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

LILLYBET

I would rather drive over 2 hours to another airport and go with another airline than fly with Ryanair. I used to but got fed up with the cattle truck mentality, the disorganisation at the gate (first 30 to check in got on board first! NOT) the extras, the charges, the chaos on board before take off, the very small amount of leg room, the claustraphobic atmosphere and on one occasion being told by a stewardess who could barely speak intelligible English that the Germans sitting beside me had to move as they did not speak English - we were sat right at the back.
The same stewardess then gave instructions to all passengers with her appalling accent which had to be repeated. We never did understand what she said. The staff on board were so busy trying to sell stuff to us we got no peace on the flight(s) and on the return leg of a journey from Spain I almost walked off the plane.
It was total chaos, with screaming kids, a very rude steward and generally very unpleasant. Nothing was done to shut the kids up.
I will never fly with them again so the charges wont apply but typical of Ryanair.
Time for people to give them the elbow and fly with airlines who care about their passengers. Who says they are the cheapest by the way? NOT anymore.

Laughingbear

We're not going to use Ryan Air anymore. As they say, "You pay peanuts, you get monkeys".

Last time we flew with them they tried to charge us for excess baggage weight. No problem with that in itself as we knew we were slightly over the 15kg allowance but not by the amount Ryan Air were trying to charge us by. We were told were about 7kg over the allowance and would need to pay for it. We queried the 7kg as we only expected the excess to be about 3-4kg. Fortunately the adjacent check-in desk wasn't being used so i moved the cases to the scale on that desk. The weight was different. The clerk sarcastically suggested that those scales could of been wrong. I asked her which one, the first or the second set. I transferred the cases to a 3rd check-in desk scales and that read a completely different reading than the first 2 scales!!

"Which weight are you going to base the excess charges on then?" i asked the clerk. She contacted her manager to ask and guess what? We were allowed through with NO EXCESS CHARGES at all!!! (otherwise i would of kicked off a fuss and made sure that EVERY passenger in the queue behind us would of been made aware of this anomaly). Further more, on our return to Liverpool, we had checked-in at the foreign airport again with excess baggage and the clerk just let us through, NO CHARGES!!.

If Ryan Air are to penalise/charge people for excess baggage, they should be made to prove that the scales they are using to calculate those charges have been regularly calibrated. They won't like having to do this because each and every time they vacate the check-in desk, allowing other airlines to use it, those scales will need to be recalibrated. That will cost them lots of money (and how many airports across Europe and how many check-in desks do they use?).

It's about time Ryan Air started paying more attention to detail.

cloudwalker_3

It's been clear to me for some time that Ryanair is a pretty nasty company, both in the way that it treats it's customers and it's staff.

There are so many stories of rude, obnoxious, mean and dispiriting behaviour by that I scarcely know where to start, but here's one example:

A few years ago Ryanair banned employees from plugging in their mobile phones whilst working. They claimed that it amounted to electricity theft and that any staff member caught would be disciplined or maybe even dismissed/sacked from their job.

Whatever amount of electricity Ryanair think they saved that day, they lost an far greater amount of customer loyalty and affection.

I've never used them since that decision.

Don't get me wrong, I love saving money, but have to draw the line somewhere. I try hard, on principle, not to use companies thare nasty to their employees, customers or the larger society that they are part of.

According to Wikipedia, "Michael O'Leary is an Irish businessman and the Chief Executive Officer of the Irish airline Ryanair. He is one of the Republic of Ireland's wealthiest businessmen... he has a reputation for loose talk in the airline industry and among its regulators. Many press articles have often described him as arrogant, and prone to making comments which he later contradicts...He has been criticized by a judge for lying, who said he was lucky not to be found guilty of contempt of court"

This says it all really. I won't be giving him any of my money any time soon.

watsonworld

There seems to be a tremendous amount of bile directed at Ryanair surrounding everything they do. Yes - there are fees ! Yes they don't land in the centre of town ! But my wife and I have used this airline more than a dozen times in the last ten years and have not encountered any real problems. We have travelled to interesting European / Scandinavian destinations and only once did I have to pay the full fare (because of a booking error on my part.) The additional fare was more than covered by the number of times we have flown for £10-£12 each way including the "dreaded" card fee. I really can't understand anyone who continually states that the fees are "hidden". When I book a flight, I initially enter random customer details - Mr X etc and I proceed ALL the way to the payment screen to establish the true fare. As for the compensation issue, I frankly don't expect ANY if I only paid £12 to fly ! I honestly think they were hard done by after the Ash Cloud shut down ! We take only carefully weighed & sized cabin baggage, (even for our week in Ibiza.) To avoid traffic hold ups we arrive hours before the flight for "priority queuing" rather "priority boarding" (waste of money). We check in online and print everything twice. We bring your own food or use Wetherspoons vouchers. Use the toilets in the terminal. We wear earplugs to block out the scratch card and "congratulations" type announcements. We have a "belt and braces" alternate travel plan. (It's never happed yet but if our flight was cancelled, we would be standing at the other airline desk when YOU got there buying the last seats because we'd done our homework.) On a similar subject, I don't get these folk who don't have some emergency plan / cash / card ! "We were down to our last 50 cents ! - It was awful !" (These same folks go up Snowdon in flip flops !) Mr O'leary is teaching us to be leaner travellers so he can turn his buses round and cram in the extra return flight. Martin's followers are savvy travellers who can spot loop holes as well as hoops. Here endeth the first lesson.
PS - For reasons of balance, you really should check out "Cheap Flights - Fascinating Aida" on You Tube.

