than ten minutes to talk to someone) i was amazed to be told that I would be required to pay an additional 145 pounds to rebook on my chosen flight. I must admit that the conversation on my part became progressively heated (during which the poor Ryanair agent responded to my statement that this is outrageous, stated "I know I have worked for them for three months and I think their behaviour is unacceptable') and as I was getting no where I asked to talk to her manager. I was duly transferred and part way through the discussion I was cut off.
I will not boor you with the the details of the subsequent conversations but this exact process occurred a further five times. Each time the agent following the set dialogue and when it was clear that I was not going to pay the additional money they put the phone down necessitating the 10 to 20 minute wait to be connected and the whole process to be started again. I even tried one of the recommendations of your contributors of keying in ##, it rang but was cut off immediately.
However on the seventh attempt the manager was silent for a very long time (which made me think they had put the phone down on me yet again...) she said, to my amazement, you are now booked on the Sunday flight (the one I wanted) and will send an e mail. This duly arrived.
From this all I can presume is that you have to persist and eventually they will give in, unless i was very lucky and eventually got someone reasonable. However it was fortunate that I had the time to do this as it literally took from 9AM to 1.45 PM to achieve this result, during this time I was constantly on the phone.
I do not need to say how frustrating, unprofessional and generally depressing I found this process. And it goes without saying that I will not be using Ryanair again. I wish you well in your campaign as it is important that such companies are not allowed to get away with such disgusting behaviour.
Birthday Message
Like most people I have my issues with Ryanair (and any other company that charges you for the privilege giving them money!) but I recall one single pleasant moment on a Ryanair flight.
A couple of years ago my friends and I travelled to southern Spain to celebrate the birthdays of two of our group. As it was busy we weren't all able to sit together - we had some at the very front (including one birthday girl), some at the very back (including the other birthday girl), and some (including me) in the middle. I was bored, as is usual on flights, and decided to play a prank!
I called the air hostess over and was going to ask her to get the pilot to embarrass the birthday girls over the PA system. She grumbled at me that I should write something down and she'd see what she could do. She seemed in a bad mood so I toned things down, just asking for a simple Happy Birthday message. She read the noted, made a sulking face and passed it back saying, "Make it funnier". Red rag to a bull!
A few minutes later we gave the revised message to the hostess and she left to go to the cabin. We had our hopes raised, but 10 minutes later and nothing had happened. 30 minutes later, still nothing.
Then, about 45 minutes later just as we were preparing to land, the pilot spoke over the PA system. He gave the usual rant about local time and temperature, and then, just as we thought he was going to deny us our birthday prank, he asked the girls by name to stand and make themselves known to the cabin crew for a security matter. They both stood up looking rather scared, thinking there was a genuine security issue, then they looked mortified when the pilot announced that it was their birthday and made the whole plane sing Happy Birthday to them! Their expressions were priceless!
After we landed we found that another of our group had somehow thrown his passport in the bin on the plane! The staff were utterly useless and wouldn't allow anyone back on the plane to help look for it and gave him no help, threatening to send him back home. Luckily, after 20 minutes of him trawling through bits of food and other waste he found it and was allowed to stay. For him it ruined a very funny and memorable flight, for us it simply added to the humour!
Administration Fee More than Tax Refund
I am writing you to tell what happened to me regarding my experience with Ryan Air - and a missed tax refund.
I booked a flight from London to Pescara that unfortunately I could not use. I knew I lost the money of the flight but I thought I could have refunded at least the money of the airport tax. I know for sure that the company MUST refund you the money if you do not use the flight, it happened to me another time with another company and I had the tax money refunded with no problem.
I tried to contact Ryan Air by email, I used the addresses found on this site (thanks!); I emailed them at least 10 times before getting an answer.
Finally they replied me, what they said was that, to do the refund, they apply a "reasonable administration fee"; in this case the tax amount was less than the fee, so I had right to nothing.
I was very annoyed because I am sure this is illegal; also they do not say how much the administration fee is, I bet is always higher than the taxes, no matter how much your taxes are.
Booking Charged After Web Error and no Confirmation for 22 Hours
I would just like to say a big thank you to you, as without your site solving my problem would have been more complicated.
Basically I had tried booking flights with Ryan air as I have done before, but I kept having problems with the website, I clicked the purchase button and it said it would take about 45 seconds to complete, then another error came up saying there had been a problem with my booking.
The following morning I checked my email and had received nothing, I also checked my available to spend balance on my credit card, and this had not reduced, so I presumed the booking had failed completely, I also could not attempt to access my booking as I had no conformation number.
I proceeded to go through the booking procedure again, but the special offer had gone, so I decided to book with Monarch.
6 o'clock in the evening I received an email from Ryan Air containing my travel itinerary! I checked my credit card available to spend balance and this had reduced - Ryan Air had booked the flights and charged my card 22 hours after I tried to book them! I now had two lots of flights booked for a total of £1800!
I tried to contact Ryan air, no luck, I tried to contact my credit card company, no luck, I then found your website.
The following morning I phoned Ryan Air reservation line, and got no reply, second time the other caller hanged up message, then I phoned Ryan Air head office and pressed 0, after 20 minutes I gave up. I then contacted me Credit Card Company and they said they would send a form out for me sign to say the charge was not authorised and then they would cancel it, so I now had that as a back up. They also confirmed that my card was charged at 6pm.
I then emailed all these addresses taken from your website walshg@ryanair.com; penstonm@ryanair.com; greenc@ryanair.com; info@frsc.net; KellyG@ryanair.com; oneills@ryanair.com; WiniarkskaA@ryanair.com and requested read receipts. I had two read receipts from Gemma Walsh & Siobhan O'neill, but no bounce backs.
I also had two emails during the course of the day.
First one from Refund@Ryanair.com, second one from Ryanair Customer Services [info@frsc.net] both apoligising and stating my money had been refunded in full
The money has not yet been credited back to my account, but then it's been less than 24 hours and it usually does take a while, hopefully it's on its way.
I am pleased that I got a quick result to the emails, but it should never of been that hard to contact them, and they should have checked I still required the flights, they did have my contact details from the original booking attempt!
Deported After Lost Passport
My daughter and her boyfriend went to Sevilla from Stansted. He lost his passport on the plane. Ryanair staff refused to let him return look for it.
The pair were separated by shouting customs officials with guns who spoke no English. He was deported from Seville as an illegal alien and treated like a criminal. I had to listen to my daughter (aged 16) crying down the phone to me from Spain because her holiday was ruined.
When he returned to Stansted his passport was reported stolen and he must buy another, It had been handed in as lost to Ryanair staff. Anyone who finds a lost passport on the plane MUST understand that it is necessary to return it or the owner's holiday will be ruined.
Ryanair provided no documentation to the BF to explain what had happened. Their behaviour was appalling. I am shocked they could be so cruel and inhumane- it doesn't matter how much or how little I paid for the ticket: this is dreadful dreadful treatment of passengers.
Marathon Refund Attempt
Well I had a booking with this low budget airline early in June to go from Leeds to Dublin. The flight was scheduled to leave at 10.50am and arrive at 11.45am, giving me plenty of time for my appointment. After various changes to the departure time, the plane was then due to depart at 12.15pm, meaning I would miss my appointment. I contacted the company I was visiting who advised there was no point in catching the flight, so could I re-arrange it.
The ground crew were less than helpful when I explained I was not now flying (even before boarding began) and I was forced to sit and wait like a naughty school boy until they had boarded everyone. The ground crew then advised I contact Ryanair in the check-in to re-arrange my flight.
After eventually being allowed to leave the airport (airports are not customer centric), I duly made my way to the check-in desk, only to be informed that they are Servisair and nothing to do with Ryanair, so I need to call the over priced 10p per minute call centre. So like a good little customer I tried calling, after being cut-off 5 times by the call system I eventually got through to one of the many foreign call centres who advised that the plane had left on time (even though it was still sat on the runway) and I must have missed it. It took several more calls to eventually be told that they do not get an update until 24 hours later on whether the flight took off on time or not (strange then that both Leeds and Dublin show immediately when the flight leaves and arrives, maybe Ryanair should invest in real-time systems).
So I decided to try and contact the Head office, but you can't, you have to contact the customer services, who send the emails to the head office and then never bother to get back in touch with you. I put together a letter, with all the information they require (as detailed on the terribly unfriendly website) including a real-time screen grab of the Leeds Departures screen and the Dublin Arrivals screens, showing the delay.
Now you have to fax any communication to the Ryanair Head Office in Dublin (fax, I mean who uses fax these days), how crazy is that, pay for over-priced call centres and then pay for over-priced fax charges (bear in mind that BT charge a "set-up" fee for the international call, even if it is engaged). It took 15 attempts to get my fax to go through, requesting they change the booking to a date later in June due to the delay. This fax was sent on the day of the delayed flight and I did not receive a confirmation email from them.
The day after the delay I contacted the customer services again, this time I was informed that I could now move my flight, however I could only move it to a day within the next 7 days, which was of no use to me at all, the only other option was to request a cancellation, which they can do for you, but you have no control over anything at that point, it again goes into the "Ryanair Systems" internally and no-one contacts you or keeps you updated. So I requested a cancellation and refund, since Ryanair in its infinite stupidity had decided to update my booking to 7 days after the initial departure, which was really of no use to anyone.
