Bravofly and Skyscanner

MagWag

Well I have just booked Ryanair flights through Bravofly and now I am wondering if it was a good move or not?

Reason for doing it?

First of all I went to Skyscanner looking for cheapest flights to & from my destination and it came up with Ryanair...so I went to Ryanair and the prices were good, but when I clicked to the next screen they were £7 each more for the return flights then they had originally quoted. I decided to check out prices for accommodation & car hire and meanwhile the Ryanair site timed out. When I put my details in again the return flights quoted had gone up.

I went back to Skyscanner and the first low prices were shown there, but not on Ryanair when I clicked through. I tried it using private browsing and the return flight went up another £4! So I decide to book the outward flights only & go back tomorrow, in case all my interest was pushing the return prices up? However I did a search for the return flights on Skyscanner - £11 above what I had started out with BUT the price quoted by Bravofly was still the original price (+£1.07 commission per ticket) so I booked through them without thinking to check them out first:-(
As it turned out they were quite a bit cheaper than Ryanair directly because of the lower flight costs AND the luggage charge was only £18 something per 15kilo (I assume because they were paying the euro rate). They sent me through a confirmation email with check-in details that differed a bit from Ryanair itself so I phoned them up to ask about it. I got through straight away and the girl I spoke to tried to be helpful but really was only repeating what was said in the email. My major concern was online check-in and printing out boarding passes in a foreign country without having my own printer to hand; now this is where I have some questions that I may have to answer for myself.....

I was given my own email (that had been generated by bravofly) and which I was to use for online check-in and I was also given my reservation number for Ryanair. When I booked the departure flights with Ryanair I had paid to choose particular seats; this I understand allows you to check-in as early as 30 days in advance - so if I could book seats for the return journey I could check-in before I left and print my boarding passes for the return journey before I left the country :-)
So I tried it and it worked - at least so far! I can see the booking in my name, which is confirmed - paid for by a card that I do not recognise. It was actually slightly more then the amount Bravofly debited to my card according to their email - which is interesting and which I will keep a check on. Actually when I first logged in it looked like they had paid £30 more than I had been charged but then it changed - I think there was a GPB/EUROS thing going on!?
After I paid for my seat reservations it said it was confirmed and they would send an email. Well of course I will not get this email myself because it isn't 'mine' - but I notice that I can change the email so this is what I am wondering...should I? At least I would then get notification emails from Ryanair...I might even be able to get the boarding passes sent to my smartphone. If the booking is in my name & is paid for (and I have paid Bravofly) then what is to stop me cutting out the middleman? If Bravofly had excellent reviews and great customer service then there wouldn't really be any point in doing this, but since they haven't I thnk I would fee much happier managing my flights myself! Has anyone else tried this?