Ryanair to cancel flights booked through intermediaries [MERGED]

Little_Ettchy

Ryanair are not accepting any passengers who have booked through comparison sites (screen scrapers). Their reason is "We don't accept their terms and conditions". Friends of our arrived at Luton last Monday, August 4th, to be told their tickets wouldn't be accepted and they should go to the Ryanair desk to purchase new ones. So much for their CEO, Michael O'Leary saying this action will commence on August 11th.

The advice seems to be; By all means use comparison sites to find the cheap flights, but, once found, book the flight(s) direct with the airline.

kilrail

Found a new thread and posted to it - didn't spot this til later sorry.

I have used Ryanair extensively booking direct but also through Fleetwaytravel.com which link hotels and flights to provide a holiday (as most travel agents do). They utilise the low cost airlines and we had no idea that Ryanair would take offence at this.

In fact the last 3 holidays were booked this way with no problems.
However, trying to figure out what is actually happening now is damn near impossible. The news media are saying if tickets were booked this way you could be turned away at the desk and our friends who used Otbeach.com to book a 3 week holiday in Almeria in September don't know if their booking is valid or not.
Otbeach simply say negotiations with Ryanair are ongoing - Ryanair phone lines are constantly engaged (even at £1 per min) so our pensioner friends are worried, to the extent that they are considering booking again with Ryanair direct.

I am a fan of Ryanair and even admire Michael O'Leary for his business brain but I fear on this occasion he has got it wrong and it is a PR disaster. OK he doesn't like so called screen scrapers but most people wouldn't have a clue what he is talking about as all they may have done is book a holiday through what they perceive as an online Travel Agent.

Surely, the right thing would be to warn people in advance and not punish retrospectively or does he think Alastair Darling has given the green light on this sort of behaviour with his vehicle excise duty rates.
Also I'm sure he has access to software experts who could block these sites so it wouldn't be a problem in the first place. Then if the online "Travel Agents" wanted to book flights to link to hotels, they could do it on behalf of their customer using the details supplied i.e. customer email address, customer credit/ debit card etc.

I hope there will soon be some confirmation as to what is actually happening as I don't know of anyone really being turned away at the Ryanair desk, unless of course someone knows different.

dmg24

Just to remind people that, if you have booked tickets that may be affected, you need to contact the agent, as this is who you have made a contract with.

Don't waste your money ringing Ryanair. They will only direct you back to the agent.

Crabman

Please read Martin's post and continue discussion here:

Ryanair "cancels bookings through screenscrapers." The FlightChecker ISN’T affected