I decided after hearing nothing over a 3 day period, to send a second fax requesting full refund in-light of:
Again I had heard absolutely nothing from Ryanair, no email communication to my registered email address, no telephone call to my telephone number listed on both faxes, so I sent a third fax 11 days after the delayed flight, pointing out that I had still heard nothing in response to my numerous calls and faxes so far. Now Ryanair state that they respond to communication to the original email address as outlined in their "Customer Charter", which I have struggled to find on their website.
Then 2 weeks after the initial booking and delay in question, I checked my bank account and my flight was actually refunded, wow I was amazed!! No email communication, no telephone call, nothing. So un-customer friendly.
Upon checking my email I found a short and to the point note from Ryanair (at 1.45pm, two weeks after the delay and one day after the refunded money), with the following information:
Dear Sir,
Following your recent refund request for your booking.
We confirm that your refund request has been processed to the form of payment used to pay for your booking. Your issuing bank will then take 5-7 working days to process this refund amount back to your account.
Yours sincerely
Ryanair Customer Services
So I have my money back, all it took was 9 telephone calls (totalling approx 55 minutes) and 3 faxes (taking 53 attempts in total to get through), was it really worth it, well yes it was the principle of getting back my money from a company that does not know how to deal with customers and on the surface would appear to believe that since you are paying a knock down fare, you should be happy with a knock down service.
My advice to anyone trying to get a refund, or in a similar delay situation is this:
Successful Refund thanks to Contacts Given Here
Early this week I had problems with the Ryanair booking website freezing as i attempted to book a flight. When I finally succeeded (the next day) and went to my mailbox for the confirmation I found 2 reservations for the same flight.
Looking for the customer relations address I found your website, and decided to carpet bomb Ryanair for a cancellation and refund.I emailed Ms s Penston, Walsh,Greene and O'Neill with the saga and request for a refund.
Ms O'Neill responded within a few hours with an apology, a cancellation of the unwanted duplicate and a full refund. Result- one happy customer!!!
Many thanks for the list of addresses.
Taxes Not Included?
I have just tried to book with Ryan air winter sale which tells us that the fares include all taxes - WRONG for a return flight in November complying with time and day restrictions from Prestwick to Malaga they are charging an additional £90 in taxes to the fair.
How long is Ryan air going to be aloud to do this (think ill stick with easy jet?)
Cabin Crew Thanked Through This Site
Hi im crew for Ryanair and I have just seen a thank you letter, dated the 24th April 2008. I was crew on this flight and I would like to say thank you to the customer who wrote about us, I will be printing it off and putting up in the crewroom with the other crews names on it
Kind regards
One of the caring cabin crew at EMA
Customer Service Problems (addressed to Ryanair)
I am e-mailing you with regard to the above flight booking and the level of service I have received this morning at your Customer Service Centre.
Last night (12/06/2008) I endeavoured to book 2 adult flights to Trapani on the Ryan Air website. I made numerous attempts at trying to make this booking only to be booted out of the internet site on each occasion and an error message appearing. I called a friend to try and make the booking for me only for them to encounter the same problems. It was not possible to contact your Internet Support as the telephone line is not open at this hour.
Eventually at approx 10pm the site seemed to be working correctly and the flights were booked.
However as the confirmation came through to my e-mail address at 22.17hrs I realised that flghts to Trieste had been booked instead of flights to Trapani. I'm sure you are aware that this is the destination sitting directly below Trapani in the drop down menu. I immediately realised the error and searched your website for a phone number to call Customer Services. The Internet site was having problems again and again it took several attempts to access the site and indeed locate a phone number. As you will be aware the phone number given is not available to call at this hour. I then looked at the issue of changing the flights and the procedure on how to do this. On reading that a total charge of £112 (£28 per flight one way) would be made I decided to make the destination change (as originally required) as I was concerned that the flight would not be available if I left booking until this morning. Following this I would make a call to your Customer Service department this morning (when the line is open) to explain the situation and hopefully get this rectified.
On calling 0871 246 0000 , option 8, at 9.00am I was connected to Rachel who I explained the situation to only to be hung up on. Re-dialling I was connected to Andy who after again explaining the situation to, said to me that I should have called Customer Services straight away last night and they would have rectified it then. I would have thought he would know that the lines are not open at that time of night and that this was impossible to do. After I pointed this out to him he then stated that it would have been cheaper to have contacted Customer Services this morning and make the change - however on your website it clearly states that the charge would have been £44 per flight one way had I done this. I asked to be put through to his Manager, he then put me through to Nicole who I had to explain the whole situation to again and who consequently hung up on me after an 11 minute conversation which involved her telling me that the website often has these problems but there was nothing she could do about it.She aslo said that I had 2 minutes in which to make a change with no charge. I am sure you cannot dispute that this would be physically impossible.
I feel totally dissatisfied with the way in which your customer services dept has dealt with me this morning and I am sure that this cannot possibly be the way in which Ryan Air would wish to be perceived. I would appreciate your assistance in looking into the problems I have experienced both with on line booking and customer service and trust that I will receive a speedy reply and resolution.
Ryanair Staff Embarrassed to be Named
To Whom It May Concern;
I note from your website a topic titled "Correspondence About Luggage
Size and "Professionalism" at Beauvais" submitted to your site on 25th
May last. This includes a response from Ryanair, which I wrote.
I would appreciate it if you could delete my name from any
correspondence in your possesion with reference to me. You do not have
my permission to display my name.
If my name is not removed from all areas of your website within 48hrs,
please be advised that I shall not hesitate to take matters further.
Our Reply, 13 June 2008
Thank you for your message. It is good to receive correspondence about a specific matter that we can comply with rather than the vague general objections and threats that we used to get.
We will remove your name on the basis that names are normally removed from stories received, and we are sorry if this error has caused you any personal upset.
However, your implication that display of names requires permission of some kind is surprising. I can only assume that all newspapers get permission from George Bush, Robert Mugabe etc before publishing any relevant news stories (in print or on the Web presumably).
This must be a huge burden for them which we were never aware of till now.
Any details of the legal basis for the action that you were considering would be fascinating if you are able to provide any links.
Thanks
Complaints and Replies
Here is my letter after my ghastly experiences on Ryanair, and the dishonest replies of Mr O'Leary, Chief Executive:
I wrote to complain about the airline, its insulting service, and its disgraceful ethics. Ryanair is not a low-cost airline, and its advertisements falsely give that impression. It does not give child discounts, or advance booking discounts. It also hides a huge array of hidden charges.
Dear Mr O'Leary,
Can't Even Get Insurance Claim
Hi, i am absolutely frustrated with Ryanair and their trading terms and conditions.
My husband and i live in cornwall and caught flights from newquay - stanstead- rodez with ryanair on line booking system, complete with insurance as i am partially disabled with a serious hip condition.
Our return flight with them was delayed which meant we missed our last flight home to newquay. We went to speak with a rep at stanstead to see if they would transfer our flight to the following morning but to our horror they did not want to know and offered no help what so ever. In the end we had just enough money left to find a hire car at 8pm and had to drive the 5 hours home which took forever as i cannot sit for too long. Instead of us being home for 7pm we returned home at 2am.
I have called the ryanair insurance people requesting claim forms 4 times now but am still waiting. There is no way of contacting them by phone and refuse to respond to our letter, personally ryanair need a serious kick up the arse !!!
Getting Through Thanks to Tip Given to This Site
I have been trying the 0871 246000 number all day and been only receiving a long uninterupted tone as if unobtainable. However, ironically after finding your site in an attempt to find another number i tried again and it rang, I used the ## option as mentioned by someone else on your site and was put through, the message began to say to go to the web site so i used ## again. Though it kills me to say it i was put through to someone imediately who gave me all the information I required.
Experience Returning from Lourdes
We were a frequent flyer with Ryanair as they had a good link from Blackpool to Stansted now sadly no more.
On a flight last year coming back from Tarbes near Lourdes we had a rather nasty episode on board. We can sign i.e. lip read and we asked to view a bottle of champagne which the attendant tried to dissuade me from viewing showing by hand gestures that it was so big. However despite the attempt to publish my request publicly we persisted and asked for the chief attendant to let us see the bottle Eventually Franchesca the Chief attendant brought it.
It was a 25/cc We decided all in the party if we wanted to splash out on 4 mini bottles or not We all decided not but asked for a small gin and tonic instead. We were refused as Franchesca as i read sign language said to her colleague why did you not push the sale well its either this or no drinks we are closed
This was 45 minutes from landing It was not a busy flight as all work was very efficiently carried out. We were informed by Carol the bar was closed. No explanation but i knew why because of my ability to sign / read I informed Carol i would report this incident to Ryan air direct.
When i had to use the toilet at the rear of the plane my bat was blocked by a very irate Carol who was insisting to enlist more information. I informed her politely that i was able to sign and that Franchesca decision was bad business policy and if she did not get out of my way urgently a Major Diplomat Incident was about to occur due to my weak bladder.
