Beware on Ryanair!

bagand96

You buy a Ryanair ticket, you have to play by their rules. Yes, there are a lot of them, but they are all spelled out. They also make it clear that you will pay dearly if you dont follow them.

That said, it is always a lottery, and very inconsistent which rules are and aren't enforced, or to what extent they are. The reason for this is that the people responsible for enforcing them are the staff of the contracted ground handling agencies.

Generally these people work very hard, for a poor wage, and a lot of the time probably think it isn't worth their hassle enforcing half the rules, knowing the response they will get from the passengers. They also have very little loyalty to Ryanair as they are not employed by them; and more often than not Ryanair turnarounds are far more hassle than that of other airlines they may handle.

This is what adds up to make the lottery. If Brother O'Loudmouth his way, every non conforming passenger would be charged the appropriate fee. But that simply doesn't happen.

However, you must realise what the rules are, and that if you do break them, you can be charged as per the Ryanair T&C's. If you get away with it, good for you. But if you don't, the rules were always there and Ryanair are well within their rights to enforce the penalty.

Inactive

Lieutenant_Thrift wrote: »

I don't see why the person is 'trolling' by posting this story. Ryanair appears to try and make cash on pedantic enforcement of rules, the necessity of which is far from clear.

I had an incident with RA on Saturday. Jobsworth enforcement of the rules meant that we had to repack our cases with our duty free purchases. I know it says on the boarding pass that your airside purchases must be in the case but I can't see why the duty free bags couldn't have gone at our feet. They didn't have scales at the gate and I suspect the two bottles of Baileys we'd bought would have put one of the bags way over the 10kg limit. As we were struggling to fit them into the bag, we were reminded twice that we had the option of paying an extra 35 GBP to put a bag in the hold. Just made us contemplate what the true motive was for forcing us to repack.

Considering writing a complaint to O'Leary of Dublin about this. I notice also that you can't email complaints, they must be on paper. Presumably, it'll have to be on untorn A4 if it's to be considered...

Waste of time, what was it about " one bag only " that you didn't understand?

whatmichaelsays

albir wrote: »

I wonder if Mr O'Leary is aware of the bad feeling being caused?

I'm sure he couldn't care less, given that he's running the most successful airline in Europe at the present time.

For somebody who gets a kicking so often, so publicly, he must be doing something that people like.

whatmichaelsays

Lieutenant_Thrift wrote: »

I had an incident with RA on Saturday. Jobsworth enforcement of the rules meant that we had to repack our cases with our duty free purchases. I know it says on the boarding pass that your airside purchases must be in the case but I can't see why the duty free bags couldn't have gone at our feet. They didn't have scales at the gate and I suspect the two bottles of Baileys we'd bought would have put one of the bags way over the 10kg limit. As we were struggling to fit them into the bag, we were reminded twice that we had the option of paying an extra 35 GBP to put a bag in the hold. Just made us contemplate what the true motive was for forcing us to repack.

Translation:

I knew the terms of carriage, indeed I agreed to them when I booked. I knew full well that duty free has to be packed with my hand luggage, I even read it on the boarding card that I printed off, using it to confirm to myself that having a seperate duty free bag was against the terms that I'd agreed to. Nevertheless, I though that I was an exception to these piddly little rules that I had previously agreed to and attempted to board with two items of cabin baggage, even tough I knew that only one was allowed. When I was eventually caught not conforming to the terms I had knowingly agreed to, I harrumphed, hastily repacked my bag in front of the dispatcher who, whilst simply enforcing the terms that I knew about anyway, was clearly being a "Jobsworth". I then decided that I would write a nasty comment on an internet forum, consider complaining to the company and vowing never to fly with Ryanair again (or at least, not until their next £1 sale).

seemasfriend

I frequently fly with Ryanair and have never had any problems and yes I do abide by the rules to the letter. I think the confusion comes when the interpretation of the rules differs from country to country. I have seen one woman remove about 10kg of clothes from hold luggage to get the weight to 15kg and get away with four carrier bags as carry on luggage. No chance from Stansted but she just got lucky in Bratislava. Better safe than sorry is my motto

PolishBigSpender

Inactive wrote: »

Waste of time, what was it about " one bag only " that you didn't understand?

And yet people like this are taken seriously by some people!

Mind you, the best one on here was someone complaining that Ryanair advertise their flights to take longer than they take, so that they arrive early. Better to arrive earlier than announced than later, surely?

stoneman

PolishBigSpender wrote: »

And yet people like this are taken seriously by some people!

Mind you, the best one on here was someone complaining that Ryanair advertise their flights to take longer than they take, so that they arrive early. Better to arrive earlier than announced than later, surely?

Better still to arrive at the time it actually takes to fly from A to B than by a massaged schedule purely made up to get better "on time" results.
Anyone have any ideas as to who post number 5 is about;)

BTW is the bruising going down yet:rotfl:

Lieutenant_Thrift

whatmichaelsays wrote: »

...he's running the most successful airline in Europe at the present time.

For somebody who gets a kicking so often, so publicly, he must be doing something that people like.

Sycophancy or what!

Despite the uncivil replies above, I'm not convinced us being asked to repack our bags was anything other than a pathetic and obvious attempt to get another £35 from us. My experience of other airlines and of previous Ryanair trips is that they tolerate you buying stuff from the Duty Free and having it in a separate bag in spite of a 1 cabin bag policy. It makes no material difference to the amount of fuel the plane uses and we were quite happy to utilise the space under the seats in front which we are still told is an acceptable place to put stuff. The attitude taken by the woman at the gate was officious, not to mention inconsistent. Maybe if some of you had been there, you wouldn't be so high minded.

Given the level of deference shown to RA's policies and inconsistent and poor service here, I wouldn't be surprised if some people above thought it reasonable for them to hypothetically say:

"You MUST tattoo your reservation and flight numbers to your forehead prior to departure or face another £40 surcharge for us printing them out on a a bit of card that actually costs about 10p. The very good reason for this is our staff are low paid and badly treated so you cannot expect them to be polite or use common sense"

and be similarly rude and patronising to anyone who thought it was stupid.

As for the next £1 sale, I might not bother, Wizzair and Easyjet fly the same routes I usually take and I've not had any bad experiences with them. I've also not heard enough bad reviews of them to fill a phone book as I have with RA.

Happy New Year to fellow disgruntled RA customers.

busiscoming2

So far I have not encountered any problems with Ryanair or other lo cost airlines. Stick to the rules and you will be ok Why can't people do this? . Beats me.

scot88

I too frequently fly with Ryanair and never had a problem