Are Ryanair taking the mickey on hidden "Fees" again?

2sides2everystory

Perhaps no need to Cityboy, dmg24 is/was qualified and hasn't said much since I pointed to the law, and anyway we can again in the first instance revert to our own law and discover under Schedule 1 which relates to Regulation 3.(4)(d) such things as:
SCHEDULE 1 Commercial practices which are in all circumstances considered unfair

5. Making an invitation to purchase products at a specified price without disclosing the existence of any reasonable grounds the trader may have for believing that he will not be able to offer for supply, or to procure another trader to supply, those products or equivalent products at that price for a period that is, and in quantities that are, reasonable having regard to the product, the scale of advertising of the product and the price offered (bait advertising).

malkie76

But that isn't the case here - the bottom line price is shown prior to clicking the confirm button.

You are genuinely grasping at straws, and again I must ask who is forcing you to use RyanAir's services ?

If you are so passionate I assume you must have raised your issues with the OFT etc - what did they say ? (or are you simply an internet grumbler?)

2sides2everystory

Just booked another ryanair flight. Strange but the blue price has reduced from £19.99 this morning to £12 this afternoon - so naturally by delaying my non-average consumer buying decision making process I of course saved err... £13.99 :rotfl:

I ask you malkie, how can you justify arguing that double-dutch price-labelling like that does not affect the average consumer's economic behaviour when entering into a transaction on Ryanair's website? Help us here - are you saying that the average consumer should or does simply trust that the final deduction from their bank account will tally with the last price they thought they saw in blue, black, or red in massive font, 12pt or 8pt or whatever on the website before clicking "Purchase Now" and not the price they clicked on when they decided "That's the price for me on the date I want" ?

Well we have a different set of examples of where that is not so, don't we? I bought a flight in a non-GBP currency yesterday and had I not understood Ryanair's obtuse ways I'd have ended up paying Ryanair's "recommended" £25.74 instead of the fair currency equivalent I knew Neteller would charge which was £24.85 i.e. if I wasn't already slightly confused, I'd have been done at the last moment for an extra 3.5% purely for my average-ness and general lack of nouse.

And with no less than three of my transactions in the last 24 hours instead of getting a confirmed booking reference linking me to the price I hoped I'd paid, I got an error message telling me that the Session was locked and asking me to wait 10 seconds before clicking on a link that actually took me nowhere. Had I been an average consumer I might have worried somewhat and leapt onto the phone and paid Ryanair some more money via a premium rate telephone number to confirm that all was well, but being a non-average consumer like you, malkie, I didn't worry too much.

I mean that's how it really is with Ryanair, so why tell it differently?

It does leave me wondering if you are just idly paddling your own canoe up and down the lazy waters of MSE scanning the shore for literary obtusities for entertainment value, or if you really do post some of your contrarian anti-consumerist clap-trap out of some kind of distorted concept of public-spiritedness ... Economic behaviour is truly a wonderful thing to behold sometimes

malkie76

Still no answer then ?

2sides2everystory

Frame a useful question and I'll do my best to answer it ... meantime the answer to my original question appears to be a currently unopposed "Yes".

malkie76

I'll try again then - who is forcing you to fly RyanAir?
Do RyanAir add the extras before or after you push the confirm button?
(This is why fundamentally RyanAir are doing nothing illegal)
Are there other travel options other than RyanAir?
What did the OFT say when you approached them with your issues (or are you only an Internet grumbler?)

2sides2everystory

Three and a half puerile questions and another based on a fundamentally false assertion. I leave you to sort out which is which.

Want to try again malkie and engage rather more seriously or are you content to continue to blunder on down your "am I bovvered" route ?

malkie76

Pretty straight forward questions to address. Your lack of answer tells me (and every other poster) everything we needed to know.

2sides2everystory

I am pleased for you malkie - that you've got things so nicely sorted in your mind, I mean - but are the rest of us really bovvered ? :rotfl:

Anyone else still disagree (despite the overwhelming evidence supporting the premise) that Ryanair are taking the mickey on hidden "Fees" again ?

Don't be shy now ...

And just to re-emphasise the point tonight, here's what the same flights I mentioned in my original post now look like:

Fri, 15 Apr 11 from 12.00 GBP Total Price: 12.00GBP (correct!)
Sat, 16 Apr 11 from 39.99 GBP Total Price: 77.06GBP (+93%)
Sun, 17 Apr 11 from 39.99 GBP Total Price: 77.06GBP (+93%)
Mon, 18 Apr 11 from 27.99 GBP Total Price: 33.99GBP (+21%)
Tue, 19 Apr 11 from 39.99 GBP Total Price: 77.06GBP (+93%)
Wed, 20 Apr 11 from 79.99 GBP Total Price: 117.06GBP (+46%)
Thu, 21 Apr 11 from 59.99 GBP Total Price: 97.06GBP (+62%)

Which still means 6 out of 7 cats who expressed a preference for one of these flights were likely to have had their economic behaviour distorted.

2sides2everystory

I do not quite understand the sentiment in this context. Are you sure you mean to support the use of the word "from" as some kind of universal get out of jail free card ? Bait and switch has long been unlawful but the law was unquestionably strengthened by CPUTR2008.

If "from" in the context of the blue prices is a key word, Cityboy, what is it a key to ? Is it perhaps a key to the distorted (upwards) price that will follow if you click on it ?

It is certainly not a key to converting the presentation of a false totally unavailable price for a flight that day into a lawful commercial practice.

You must remember where these blue prices appear - they are all specifically linked to unique single-date-route combinations. So 6 out of 7 of the ones presented yesterday on the Week At A Glance for my chosen route were absolutely false invitations to proceed with a transaction ("Select the flight of your choice").