Lucky for both of us she moved. I informed Ryanair but no reply or apology. Now we have always been fair to Mr O Leary as on 1 previous occasion we reported that instead of flying back from Stansted we would hire via Ryanair a Herts Car as the price offered a good deal and we could be back at base well before the evening flight left the ground.
So decent harry went to the Ryanair desk to inform that we would not be travelling back and the seats could be offered for sale, well what happened next beggars belief "Sorry Sir no need to tell us there is always plenty of spare seats on that flight."
We then just out of curiosity decided to see the situation via the laptop. This was 1.15 pm .3 places left at £145 each. I informed Ryanair in writing that he Mr O Leary was in my opinion was loosing money and i got a letter from Dublin asking for more details and thanking me for bringing this important matter, etc. , etc.
On this occasion we did not even bother. I did inform however our experiences by letter but to date no reply. I like Mr O Leary after all like myself he is Irish but would i fly again perhaps not but then who cares. I am just another punter but our Congregation have very uncharitable views and despite my efforts they have pledged a sympathy vote to me and vote themselves with the credit cards on alternative arrangements via Liverpool and Manchester.
No Warning of Error When Changing Details
My friend, her two year old daughter and I were booked to fly out to Girona, flying out of Stansted on Monday 26th May, 2008.
However, due to personal reasons we were unable to fly out on this date and were relieved to discover that with Ryanair customers were able to change their flight details and dates up to 12 hours prior to departure. We therefore took advantage of this benefit and on Sunday 25th May at approximately 3pm we proceeded to change our flight details and dates online, following the online prompts. The procedure was straightforward and at the end the screens confirmed that all the flight dates of all the passengers had been changed.
However, it was not until the following day that we noticed that only one of the passengers had received an Itinerary/confirmation email.
Concerned by this we immediately telephoned Ryanair and were informed that, contrary to the information we had received online that all flight dates etc had been changed, only one passenger's flight details had been changed. The representative for Ryanair then asked 'Were both screens opened at the same time?' to which the response was yes - the system allowed us to do this. The Ryanair representative then replied that the system only accepts the changes of the 'second screen'. We were then advised to change the return flight details as it was now too late to alter the outbound details as the flight had now closed. We were also informed that we would have to fax a letter of complaint as there was no telephone contact number for us to do so.
The fact that the Ryanair representative asked us if we had two screens opened simultaneously (even before we could volunteer this information) suggests that Ryanair are aware of this fault in the Ryanair online booking system. It would also suggest that our case is not unique and that other unfortunate customers have had the same problem.
We are now faced with the dilemma of having to pay to change the inbound flight dates and wait until we get a response to this fax from Ryanair complaints department as to whether Ryanair will honor the fact that due to a technical error on their part we were not aware that all of the flight details had not been changed as the system allowed us to open two screens at the same time. Again we stress that the screens on both pages confirmed that the details had been changed!
As the Ryanair representative was aware that if two screens are opened simultaneously only the second screen's changes will be processed, then why has Ryanair not put measures in place to protect its online customers.
I have not previously traveled with Ryanair and after shopping around was impressed by the very competitive fares. My daughter is currently studying for exams and so unable to come on the trip. Now we have delayed the trip to July I was planning on booking her ticket through Ryanair also. Both my friend and I feel cheated as in good faith we believed and were led to believe by the on-screen message, that we had successfully changed our flight details. We are both single parents and cannot afford this extra expense.
The situation is grossly unjust and unacceptable. We urge Ryanair to show some goodwill in this matter, also that they would remedy the situation so that other Ryanair customers do not fall into the same trap. Please adjust your system so that flight details/date changes cannot physically be done simultaneously.
Wasted Evening Trying to Book
I have just spent the last four hours trying to book a flight online with Ryanair to Shannon. I had previously booked a return flight from Shannon to Stansted for my daughter-in-law and grandson and want to return with them to Ireland for a few days.
Having booked the first flight with relative ease it has taken me 4 very frustrating hours to book my flight. The Ryanair website has been excrutiatingly slow with pages freezing, or inaccessible. The few times I was able to access it the flight page kept quoting prices for flights other than those I had selected and it kept charging me for priority boarding when I had not selected it. When I tried to go back a page to correct this it would tell me that the web page was unavailable. I have had two computers with different internet providers running for the past 4 hours to see which one would 'win the race' to make a booking.
The flights in question were on a special offer of 0.01p with no taxes or fees and had to be booked by midnight, it look like I have just managed to get in before they close!!!
I wonder if this is a ruse by Ryanair to offer such 'good deals' and then to make them impossible to book. I would have gone elsewhere but having already booked by daughter-in-law on I wanted to travel with her. T
Thank you Ryanair for totally spoiling my evening!!!
Getting Round the Booking System
Hi, I use Ryanair on a regular basis and generally have no problems providing you read know and understand all the terms and conditions. However what really is a clever marketing trick is the use of cookies on your PC. If you remove all the Ryanair cookies their system will not let you proceed with costs or anything else, it then directs you to the call centre Recently a small group of my friends (8) and I were looking for Rimini from East Midlands. As we agreed the flights and costs to each other over the telephone, we said book. My mate booked first...... seconds later the return section had gone up by £30. The rest of us waited a few days and guess what it dropped £30. They must think that there is a major event on somewhere due to the interest on a route on certain days, of course ALL MAJOR EVENTS are excluded from any offers.
Can anyone please tell me why the airport taxes and charges seem to vary from time to time eg £24.98 in July and £9.99 in September. These are on the same flights on the same routes and on the same days
Finally..... How do they get away with the offers the advertise.... if you look at the offers for East Mids to Rimini it states applicable days in July/Aug are Tues/Wed subject to availability but yet the only fly on MONDAYS AND FRIDAYS..
Correspondence About Luggage Size and "Professionalism" at Beauvais
(this is my first letter of complaint)
Dear Sir,
This letter concerns my experience on Friday May 9th 2008, code JCJK8U, Paris - Rome, fr9636 at 21h20 pm. Hereby, I ask for a refund of the unexpected last minute fee paid for checking in my hand luggage, as well as a reply to the following:
-How can a cabin luggage corresponding to what you state on your website (40-55-20cm, under 10kg) do not fit into the sizer at the registration desk? It seems that a correction must be made on your web site, otherwise this lack of coherence in your service is taken as an organized robbery.
-My hand luggage fulfilled all Ryan Air's requirements. How can the lady of the registration desk oblige me to check it in? I insisted on measuring it together. This request was ignored. Instead, I was cynically advised to give up flying by the same person. This is an insulting suggestion. I hope this obvious intimidation practice is not an instruction given by Ryan Air to its employees. Some passengers fly for pleasure, some HAVE to fly.
-I asked to see a supervisor. The answer was that there wasn't one for the Company. Is this information right? After so much insistence (I remained about one hour at the registration desk) a supervisor was called, and stated not being at all responsible for Ryan Air but for the whole Beauvais airport.
I don't think you are aware of how much chaos exists at BVA. The lines of passengers in my situation were enormous, due to what the registration for the flight lasted until 20 minutes prior to departure.
Another surprising fact is that we boarded an aircraft which had just landed. Isn't there a minimal span of time to be respected between flights? Is an aircraft safe when treated like a bus?
I think you are relying on incompetent and insolent employees. ( end of it, I have eliminated my signature)
(Now, their reply:)
Dear Mr. ...,
I acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 15th May 2008.
On behalf of Ryanair, please accept our apologies for any inconvenience suffered whilst checking in for your recent flight from Beauvais Airport.
Please be advised that the hand luggage sizer at any of our airports are all the same size. I have been informed that the sizer is slightly bigger than the dimensions shown in our Terms & Conditions by approximately 2cm in each way to allow for bags that have wheels to fit comfortably.
Given the above, the dimensions provided on our website are correct and bags do fit within the sizer comfortably, providing they are not over-packed. Therefore, we are unable to consider your refund request.
Furthermore, we pride ourselves upon the high standards of service and professionalism provided by all of our staff and as such we do expect the same level of professionalism from our handling agents. We maintain these standards with regular retraining programmes which ensure that not only our own staff but also our handling agents are constantly reminded of their most important function; to be friendly and professional at all times. I do sincerely regret that this was not reflected to you on this occasion and as such I have forwarded your comments to our Operations Manager at Beauvais Airport to ensure that such a situation does not recur.
Additionally, please be advised that there is a turn-around time of 25 minutes, which is sufficient time to get all pre-flight checks and preparations done. Therefore the safety of the passengers is not at any time being compromised.
Whilst your comments and dissatisfaction have been noted, we regret that we are unable to be of further assistance on this occasion.
With renewed apologies.
Yours sincerely
For and on Behalf of
(Finally, my second letter, which haven't had an answer yet:)
Anonymous
Dear Missis Anonymous,
Your reply arrived immediately after my complaint was sent. I sincerely thank you. After the Beauvais events, such a kind letter remains unexpected. I have enclosed a copy of my original fax as well as one of your reply, so as you can easily keep track of our previous correspondence.