Jonnytwotimes

watsonworld wrote: »

There seems to be a tremendous amount of bile directed at Ryanair surrounding everything they do. Yes - there are fees ! Yes they don't land in the centre of town ! But my wife and I have used this airline more than a dozen times in the last ten years and have not encountered any real problems. We have travelled to interesting European / Scandinavian destinations and only once did I have to pay the full fare (because of a booking error on my part.) The additional fare was more than covered by the number of times we have flown for £10-£12 each way including the "dreaded" card fee. I really can't understand anyone who continually states that the fees are "hidden". When I book a flight, I initially enter random customer details - Mr X etc and I proceed ALL the way to the payment screen to establish the true fare. As for the compensation issue, I frankly don't expect ANY if I only paid £12 to fly ! I honestly think they were hard done by after the Ash Cloud shut down ! We take only carefully weighed & sized cabin baggage, (even for our week in Ibiza.) To avoid traffic hold ups we arrive hours before the flight for "priority queuing" rather "priority boarding" (waste of money). We check in online and print everything twice. We bring your own food or use Wetherspoons vouchers. Use the toilets in the terminal. We wear earplugs to block out the scratch card and "congratulations" type announcements. We have a "belt and braces" alternate travel plan. (It's never happed yet but if our flight was cancelled, we would be standing at the other airline desk when YOU got there buying the last seats because we'd done our homework.) On a similar subject, I don't get these folk who don't have some emergency plan / cash / card ! "We were down to our last 50 cents ! - It was awful !" (These same folks go up Snowdon in flip flops !) Mr O'leary is teaching us to be leaner travellers so he can turn his buses round and cram in the extra return flight. Martin's followers are savvy travellers who can spot loop holes as well as hoops. Here endeth the first lesson.
PS - For reasons of balance, you really should check out "Cheap Flights - Fascinating Aida" on You Tube.

I could'nt agree with you more. I love Ryanair, I have travelled all over Europe to places I would never imagined for peanuts. I can go home to Dublin at the drop of hat and I never usually pay more than £20. Recently I booked a flight to Dublin for £9.99 and could not make it. Thats one of the great things about Ryanair being so cheap, if I book a flight home and I have something more urgent here I dont care about losing the flight if I paid pennies for it. This year I visited a friend in Slovakia again for peanuts.

Another great thing about cheap flights from Ryanair and a great tip for people who like to travel for cheap is, if you want to go somewhere thats not served by Ryanair for example I have been to Hungary many times, fly into somewhere nearby like Bratislava and take a cheap train ride to wherever you want to go.

If you look back at the tremendous amount of bile being directed at Ryanair its mainly from people who have never used the airline, because of principal, or some sort of self imposed boycott, or a story they read about employee's or whatever, its clear they are just looking for a cause to represent.

I'll look forward to continuing my travels around Europe for pennies thanks to Ryanair.

alanrowell

I think Ryanair are throwing out the baby with the bathwater - they need to step back and stop drinking the kool-aid and think of what they are trying to do. All this nickel & diming is leading Ryanair to lose trade.

richardw

Laughingbear wrote: »

those scales will need to be recalibrated.

It is the airport operator's responsibility to calibrate scales and local trading standards are interested if they don't.
Many airports have grocery stores land side, so a 1kg bag of sugar or flour is a cheap enough item to check the scales if need be.

2sides2everystory

watsonworld wrote: »

Here endeth the first lesson.

I have often tried to balance the arguments too watsonworld, but this is too much. It isn't the first lesson at all - there are tens of regular contributors on these threads who have not used Ryanair tens of times but hundreds of times over the last ten years. We are this time rattled more than any time before. We have literally seen an unruly kid who is in our street in our faces every day now sticking two fingers up at the policeman daily too, and his boss, and the policewomen, and the police have just been backing off because ... well because what?

I have blown hot and cold about Ryanair. Laughingbear said they need to pay attention to detail - I certainly hope they have never stopped paying attention to detail when it comes to actually flying those ever so thin aluminium cigar tubes around in the upper atmosphere where their precious cargoes (US!) could freeze and suffocate in less than a minute if something went horribly wrong.

It just doesn't compute that a company that treats its passengers with so much disdain would treat its staff any better or stop before taking shortcuts with other 'costly' elements of its operation. Can't they see the game is up ?

It's not the first lesson - this could indicate the beginning of when the powers that be need to consider dissolution of a troublesome monastery.

richardw

2sides2everystory wrote: »

there are tens of regular contributors on these threads who have...used Ryanair...hundreds of times over the last ten years. We are this time rattled more than any time before.

Well if they've upset some of their most highly frequent flyers then they might have gone too far.

A.Jones

watsonworld wrote: »

I really can't understand anyone who continually states that the fees are "hidden". When I book a flight, I initially enter random customer details - Mr X etc and I proceed ALL the way to the payment screen to establish the true fare.

Why do you put in fake details and proceed all the way to the payment screen to establish the true fare if the fees are not hidden? If they were upfront, you would not need to enter fake (or real) details to find them out. Having to proceed all the way to the final payment screen to find out the true fare means that they fees are hidden.

I can't understand why you can't understand why anyone thinks the fees are hidden, when you have to go through the whole booking with fake details just to find out the final price. This means the fees are hidden! If they were not, you wouldn't have to do it.