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

A.Jones

alanrowell wrote: »

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.

Is it? They make £300M+ a year profit, and reckon that the profit will be similar next year. They may lose some customers, but they don't care. Pleasing 100% of your customers is not always cost effective, and their business model is clearly that they can make more money by pleasing most of their customers with cheaper flights but not spending money on retaining all of them.

Personally, I don't like flying on Ryanair, but don't find them much worse than easyjet or jet2 or bmibaby. If they fly the route I want and are cheaper, then I will use them. OK I may find it uncomfortable and don't like the scrum to get on, but I will put up with it knowing I have extra cash to spend on something I want to do. I can put up with two hours of Ryanair service to save £50 or more.

Ryanair are a bit like eBay. They may lose some of their customers due to the way they work and the way they change things. But they don't care, since many others will stick with them, or start to use them because they are cheap.

2sides2everystory

A.Jones wrote: »

Ryanair are a bit like eBay.

They might like to think so too ... but I would refer you to my comment earlier about thin aluminium cigar tubes hurtling around in the upper atmosphere. They are also like a bit like NASA when they are up there, and they'd like to think so too. But which is it?

SaveTheEuro

Ryanair are getting their defence ready for when they face the Office of Fair Trading:

Ryanair, the world’s favourite airline, today (15th Sept) revealed the ‘secrets’ of how to avoid all Ryanair’s optional fees by publishing a FREE online guide entitled, ‘How Do I Avoid Paying Optional Fees?’.

richardw

Here's the link http://www.ryanair.com/en/notices/gops/110914-AVOID_FEES-EN-GB

wozearly

mikeeboy wrote: »

Does it really take 3 hours to use sky scanner? More like 3 minutes I'd say.

Skyscanner is a good pseudo-aggregator site for flights, but you still have to go through and look at the final, actual price after additional charges for anyone that comes up through it (unless they've improved this since I last used it).

What it does do is narrow the playing field, as prices only tend to go up when you look in further, not down.

In any case the 3 hour point was someone else's, not mine. My point was that there's nothing inherantly wrong in saying "Forget it, I'd rather not spend (x) time looking for the best deal if I don't think the savings are worth the extra time and hassle".

Most of us do this all the time - we don't visit every supermarket within reasonable travelling distance to get the best price on every item of our weekly shop. We don't constantly review the market for bank accounts, savings accounts, insurance, etc. to check if a new and better deal has just arrived. We tend to do these things regularly, on the basis that we're willing to spend (x) time every so often to seek savings, but not necessarily every month, or every week, or every day.

Doshwaster

5pillarsofhealth wrote: »

It is not just the travel industry. Last time I tried to book some theatre tickets they also incurred a charge for each ticket!! I think it should be a flat fee, if anything.

That has been going on a long time for tickets for the theatre, concerts or sporting events. A single fee is understandable to cover postage etc but a per ticket price is just a money making exercise. Imagine if Tesco charged you a checkout price per item!

Until about 3-4 years ago, I was a big fan of Ryanair. They were cheap and nasty but who cared if you could fly to places for 99p? Recently, however they have just gone too far with their petty charging and stop onboard marketing. Now I only fly with them if there isn't a reasonable alternative and much prefer Easyjet or the "legacy" airlines.

mikeeboy

I just can't believe some of the nonsense that's posted in this thread. Anyone can post horror stories from any of the airlines when things go wrong. There's been people talking of planes crashing and them cutting corners on safety???? Get a grip people

As for "all the hidden extras". You mean the optional bag check in? The £6 payment charge is about the only thing you need to add on and everybody knows about it. SkyScanner includes web checkin, EU levy, taxes and charges so what's everyone complaining about?

I've just had an email reminder to check in online for my flight next week.

What a great service

2010

Kinda the end of this thread now.

Some like RA, some don`t. :T :mad:

If you want to avoid credit card charges get the Ryanair cash passport card. :T

If you want to pay £6 each way for other card charges

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don`t get it. :mad:

huppelkutje

I'm not surprised about this really, I figured it would only be a matter of time as more people got the prepaid mastercard. They'll probably change again later when everyone has got the Ryanair prepaid! I use Ryanair when they're cheapest and you get what you pay for. I'd rather take out the new Ryanair card and still be able to take flights for a tenner each way which Easyjet and the like just can't compete with

2sides2everystory

mikeeboy wrote:

There's been people talking of planes crashing and them cutting corners on safety???? Get a grip people

Yes you'd better grip tightly if you find yourself without a clue about what's happening one day. Let's trust you don't have to worry, shall we, like we do when we go on fairground roller-coasters perhaps - we trust to statistics and have fun, don't we? And long has it been so and long may it be so. But aviation is a bit different.

I don't see much about crashes in this thread, even though it is true there have been a few upsets. Maybe you are simply poo-pooing my cautions about how we ensure that a company like this who sticks its fingers up to one group of policemen might at least continue to be regulated such that they would not dream of doing the same to the safety policemen.

We already saw O'Leary sending one of his aircraft into forecast possible ash danger areas to make his personal point that he thought it was safe. Do you really think his aircraft have always evaded ash when it's been out there somewhere as forecast? Do you really think he knows best about everything?