As I mentioned before, my hand luggage -corresponding to what your Web Site states- didn't fit into the sizer regardless the 2 additional cm. It wasn't over-packed, it wasn't over 10k. I insisted to call a supervisor to verify all this, but gave up when I understood that I was about to miss the flight. Therefore, the only possibility left is that something is wrong at Beauvais where the queues of people in my same situation where enormous. Passengers wouldn't prefer to pay twice more for their bags at last minute... Through your letter you don't seem to have analysed these elements.
"Furthermore, we pride ourselves upon the high standards of service and professionalism provided by all of our staff and as such we do expect the same level of professionalism from our handling agents", but in fact Ryanair doesn't have its own supervisor to control what ACTUALLY takes place at different airports! Definitively, handling agents at Beauvais don't seem to be willing to defend the reputation of the Company. On the other hand, I don't find neither honest nor professional to pride on imaginary or virtual qualities.
You mention that my comments about Beauvais have been forwarded to its Operation Manager. I would like to be informed of her/his reaction. Could you forward me the mailing address and phone number of the person you contacted at BVA?
I talked to several passengers, who said not being able to write to the Company because of the language barrier. I understand that you can't afford having a multilingual team to answer to complaints, but would like you to know that I am not the only passenger astonished by chaos, insolence and robbery.
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Yours sincerely,
Chaos at Pisa
Having just encountered Ryanair on a recent trip to Pisa I feel I must warn other users of the awful way in which this company treat fare paying passengers. It is a real eye-opener the way that you are herded around and treated with utter contempt by the operators on the ground with disgraceful actions form the majority of both Ryanair staff and the airport staff who work for them.
Travelling with 9 people including 2 infants we attempted to check in, they opened up the desks only 2 hrs prior to the plane leaving with a full plane. It resembled a rugby scrum as rumours flowed concerning Genoa closing and people were left stranded with no information and forced to travel 2 hrs to Pisa where they might get on the plane. Apparently BA laid on a coach to ferry passengers to Pisa, Ryanair not a chance there's a hire car book it yourself and pay it also.
We all get to the desk (only 1 check in desk) suddenly another opens which my wife goes to beckoning the other members on our booking (as we are always told for security all named passengers must be present) No you can't all come I will only book one person, chaos kicks off then the original desk closes leaving all the passengers in that line wondering what the hell was going on. Eventually got through with seething wife in tow, we then hear of the most disgusting thing. An Italian couple with an elderly lady of 87 were at Genoa, that closes (as apparently the pope landed) unfortunately they were overweight with the baggage which was charged at checkin, the flight was then cancelled with no help or assistance, they then travelled 2 hrs to Pisa where once again they were charged excess backage! Never again what an absolute s**t airline. To treat passengers like this is an absolute disgrace, I would rather pay a lot more at least you get treated with more dignity.
Continued Problems with Booking, Service, Charges ... (and everything)
I was amazed to find your website and would like to alert you to the fact that there are still problems on the Ryanair website, which I found to my cost last week.
On 15th May I booked a flight to Palma flying on 8th September and was stunned when, on completion of payment, my confirmation was for a flight on 16th September!
I rang the customer service number and was cut off immediately I got through, then I managed to get to the recorded options only to be cut off when I pressed the number of my choice! During this time I attempted to change my booking on the website, which then froze after asking for a further £28.00.
In desperation, I rang the £1 per minute number to explain that there was a problem with the web and that I did not feel that I should have to pay extra for Ryanair's error. Well, I have never experienced such total arrogance! I spoke to a clerk and then asked to speak to her manager. They both displayed a total lack of understanding of the situation and told me that I had made the error myself! If they were to change my booking I would have to pay a further £7 on top of the astronomical cost of the phone call and if I cancelled there could be no refund.
I wrote to Ryanair customer services. What a waste of time that was! The reply displayed the same lack of empathy, suggested that I had had ample opportunity to check the flight date, and pointed out that, according to the terms and conditions of the booking, I was not entitled to any refund.
I do not know how they can keep the £12 baggage charge and the £4 check-in fee if I do not travel! This is totally immoral. I have now booked my flight with EasyJet. It has been a very expensive learning curve, but it is certainly the first and last time I will attempt to use Ryanair. I would rather swim to Mallorca!
I wish to goodness that I had discovered your website beforehand.
Attempt at Making Claim (note that this is an individual experience, NOT legal advice)
Late last year, my wife and I were abandoned (with 180 others) at 11 pm in Austria when our return flight to Stansted was cancelled less than one hour before the time due for our take-off for home.
I tried to claim under the European regulation 261/2004 which, under articles 7, 9 and 14, requires the airline to compensate, reimburse and inform passengers. Ryanair did none of these.
However, because Ryanair is registered in Ireland (not UK), any claim made through the Internet and the small claims court Money-Claim-On-Line (MCOL) in Northampton will fail, because MCOL only deals with UK-registered companies - but its website does not mention this! The only way to get full satisfaction is EITHER to submit a claim (via the Internet) with the Irish equivalent to MCOL through the Irish courts, OR to submit a claim through a UK county court (which will require solicitors, bureaucracy, costs and complication).
My claim through MCOL failed, but it did put me in touch with Ryanair's UK solicitors (who are Manches LLP, Aldwych House, 81 Aldwych, London WC2B 4RP; tel: 020-7404-4433). Discussion with them led me to being reimbursed our expenses for a 24-hour overnight delay (but not any compensation as listed in the EU Regulation). I also had to pay my own MCOL costs (of £35) so, overall, I was still somewhat out-of-pocket.
In short, claim through the Irish small claims court via the Internet.
PS: By the way, Ryanair's address at Stansted is: Satellite 3, London Stanstead Airport, Bassingbourn Road, Stansted, Essex, CM24 1RW.
Also, the company Ryanair UK, listed in the UK at Companies House, is a non-trading Ryanair subsidiary. Any attempt to claim against it will fail - it's the wrong company!
Can't Redeem £100 Voucher
I purchased a £100 ryanair voucher that I purchased for my father as a Christmas present. Apparently, the vouchers can only be redeemed by calling the ryanair hotline (08712 46 0000) during office hours. My father had been trying without success for three weeks to make a booking for two flights to Bergerac afraid to tell me how problematic the 'gift' I had given him was proving to be. Herewith his account:
It took him several days to get through to the above number at all, the phone just clicks and the operator says 'the other person has hung up'. After 4 days of trying he finally got through to a long looped answer phone message (stating any reservation would be subject to a £14 booking fee!!), listened patiently and then got through to an assistant. He got as far as giving his name and then got cut off - the line went dead. A second time he got through and the obviously foreign assistant, ironically claimed she could not understand him - again the line suddenly went dead. A third time he got through and got as far as giving his name and the voucher references, which the assistant could not find on her system, she then spent a long while searching and finally found the booking under the surname, my father got part way through the booking about to give his credit number and AGAIN the line went dead. This is when my father recounted the story and his frustration to me & I was anxious to resolve the situation.
I called the number and got through the first time - proceeded with the booking and again they could not find the voucher references. The assistant accused me of having the incorrect voucher numbers although I had them clearly in front of me. Apparently under the reference number was a booking for a different name - she continued to look and eventually surmised that the voucher reference that we had been given was incorrect, we proceeded with the booking, confirmed the dates and prices, which of course had inflated greatly since my father checked online 3 weeks previously and I passed on the credit card details. The assistant confirmed the details back, said the booking had been processed and went on to read me my rites about baggage allowance etc. Anxious that we could be cut off at any point I kindly asked for my booking reference, she asked me to hold the line and the line then cut off and went dead. How frustrating!
I was then unsure if the booking had been fully processed or not, so since 5 days have been trying to ring the number to find out - the line does not connect at all and I had the original problem my father had where the line clicked in and the operator says the other person has hung up. My father has checked his bank to see if the transaction has been processed, which it has not. I don't know what else to do. Has the booking gone through?? I am furious that such a reputable company can operate in such a way - it is a disgrace.
Due to all the inconvenience, the fact that the flight and hotel prices have greatly increased in this three week period and the fact that my parents holiday planning is in complete disarray I would like a full refund on the voucher, some level of compensation for the cost of calls and time wasted and not least an apology from Ryanair. Alternatively, perhaps they could offer my parents the flight at the original price without any further inconvenience - hoping that they can still find a hotel available.
I simply do not know how to contact ryanair other than fly to Dublin and confront them directly, which is simply not feasible.
Inconsistent Scales
The worst service I have received, travelled with my wife to Belfast with two others I had a bag for the hold the others booked hand luggage only. I paid more yet had to stand in the non priority line for ages. my bag on the way out weighed 14.5 kg on the way back it was allegedly 17 kg I travelled back with the same luggage nothing added, I had to take one shoe and small jacket out and put them in hand luggage the weight in the bag was now 14.5 kg there is no way this is true; one shoe and a jacket 2.5 kg! Due to the shoe containing a bottle of aftershave which now was in my hand luggage I through security again and put the offending item in a clear bag.
My wife is 30 weeks pregnant other parents had small kids yet they were not called forward as priority like other airlines they had to queue for ages whilst people with large hand luggage who pay less get priority. This has to be wrong, what service!
