MSE News: Ryanair 'sticks two fingers up at passengers' with new card fees

A.Jones

mahanrahan wrote: »

All budget airlines should show the cost including seat reservation, hold baggage, taxes etc. with the option of 'opting out' of hold baggage with a cost reduction. As for card fees, this is one of my pet hates. As an ex-retailer we absorbed these costs and did NOT pass them on to our customers; all Internet bookings should be fee free as we are doing all the work ourselves and not going through a call centre. (This I also feel should be to case with bookings for theatre/cinema etc.):eek:

You say get back to basics, yet then say that the price should include hold baggage, seat reservations, etc. To me, basic means just that - the price you pay for the basic service. Hold baggage is not necessary for many, therefore not a basic. Seat reservation is also not necessary. Usually I don't care where I sit, so this too is an optional luxury, not a basic.

Should they charge a booking fee / payment fee? I don't care.

Should the extra charges be stated before you go through the booking process? Yes. Most people know there are extras, but they should still be stated up front.

My take on why Ryanair are changing the card they accept is not that it will make them significantly more money from the fees they are charging. But it will get them mentioned in the press, on websites, etc etc and give them loads of free advertising about how cheap they are.

hamsterfan1

if you're not happy with Ryanair don't fly with them - but they should still give you a full price before you get through the booking process

hermante

Obviously people are still flying Ryanair despite all of this. Maybe they are actually trying to reduce demand? There are so many people who just pay up every time they are ripped off.

The silliest excuses I've heard include someone saying that they "know" Ryanair are cheap, and it would take them 3 hours to look at all the alternatives. Their hourly salary is about £10, so unless they can guarantee to save £30 by flying with someone else there isn't any point bothering. Needless to say, unless they are looking at flights on work time that is nonsense.

The_Pixi

Sharon87 wrote: »

When I checked flights to Rome Ryanair and Easyjet weren't even the cheapest for us on top of all their fees. We took Al Italia there and BA back, Ryanair and Easyjet would have cost a bit more. So they're not cheap for every flight they do, they may still have some bargain flights, but I'm betting the bargains to be had are less frequent.

I refuse to fly with Ryanair though, don't fancy having to deal with them and their bad customer service (that I've heard about from news/friends)

Snap, I'm off to Rome soon and BA worked out cheaper than Easyjet if you include the baggage charge.

gowgowuk

glider3560 wrote: »

Yes, they are. We've booked flights to Pisa in October for £70 (for two people) including one 15kg suitcase.

Even with a £6 fee (i.e. extra £24), the price is still a bargain.

Same here. I am a regular flyer to Brussels (from Edinburgh) and even with all fees and luggage, at less than £100 is nowhere near the competition (usually between £200 and £250)

shoi

The press release says
Free card top-ups can be made at www.cashpassport.com/ryanair.

Well that page isn't up and running yet, but they charge 2% for topups for their other cards, and the worst of it is that topups take a day to clear, so you finish up lending the £$%^& money to kae sure there's enough in the account when you buy. Oh well

I just don't get why Ryanair make it obvious that they are so contemptuous of their customers. Maybe all big companies are (banks, Sky, for example) maybe somehow we prefer the greasy lies as opposed to the "if you don't like it then sod off" way of saying things. No, I don't think so, Tesco seem to be much more straightforward. That's it really, you shouldn't play hard ball with your customers, because we really do hate him and if ever something bad happens with a corporate safety-liability case, the lynch mob will be out in force and Mr Ryan will finish up in exile in Burkina Fasso. Nice.

Steve

philco18

good idea gadgetmind but sometimes ryanair are the only carrier to a particular airport or region. I recently bought a pre paid Mastercard (Kalixa) and it worked perfectly and therefore avoided the rip off fees which ryanair charge. Now I'll have to buy their own card or travel with another carrier. They shouldn't be allowed to get away with it any longer.

geoff_s---r

I'd suggest this could be tackled through advertising standards.

If Ryanair advertise a £10 flight that is only available within the week. Then the advertised offer would be unavailable to more than say 999 out of 1,000 people who read the advert (because it takes more than that week to get Ryanair's card). I'd have thought that such an advert price would be classed as misleading & would have to be withdrawn?

Perhaps someone with legal knowledge might look into this & draft a complaint so that everyone without a Ryanair card who see's an advertised price that is unavailable to them could flood advertising standards with complaints next time Ryanair adverts appear on billboards.

NFH

mikeeboy wrote: »

It frustrates me so much when people jump on the 'I hate Ryanair' bandwagon. How are they ripping me off when I can fly somewhere on time with a suitable bag for cheaper than anyone else?

You've totally missed the point. It's not about how Ryanair's all-in fares compare to its competitors, but about Ryanair misleadingly advertising fares that are cheaper than its true all-in fares by excluding compulsory additional fees. From 1st November, the £6 fee will not be avoidable.

wozearly

hermante wrote: »

Obviously people are still flying Ryanair despite all of this. Maybe they are actually trying to reduce demand? There are so many people who just pay up every time they are ripped off.

The silliest excuses I've heard include someone saying that they "know" Ryanair are cheap, and it would take them 3 hours to look at all the alternatives. Their hourly salary is about £10, so unless they can guarantee to save £30 by flying with someone else there isn't any point bothering. Needless to say, unless they are looking at flights on work time that is nonsense.

Arguably that could be a rational approach and not just laziness.

It ultimately depends how much value you place on your own time and how much value you gain from finding the best price.

If it takes 3 hours to review all the alternatives, and you know that many are going to be offering a highly similar service at a highly similar price, and that certain carriers are likely to fall into the bottom end of that category, then picking one of those carriers and booking straight up frees up 3 hours' worth of your time.

That's three hours you could spend doing something you enjoy, rather than going through umpteen different websites to check flights, confirm all of the extra charges and fees, compare departure and arrival times / locations, etc.

If the likely saving is in the region of £30, you might objectively decide that you'd rather accept it might not be the cheapest and that your time is more valuable. A lot of that may depend on how much money you have - £30 is a more important saving to some people than others.

If the likely saving was a lot higher, say £300, people might act differently. The nub, of course, is that its very difficult to tell what the likely saving would be at a glance given the number of hoops and jump-throughs you have to do and the lack of an effective aggregator-style site that can take your situation (e.g. single traveller, no extra baggage, paying by a 'normal' card) and review the market on that basis.

Of course, this is a good argument against the practice of adding in artificial 'hoops' that aren't included in the headline price, because that type of behaviour makes it more difficult to compare pricing. As financial services companies have demonstrated to great effect, if you have a lengthy application process then people are much more likely to accept at the end of it, even when hit by an unexpected extra charge, than waste time going through the whole charade again with a different provider who, chances are, will do exactly the same thing and end up at roughly the same price.

Making it difficult to compare only ever benefits the company, never the consumer - and this latest Ryanair stance is particularly disingenuous. If the 'hook' of their own prepaid card is that you get £6 back per flight, then let that stand on its own and people can work out if its worthwhile - but include the £6 booking fee as part of the overall ticket price.

I don't think we'd tolerate Tesco starting to quote product prices based on what they would be if you used a voucher and then upcharging you at the checkout. So why on earth should Ryanair be allowed to adopt the same approach?