Priority Booking Refund Mystery
On 13 December 2007 I bought priority boarding at Krakow Airport. This service was not provided and we ended up as part of the usual mad scramble for seats. It took 2 letters to get an email response from a Mr Smith on 29th January 2008 to the effect that a refund had been made to my Wife's card and the refund would appear on her next statement.
This did puzzle me because my Wife has never used any of her cards either directly, or indirectly with Ryanair. Unsurprisingly no refund appeared and I queried this, but despite numerous emails both to Mr Smith and a Ms Green of Customer Services (That's a laugh!), I have had no response.
What I have had, however, is an email from someone at Krakow claiming to be a handling agent who has a refund and asking for my Wife's bank account details. I have put it to Ryanair that my receipt mentions only Ryanair and that, as my contract is with them, I have no intention of dealing with a third party.
In any event I suspect this email could be a scam and, whether genuine or not, my Wife has no intention of disclosing her bank details to someone she has had no dealings with, especially over an insecure email or fax. Thus in its one and only response to me, Ryanair attempted to mislead me by telling an outright lie and, by ignoring my attempts to get a satisfactory explanation and a refund, one has to wonder if these doubtful practices are Company policy.
Checkin Costs for Non-EU Passengers
As a non-EU passenger I am not
entitled to the free online check-in.
The Ryanair website does not have
provisions for non EU passport holders
to check online. Ryanair then has surcharges
for counter check-in, there was a hike to £4
Recently.
I have consistently argued that this is discriminatory
in pricing and racially. They suggest to passengers
like me that such surcharges will be refunded. I was
promised on the 10th May at Belfast City airport
that my surcharges of £6 ( for two and before the hike came to effect)
will be refunded and the lady who took the payment off
my credit card, gave me the receipt and a slip with
the address of refund dept.
I sent to Ryanair Refunds dept
the receipt with my claim for refund. The Customer relations dept
replies to me that I am not entitled to the refund as per
their terms and conditions. They say one thing to collect
surcharges and then back away from what their own staff
tell you.
Abandoned at Brno
Passengers booked onto flight FR8404 from Brno to Stansted scheduled for Saturday May 3rd experienced serious inconvenience. Being one of them, I herein state my right to some reimbursement for personal expenses resulting from the situation. The flight, which was due to take off at 17.05, was initially delayed for around 50 minutes. During the take off procedure the aircraft suffered, we were told, a bird strike forcing a return to Brno.
Such an accident could, of course, have happened to any aircraft from any airline. What I would like to bring to your attention though is Ryanair's cavalier, not to say cynical attitude to the well being of its passengers following this incident. Information was painfully slow to emerge. The first thing I was told by a member of your staff was that Ryanair was a low cost airline and that whatever happened passengers would not be given any food or drink while we waited in the transit lounge.
We were later told that we could either stay in the airport and expect the flight to depart at midnight, or leave the airport with a view to taking a chance and re-booking onto a later flight. Here again we were explicitly informed that Ryanair would not reimburse the cost of a hotel should we choose to leave the airport and return the next day.
Anxious to return to the UK as quickly as possible in order to resume work commitments I stayed at the airport in the hope of a flight at midnight. This time was then put back to 1.00, then 1.30 and then we were told that the flight had been re-scheduled for 15.00. As well as being a low cost airline Ryanair also advertises itself as the 'on time airline' though on this occasion the company's grasp of the concept of 'on time' seemed at odds with the understanding the rest of the civilised world has of it.
What was particularly striking about Ryanair's abdication of responsibility for their customers was that there no English speaking representative of the company appeared to be present after around 20.00. This left the many English speaking passengers confused and bewildered as they tried to ascertain what was happening and what their options were from Czech passengers (the Czech staff present being unable to help at all).
I later learned from a member of the cabin crew that having gone over their duty time departure later than midnight would have been impossible anyway. This being the case it seems nothing short of callous that the passengers were not afforded a swifter and more honest assessment of the situation.
Eventually, through the good office of a few young Czech women, I was provided with a handout entitled 'Notice of your rights in the event of denied boarding, flight delay or flight cancellation - version 5 - updated 19/04/07'. My attention was drawn to Section 3 : Right to Care, which states clearly that in cases such as this passengers do in fact have the right to claim back hotel accommodation.
This is something that we might usefully have learnt some hours before 3.00 when I took a taxi back into Brno and found accommodation. The receipt for my stay there is enclosed and I now expect it to be fully reimbursed accordingly (£86.95) in line with the conditions set out in the above mentioned document.
Ryanair treated its customers in the most appalling manner on this occasion. The fact that it is a low cost airline is no excuse for such rudeness and what appears to be a wilful attempt to deny people there rights as stated in Regulation EC 261/2004 of the European Parliament.
Delayed by Security Check
Yesterday a friend and me had booked a flight to London at 10am. We went through the security control and staff members of the airport checked our hand baggage twice without any reason and it took 5 minutes for sure. At 9:35 our gate was closed. We saw trough the windows that all passangers were entering the plane. We knocked on the window and an employee of the airport openend the glass door. We talked to her, that we are already checked-in (priority passengers) and we just need to go to the plane. It would have taken just 3 minutes (!) to enter the plane, but she told us, that our tickets are invalidly now! If the security check would not have taken so long without any reason (it's not our first flight, we know the rules, all liquids were stored in plastic bags), we had cought our plane in time!
Any further business with Bratislava Airport and my feedback to other potentially customers will depend on how this matter is settled! I'm awaiting an answer from your site till the end of may 2008!
I am working at Capgemini so I have a really wide network of colleagues in Europe! If I won't get my money for the Ryanair tickets (108 Euro aech person) and costs for the hotel in London (110 Euro) back, I will tell my opinion about this crappy airport and the slofuck morons, that are working there by various channels (internet blogs, austrian newspapers).
I also put a copy of this complaint on my internet blog! This would be a good marketing for Bratislava airport and Ryanair!
Bugs in Booking System?
Our last weekend has been a terrifying experience thanks to Ryanair. The three of us has been booked a ticket from Paris to Barcelona for a 4 day-vacation a month in advance. (each ticket booked separately for 62 EUR)
We arrived to the check-in with our three printed confirmation letter...and in fact only one of us appeared in the system. As this friend got the boarding card, we run to the ryanair office at the airport, claiming that we got rejected at the check-in. It turned out, that the booking system didn't book three tickets, but consequently changed the name of the passengers.
What is this? Is there a bug in the ryanair booking system?? We performed three bookings one after each other and even more, we used a different credit card for the third booking. I really think this is a scandal, that the booking system kept the information of the first card we used and charged every cost from the same card!!
As a summary, we had to pay 430 EUR/person extra at the airport to buy new tickets and we want to claim a refund. We sent a postmail and a fax as well, but no reply so far. We are really desperate, you can imagine that this amount of money is really missing from our budget!
Thank You to the Captain
Submitted 17 March 2010
Missing Confirmation (addressed to Ryanair)
Submitted 17 March 2010
Premium Rate Numbers from Italy
Submitted 16 March 2010
Extra Payments Taken (letter to Ryanair)
Submitted 27 February 2010
Flight Missed due to no Call
Submitted 20 February 2010
Complaint to ASA
Submitted 19 January 2010
Care With Browser Windows
Submitted 17 January 2010
Error on Printing Boarding Card
Submitted 23 December 2009
Bristol Flights in 2010 cancelled
Submitted 17 December 2009
Ryanair Monopoly in Internal Route in Portugal
Submitted 16 December 2009
Left Behind due to Passport Dropped in Plane After Checkin
Submitted 2 December 2009
Booking Cards: Damned if you Print, Damned if you Don't
Submitted 24 October 2009
Re Tricks for Refusing Boarding
Submitted 12 October 2009
Disabled Passengers Unwelcome on Ryanair
Submitted 12 October 2009
Rant by Frequent Flyer
Submitted 10 October 2009
More Tricks for Refusing Boarding
Submitted 6 October 2009
No Refund of Taxes
Submitted 2 October 2009
True Cost of Flying with Ryanair
Submitted 15 September 2009
Success in Reducing Change Fee
Submitted 4 September 2009
Rude Onboard Staff
Submitted 17 August 2009
Excess Baggage Fee
Submitted 19 August 2009
Young Women Abandoned in Beauvais
Submitted 14 August 2009
Refund of Vouchers
Submitted 11 August 2009
Checkin Chaos
Submitted 9 August 2009
Argument for Not Flying Ryanair
Submitted 7 August 2009
Getting Through to Correct Mistake
Submitted 3 August 2009
£70 Fee for Mistake
Submitted 27 July 2009
Falling Foul of Weight Limits
Submitted 22 July 2009
Stranded in Nantes
Submitted 22 July 2009
Lack of Care During Delay
Submitted 22 July 2009
Denied Boarding and Stranded
Submitted 9 July 2009
Ghastly Experience
Submitted 8 July 2009
Refund of Checkin Fee
Submitted 7 July 2009
Delay and Diversion from Zaragoza
Submitted 23 June 2009
Change in ID Requirements
Submitted 19 June 2009
Successful Call About Boarding Pass
Submitted 1 June 2009
More Success: Hotel Bill Reimbursed
Submitted 27 May 2009
Recruitment "Scam"
Submitted 25 May 2009
Success in Getting Through
Submitted 20 May 2009
Typographical Error Costs £119
Submitted 16 May 2009
Small Claims Success
Submitted 09 May 2009
Double Booking
Submitted 12 May 2009
Information on Fees (addressed to Ryanair)
Submitted 7 April 2009
Never had a Problem
Submitted 10 May 2009
Never had a Problem
Submitted 1 May 2009
VISA Confusion
Submitted 18 April 2009
Refused Boarding for Domestic Flight
Submitted 31 March 2009
No Free Water On Board
Submitted 27 March 2009
Web Booking Ordeal (link to external blog)
Submitted 17 March 2009
Inconsistent Application of Baggage Policy (addressed to Ryanair)
Submitted 9 March 2009
Two Days of Holiday Lost
Submitted 9 March 2009
36 Hour Flight Change at Higher Price
Submitted 1 March 2009
Catastrophic Results of Cancellation (letter to Ryanair)
Submitted 25 February 2009
Credit Fee Charged for Debit Card
Submitted 13 February 2009
Recession Makes Ryanair Care About Customer Service?
Submitted 12 February 2009
"Cancelled" Flight?
Submitted 9 February 2009
Ryanair Travel Insurance Useless
Submitted 9 February 2009
Customer Service Attitude
Submitted 6 February 2009
Fantasy About Good Customer Service
Submitted 5 February 2009
Wheelchair Booking
Submitted 29 January 2009
Online Checkin Problems
Submitted 28 January 2009
Wasted Money on "Priority Boarding"
Submitted 20 January 2009
Successful Refund
Submitted 16 January 2009
Denied Boarding
Submitted 14 January 2009
From Inside Customer Services
Submitted 8 January 2009
Three Times in One Flight
Submitted 7 January 2009
Coach Cancelled and Ryanair Staff Hide
Submitted 6 January 2009
£100 Vouchers Not Redeemed
Submitted 3 January 2009
Ryanair Experience
Submitted 30 December 2008
Complaint to OFT by Customer
Submitted 28 December 2008
No Online Checkin for non-EU Citizens
Submitted 25 November 2008
No Change Given
Submitted 21 November 2008
Successful Name Change
Submitted 6 November 2008
Unruly Behaviour on Flight
Submitted 4 November 2008
No Explanation for Delay
Submitted 30 October 2008
Successful Claim
Submitted 29 October 2008
Booking Change Saga
Submitted 19 October 2008
Still Awaiting Refund Due to Cancellation
Submitted 8 October 2008
Dumped in Biarritz
Submitted 19 September 2008
Charged after Site Malfunction
Submitted 5 September 2008
Missed Funeral, Indifference and Lack of Information (addressed to Ryanair)
Submitted 3 September 2008
No Response to Refund Request
Submitted 29 August 2008
Why Pay for Priority Boarding?
Submitted 27 August 2008
First Ryanair Experience
Submitted 27 August 2008
Extra Fees and Charges
Submitted 24 August 2008
Cheap Flights Don't have to be as Unpleasant as Ryanair
Submitted 20 August 2008
No Warning Before or Customer Service After Flight Rescheduled by Two Days
Submitted 19 August 2008
Charged After Cards not Accepted
Submitted 13 August 2008
Cost of Missing Flight due to Wrong Information
Submitted 11 August 2008
Card Fees, Payment Refused, Crashing Site etc etc (addressed to Ryanair)
Submitted 5 August 2008
Sent to the Wrong Country
Submitted 23 July 2008
No Response Over Smashed Suitcase
Submitted 21 July 2008
The Full Ryanair Experience
Submitted 21 July 2008
Change of Flight Time and Can't get Through to Cancel
Submitted 21 July 2008
Excess Baggage and Stolen Phone (letter not responded to)
Submitted 11 July 2008
One and a Half Day Flight "Time" Change
Submitted 9 July 2008
Birthday Message
Submitted 8 July 2008
Administration Fee More than Tax Refund
Submitted 2 July 2008
Booking Charged After Web Error and no Confirmation for 22 Hours
Submitted 21 June 2008
Deported After Lost Passport
Submitted 20 June 2008
Marathon Refund Attempt
Submitted 20 June 2008
Successful Refund thanks to Contacts Given Here
Submitted 19 June 2008
Taxes Not Included?
Submitted 17 June 2008
Cabin Crew Thanked Through This Site
Submitted 14 June 2008
Customer Service Problems (addressed to Ryanair)
Submitted 13 June 2008
Ryanair Staff Embarrassed to be Named
Submitted 13 June 2008
Complaints and Replies
Submitted 9 June 2008
Can't Even Get Insurance Claim
Submitted 3 June 2008
Getting Through Thanks to Tip Given to This Site
Submitted 2 June 2008
Experience Returning from Lourdes
Submitted 2 June 2008
No Warning of Error When Changing Details
Submitted 28 May 2008
Wasted Evening Trying to Book
Submitted 26 May 2008
Getting Round the Booking System
Submitted 25 May 2008
Correspondence About Luggage Size and "Professionalism" at Beauvais
Submitted 25 May 2008
Chaos at Pisa
Submitted 20 May 2008
Continued Problems with Booking, Service, Charges ... (and everything)
Submitted 20 May 2008
Attempt at Making Claim
Submitted 19 May 2008
Can't Redeem £100 Voucher
Submitted 19 May 2008
Inconsistent Scales
Submitted 18 May 2008
Priority Booking Refund Mystery
Submitted 18 May 2008
Checkin Costs for Non-EU Passengers
Submitted 17 May 2008
Abandoned at Brno
Submitted 17 May 2008
Delayed by Security Check
Submitted 11 May 2008
Bugs in Booking System?
Submitted 30 April 2008
Checkin for non-EU National
Submitted 25 April 2008
Thanks to Crew for Help with Illness
Submitted 24 April 2008
Praise for Liverpool Baggage Handling Number
Submitted 24 April 2008
Hidden Costs
Submitted 23 April 2008
"Complete" Booking not Gone Through and has to be Paid at Walk-Up Rate
Submitted 23 April 2008
Flight Booking Error and no way of Checking
Submitted 22 April 2008
Ryanair Forces Change of Holiday and Charges for the Change
Submitted 22 April 2008
Can't Get Through, Go to Stansted ...
Submitted 20 April 2008
Finally Got Through
Submitted 9 April 2008
Reservation Fee
Submitted 9 April 2008
Getting Through to Customer Services (letter to Ryanair and follow-up)
Submitted 9 April 2008
Rudeness and Inconsistency (letter to Ryanair)
Submitted 1 April 2008
Not Allowed in Front Seats
Submitted 1 April 2008
Newquay Bad Experience
Submitted 1 April 2008
Vouchers Cost More in Phone Calls than they are Worth
Submitted 25 March 2008
Charged with being French ...?
Submitted 24 March 2008
Wasted Time and Phone Bill
Submitted 11 March 2008
Cost of Refused Boarding
Submitted 15 March 2008
Unable to Get Through
Submitted 13 March 2008
Disconnected Support Line
Submitted 14 March 2008
Denied Boarding Due to Ryanair Delay (letter to Ryanair)
Submitted 28 February 2008
Expensive Web Failure
Submitted 7 March 2008
Cheapest Flight May Have Most Expensive Extras
Submitted 6 March 2008
11-Hour Delay (letter to Ryanair)
Submitted 25 February 2008
Refund at Last
Submitted 21 February 2008
No Alternatives for Cancelled Flights
Submitted 15 February 2008
Buy One Get One Free
Submitted 13 February 2008
Marrakech to Luton 1 February 2008
Submitted 12 February 2008
Diversion to Murcia (letters to Ryanair and AUC)
Submitted 12 February 2008
Vouchers Had to be Used in One Transaction
Submitted 4 February 2008
Ryanair Clairvoyants?
Submitted 3 February 2008
Cost of Inputting Error
Submitted 31 January 2008
Beat them over Split Baggage Allowance
Submitted 30 January 2008
Was Anyone on Flight FR3013 from Ciampino, Sunday 20 January 2008?
Submitted 28 January 2008
Getting Answer from Helpline
Submitted 25 January 2008
Breach of Duty of Care
Submitted 23 January 2008
Poor Reputation Effect on Share Price
Submitted 17 January 2008
Stranded in Venice
Submitted 9 January 2008
System Adds Taxes
Submitted 4 January 2008
First Experience of Ryanair Service
Submitted 2 January 2008
Currency Conversion
Submitted 29 December 2007
Budget Airline Comparisons
Submitted 24 December 2007
Refund of Taxes
Submitted 19 December 2007
Debit Charge
Submitted 19 December 2007
Contacting Ryanair about Double Bookings
Submitted 13 December 2007
Refund of Taxes for Non-Flight
Submitted 28 November 2007
Phone Cost and Free Flight Vouchers
Submitted 26 November 2007
No Phone Support After Web Error
Submitted 14 November 2007
Letter to Ryanair From Travel Agent
Submitted 13 November 2007
Stranded When Things Go Wrong
Submitted 11 November 2007
Taxes and Charges
Submitted 30 October 2007
Getting What you Pay For?
Submitted 8 November 2007
Bags and "Time Saving"
Submitted 5 November 2007
To the Back of the Queue
Submitted 5 November 2007
Two Flights Out and No Return
Submitted 16 October 2007
Checking Back Details
Submitted 3 November 2007
"Free" Flight Voucher
Submitted 2 November 2007
No Priority Boarding
Submitted 2 November 2007
Denied Boarding at Closed Checkin
Submitted 2 November 2007
Letter to Ryanair About Luggage
Submitted 28 October 2007
Buy as You Fly
Submitted 25 October 2007
Unable to Cancel Flight
Submitted 22 October 2007
Warnings About Lost Luggage
Submitted 15 October 2007
No Solution Offered to Get to Funeral
Submitted 9 October 2007
Travelling With Small Children and Bags
Submitted 7 October 2007
Letter to European Parliament about Electronic Commerce
Submitted 25 September 2007
Costly Non-Flight
Submitted 21 September 2007
Response to Costly non-Flight Story
Submitted 6 January 2008
Advice About Cancellations
Submitted 20 September 2007
Letter to Ryanair About Scales
Submitted 19 September 2007
Another Letter to Ryanair
Submitted 17 September 2007
Simple and easy way to get your refund
Submitted 13 September 2007
Excess Baggage
Submitted 12 September 2007
Double Charging
Submitted 11 September 2007
Ryanair Refund Policy
Submitted 10 September 2007
Comment on Previous Complaints
Submitted 9 September 2007
Change of Schedule
Submitted 8 September 2007
Another Letter of Complaint Addressed to Ryanair
Submitted 7 September 2007
Letter of Complaint Addressed to Ryanair
Submitted 7 September 2007
Queuing
Submitted 4 September 2007
Dumped in Lille
Submitted 3 September 2007
Damaged Suitcase and Insurance Claim
Submitted 3 September 2007
Refused Permission to Board
Submitted 3 September 2007
Connection not Covered by Insurance
Submitted 15 August 2007
Ryanair Criticises BAA, but Makes Money from Stranded Passengers
Submitted 13 August 2007
Girona Again
Submitted 12 August 2007
Missed Flight Due to Queue (letter to Ryanair)
Submitted 3 August 2007
Successful Refund
Submitted 25 July 2007
Telephone Number for Ryanair
Submitted 24 July 2007
Baggage Problems (addressed to Ryanair)
Submitted 15 July 2007
Family Checkin Problems
Submitted 11 July 2007
"Barcelona" Airport
Submitted 9 July 2007
Luggage Trouble
Submitted 7 July 2007
Successful Refund Claim
Submitted 28 June 2007
Successful Contact
Submitted 27 June 2007
No Compensation for Nightmare
Submitted 25 June 2007
Letter to Ryanair About Refusal of ID
Submitted 19 June 2007
Sharp Practices
Submitted 15 June 2007
Customer Care
Submitted 4 June 2007
Pay Again or Leave Your Bag
Submitted 1 June 2007
Contacting Ryanair
Submitted 1 June 2007
Sympathy But no Refund
Submitted 31 May 2007
Malfunctioning Web Site
Submitted 17 May 2007
Route Axed After Flight Confirmation
Submitted 10 May 2007
Being Forced to Check in Separate Bags "Reduces Delay"?
Submitted 2 May 2007
Attitude to Mother with 18 Month Old Child
Submitted 30 April 2007
Different ID Rules for Online Checkin
Submitted 30 April 2007
How Can My Mother Fly by Ryanair if She Can't Drive?
Submitted 27 April 2007
Compensation for Broken Bag
Submitted 19 April 2007
Nightmare for Visitor from USA (copy of letter)
Submitted 18 April 2007
Baggage Charge
Submitted 18 April 2007
Refusal to Pay Compensation
Submitted 17 April 2007
Can't Get Letter for Insurance
Submitted 14 April 2007
Good Service
Submitted 12 April 2007
Missing Phone and Illogical Confirmation
Submitted 11 April 2007
Reselling Newspapers
Submitted 10 April 2007
Security Checks and Missed Flight
Submitted 9 April 2007
Online Checkin Printout
Submitted 6 April 2007
Apology over Baggage Allowance
Submitted 3 April 2007
Refusal to Courier Luggage Lost by Ryanair
Submitted 2 April 2007
"Late" Check-in
Submitted 2 April 2007
No Refund for Cancellation
Submitted 30 March 2007
Ryanair Granada to Liverpool cancellation
Submitted 27 March 2007
Calibration of Scales
Submitted 27 March 2007
No Problem with Baggage Allowance
Submitted 26 March 2007
Letter to Ryanair About Customer Service
Submitted 25 March 2007
Dumped in Turin
Submitted 22 March 2007
Security Alert
Submitted 21 March 2007
Email Address
Submitted 19 March 2007
Stranded in Madrid
Submitted 18 March 2007
The Cost of Christmas
Submitted 15 March 2007
"Free Flight" Experience
Submitted 12 March 2007
Missed Confirmation Number
Submitted 7 March 2007
Excess Baggage Charge
Submitted 3 March 2007
Rude Member of Staff
Submitted 13 February 2007
Letter to Ryanair About Compensation
Submitted 12 February 2007
Letter to Ryanair About Changes to Allowances on Return from Poland
Submitted 10 February 2007
Return Flight from Riga
Submitted 6 February 2007
Letter to Ryanair About Cost of Wheelchair Booking
Submitted 1 February 2007
Comment on How Ryanair Works
Submitted 1 February 2007
Letter to Ryanair About Several Matters
Submitted 29 January 2007
Passport Demanded for Internal Flight
Submitted 28 January 2007
Letter to Ryanair About Charging new Tax for Cancelled Flight
Submitted 27 January 2007
Knowing How Ryanair Works
Submitted 26 January 2007
No Option to Cancel Before Extra Fee Added
Submitted 25 January 2007
Refusal to Give an Elderly Injured Passenger a Wheelchair
Submitted 23 January 2007
Refusal to Pay Due Compensation
Submitted 23 January 2007
Ryanair Claims of Passport/ID Validity
Submitted 22 January 2007
Late Credit Card Debits
Submitted 22 January 2007
Exchange of Emails with Ryanair
Submitted 22 January 2007
Lack of Assistance During Cancellations
Submitted 18 January 2007
"Free" Flights
Submitted 15 January 2007
Cancelled Flights
Submitted 15 January 2007
Irish Identity
Submitted 10 January 2007
Baggage Strategy
Submitted 10 January 2007
Military ID Refused
Submitted 10 January 2007
Changing Identity Rules for Return
Submitted 10 January 2007
Ode to Ryanair
Submitted 10 January 2007
Stranded at New Year
Submitted 10 January 2007
Complaint and Response About Priority Booking
Submitted 9 January 2007
Distant Airports
Submitted 10 January 2007
Skiiing Holidays
Submitted 9 January 2007
Forced to Split Baggage
Submitted 9 January 2007
Overbooking
Submitted 9 January 2007
Late Email and Good Experience
Submitted 9 January 2007
Shared Baggage
Submitted 9 January 2007
Overweight Baggage
Submitted 9 January 2007
Budget Travel Experience
Submitted 8 January 2007
Refusing Full Refund
Submitted 8 January 2007
Retrying Credit Card Payments
Submitted 8 January 2007
Letter to Ryanair about Wheelchair Services
Submitted 7 January 2007
Lost Bag Recovered
Submitted 6 January 2007
Point-to-Point, but Selling Onward Tickets?
Submitted 6 January 2007
Seat Loading Distribution
Submitted 6 January 2007
Two Experiences of Good Responses from Ryanair Staff
Submitted 5 January 2007
Sitting With Children
Submitted 3 January 2007
Printing Boarding Card
Submitted 3 January 2007
Advertising Suspended Route
Submitted 2 January 2007
The Cost of Getting Out of Trouble
Submitted 2 January 2007
Ryanair Refuses Other Identification When Passport Stolen
Submitted 2 January 2007
No Refund on Return, When Outward Flight Cancelled
Submitted 2 January 2007
Another Reduction in Service
Submitted 2 January 2007
No Responsibility for Delay Caused by Ryanair
Submitted 2 January 2007
No Compensation For Damage
Submitted 2 January 2007
Priority Boarding Charged For
Submitted 2 January 2007
Penalty for Mistake in Booking
Submitted 1 January 2007
Penalty for Online Check-in
Submitted 31 December 2006
Refund of Baggage Fee
Submitted 31 December 2006
Shared Luggage
Submitted 31 December 2006
No Help With Missing Luggage
Submitted 29 December 2006
Suitcases
Submitted 30 December 2006
Trampled Children
Submitted 30 December 2006
No Compensation
Submitted 30 December 2006
Delayed to Deliver Part
Submitted 28 December 2006
Baggage Sharing
Submitted 28 December 2006
Non-Existent Route
Submitted 28 December 2006
Special Needs Call Costs
Submitted 28 December 2006
Two Experiences
Submitted 28 December 2006
Wheelchair User's Humiliation
Submitted 10 July 2006
Letter to Ryanair from Customer (no reply at 9 July 2006)
Submitted 9 July 2006
Three Experiences from one Customer
Submitted 8 July 2006
Ignoring European Legislation
Submitted 8 July 2006
Long Story of Emails and Legal Proceedings
Submitted 5 July 2006
Contacting Ryanair
Submitted 5 July 2006
£40 for Baby Stuff
Submitted 5 July 2006
Change of Flight Time
Submitted 5 July 2006
Refund of Costs
Submitted 5 July 2006
Excess Baggage
Submitted 5 July 2006
No Telephone Support
Submitted 5 July 2006
Confiscated Burner
Submitted 25 June 2006
Customer Service
Submitted 18 April 2006
Problem With This Section
13 February 2005
Passports and Full Flights
Submitted 13 February 2005
More Good Experience
Submitted 13 February 2005
Good Experience
Submitted 8 February 2005
Passports Yet Again
Submitted 5 February 2005
Passports Again
Submitted 30 January 2005
Early Change of Booking
Submitted 28 January 2005
Carrying Skis
Submitted 26 January 2005
Change of Flight Time
Submitted 23 January 2005
Baggage Limits
Submitted 5 November 2004
More Passport Horrors
Submitted 4 November 2004
Checkin Refused 2
Submitted 30 October 2004
Excess Baggage 2
Submitted 26 October 2004
Priority Seating
Submitted 12 October 2004
Security on Internal Flight
Submitted 11 October 2004
Refund Refused
Submitted 21 September 2004
Airline Employee
Submitted 16 September 2004
Credit Card Charges
Submitted 12 September 2004
Reply to Disgusted
12 September 2004
Disgusted by this Site
Submitted 12 September 2004
Cheapest Flight?
Submitted 9 September 2004
Check-In Refused
Submitted 26 August 2004
Change of Flight Time
Submitted 19 August 2004
Cancellation Still on Sale
Submitted 19 August 2004
Stranded in Sweden
Submitted 20 July 2004
Excess Baggage
Submitted 15 July 2004
Seats and Baggage
Submitted 9 July 2004
Early Check-In Closure
Submitted 18 June 2004
Telephone Charges
Submitted 9 May 2004
Free Flights
Submitted 30 April 2004
Rescheduling
Submitted 29 April 2004
Abandoned in Treviso
Submitted 21 April 2004
Lost Luggage
Submitted 5 February 2004
Money Taken Without Confirmation
Submitted 21 January 2004
Site Languages
Submitted 30 March 2010
Submitted 17 March 2010
Submitted 17 March 2010
Submitted 16 March 2010
Submitted 27 February 2010
Submitted 20 February 2010
Submitted 19 January 2010
Submitted 17 January 2010
Submitted 23 December 2009
Submitted 17 December 2009
Submitted 16 December 2009
Submitted 2 December 2009
Submitted 24 October 2009
b) No further changes can be made to a booking after boarding passes have been printed, either online or by phone. In other words, had we not printed them off we could have transferred the flights to another date, at a cost of £140 (in addition to any price difference between the two flight dates).
Submitted 12 October 2009
Submitted 12 October 2009
Submitted 10 October 2009
Submitted 6 October 2009
Submitted 2 October 2009
Submitted 15 September 2009
The final sum is way beyond the price stated when you first started, but you think that you’re well covered with insurance, the environment factor and city to city comfort and you don't have rent a car at the final destination.
Submitted 4 September 2009
Submitted 17 August 2009
Submitted 19 August 2009
Submitted 14 August 2009
My daughter and her friends were left with no alternative given the lateness of the time to stay within the Beauvais airport until the following morning with no access to sustenance.
Submitted 11 August 2009
Submitted 9 August 2009
Submitted 7 August 2009
Submitted 3 August 2009
Submitted 27 July 2009
Po box 11451
Swords
County Dublin
Ireland
Submitted 22 July 2009
Submitted 22 July 2009
Submitted 22 July 2009
Submitted 9 July 2009
Submitted 8 July 2009
Submitted 7 July 2009
Submitted 23 June 2009
Where to complain, NOwhere!! The only option was to send a Fax to and
always busy number (!).
Submitted 19 June 2009
Submitted 1 June 2009
Submitted 27 May 2009
Submitted 25 May 2009
Submitted 20 May 2009
Submitted 16 May 2009
Submitted 09 May 2009
Submitted 12 May 2009
Submitted 7 April 2009
The contract between the purchaser, Emily Williams and Ryanair was unfair. Ryanair failed to inform me of charges prior and post booking. Even when I paid the charges on the outbound flight, I was not informed that this charge only covered the outbound flight and that I would be required to do online check-in for my return flight. Had I been made aware of these charges at the time of confirmation I may not have agreed to the contract.
Submitted 10 May 2009
Submitted 1 May 2009
Submitted 18 April 2009
Submitted 31 March 2009
Submitted 27 March 2009
Submitted 9 March 2009
Submitted 9 March 2009
Submitted 1 March 2009
Submitted 25 February 2009
Submitted 13 February 2009
Submitted 12 February 2009
Submitted 9 February 2009
Submitted 9 February 2009
Submitted 6 February 2009
Submitted 5 February 2009
Submitted 29 January 2009
Submitted 28 January 2009
Submitted 20 January 2009
Submitted 16 January 2009
Submitted 14 January 2009
Now it doesn't take much figuring out, in my opinion, that 3 passengers were bumped to make way for the 3 airline crew.
Submitted 8 January 2009
Submitted 7 January 2009
Submitted 6 January 2009
Submitted 3 January 2009
Submitted 30 December 2008
Submitted 28 December 2008
Submitted 25 November 2008
Submitted 21 November 2008
Submitted 6 November 2008
Submitted 4 November 2008
Submitted 30 October 2008
Submitted 29 October 2008
Submitted 19 October 2008
Submitted 8 October 2008
Submitted 19 September 2008
Submitted 5 September 2008
Submitted 3 September 2008
Flight FR411 Stansted-Prestwick (missed due to delay)
Submitted 29 August 2008
Submitted 27 August 2008
Submitted 27 August 2008
Submitted 24 August 2008
The reason I thought I'd pass this on out of interest to other potential Ryanair customers is that you can see the total passenger fee (there are two of us) nearly equals that of the flight itself (including taxes, fees and charges).
Submitted 20 August 2008
My guess is that many other people are doing the same as we are and taking action to avoid the completely unnecessary, unreliable, insulting and degrading experience that flying Ryanair has now become. Surely no organisation can survive by treating us, the customers in this way. They are telling us at the moment that they are struggling for custom and reducing prices. I think their strategy is fatally flawed.
Submitted 19 August 2008
Submitted 13 August 2008
Submitted 11 August 2008
Submitted 5 August 2008
In summary due to the failure of your website and/or Egg to allow my original booking to go through I decided not to give my business to an airline that persistently demonstrates flagrant and repeated contempt for its customers through many of its actions and where the directors have so little respect for their public image that they cannot be bothered to invest the effort to fire their current incompetent staff and/or contractors operating their website and replace them with staff and/or contractors who know how to do the job. I don't see how you can claim to be a totally web oriented airline and do everything to discourage phone calls when you can't even get your act together to make the website or your online check-in system work properly.
Submitted 23 July 2008
Submitted 21 July 2008
Submitted 21 July 2008
Submitted 21 July 2008
Submitted 11 July 2008
Submitted 9 July 2008
Submitted 8 July 2008
Submitted 2 July 2008
Submitted 21 June 2008
Submitted 20 June 2008
Submitted 20 June 2008
The second fax actually took 23 attempts to get connected (no doubt all the other satisfied customers out there were trying to send letters of praise to Ryanair).
I would strongly advise Ryanair to sort itself out or it will continue to alienate customers, some words of advice (from someone who has worked in busy customer service environments):
Well that's it really, my war and piece is now over and I have to say I will be avoiding Ryanair unless it is the only option available (heck I would now consider driving to Liverpool and catching a ferry to Ireland than use them), given my experience with this company.
Submitted 19 June 2008
Submitted 17 June 2008
Submitted 14 June 2008
Submitted 13 June 2008
Submitted 13 June 2008
Submitted 9 June 2008
If more people would write to Mr O'Leary about their experiences on his airline, then he might have to admit that although he makes a profit, it is only because of his half-truths, dodgy propaganda and above all the ruthless exploitation of people with small budgets who want to fly somewhere on holiday.)
Submitted 3 June 2008
Submitted 2 June 2008
Submitted 2 June 2008
Submitted 28 May 2008
Submitted 26 May 2008
Submitted 25 May 2008
Submitted 25 May 2008
RYANAIR LIMITED
Anonymous
Customer Service
Customer Services Department
Ryanair Head Office
Submitted 20 May 2008
Submitted 20 May 2008
Submitted 19 May 2008
Submitted 19 May 2008
Submitted 18 May 2008
Submitted 18 May 2008
Submitted 17 May 2008
Submitted 17 May 2008
Submitted 11 May 2008
Submitted 30 April 2008