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

Doc_N

Toe-Jam wrote: »

I'm sorry but they are a commercial business, and they are never going to be your best mate. They don't have to be "nice" they just have to make money for shareholders, and they are doing a good job at that.

That's fine - for the short to medium term.

In the longer term it may backfire on them, though. Alienating a large chunk of your potential market (which is what they do) is a pretty risky strategy. It doesn't take that much for a company to shift from being a stockmarket darling to a failing company - M&S a few years back is an example of that.

antenna

Doc_N wrote: »

That's fine - for the short to medium term.

In the longer term it may backfire on them, though. Alienating a large chunk of your potential market (which is what they do) is a pretty risky strategy. It doesn't take that much for a company to shift from being a stockmarket darling to a failing company - M&S a few years back is an example of that.

The Ryanair planes are usualy 90% full so this "large chunk of their potential market" would find that there are no seats available for them to buy.

Roger1

Roger1 wrote: »

Well spotted!

I already have two of the cards that link mentions, Kalixa and FairFX (€). I suspect that as I obtained them using my UK address, the Ryanair monster would assess UK surcharges.

I made a dummy booking at ryanair.de, the German website.

It let me check flights ex-STN and prepaid Mastercard was a fee-free option, as was the Ryanair prepaid card.

I didn't complete the booking so do not know if there would be a surprise when confirming the booking. I'll try this when I need a Ryanair flight.

Doc_N

antenna wrote: »

The Ryanair planes are usualy 90% full so this "large chunk of their potential market" would find that there are no seats available for them to buy.

Possibly - but think how much more they'd make if they were able to fill that last 10% with sales to people like me who won't use them except as an absolute last resort.

SaveTheEuro

Roger1 wrote: »

I made a dummy booking at ryanair.de, the German website.

It let me check flights ex-STN and prepaid Mastercard was a fee-free option, as was the Ryanair prepaid card.

I didn't complete the booking so do not know if there would be a surprise when confirming the booking. I'll try this when I need a Ryanair flight.

It does seem this simple. Click on any of the options in the top right hand corner of the Ryanair homepage, except UK English, and it's possible to use any mastercard pre-pay card without fee.

Troubleman

Just booked a flight from Italy to UK in Dec using my Fairfx prepaid Mastercard that is registered to a UK address. I did not pay any fees. N

Toe-Jam

Roger1 wrote: »

I made a dummy booking at ryanair.de, the German website.

It let me check flights ex-STN and prepaid Mastercard was a fee-free option, as was the Ryanair prepaid card.

I didn't complete the booking so do not know if there would be a surprise when confirming the booking. I'll try this when I need a Ryanair flight.

I made a real booking on the UK ryanair website this morning, and it didn't charge for the prepaid mastercard option, so I think it hasn't been updated yet.

2010

Roger1 wrote: »

I made a dummy booking at ryanair.de, the German website.

It let me check flights ex-STN and prepaid Mastercard was a fee-free option, as was the Ryanair prepaid card.

I would imagine the same may be true with the Ireland website.

2sides2everystory

Looks like Ryanair have now caught up a little bit today with their rollout of the new regime.

When you book now via any of the Ryanair subsites, then you will find in all the languages that they have moved the Billing Address question from last place to first place as a dropdown box under the Cardholder Details section:

"Please Select Your Billing Address Country".

If you choose UK then you will find an extra £6 Admin Fee per flight sector suddenly appears over on the right of the screen. If you select Ireland it just as suddenly disappears again. Indeed if you select any country other than UK the fee disappears.

Whilst I haven't studied the relevant laws carefully and can't point to which of them Ryanair may be testing, this implementation, whilst I forewarned that it was the only way they could follow through with their new charge strikes me as sailing extremely close to the wind i.r.o. EU Equality Law and Consumer Law. Ryanair are clearly giving OFT and CAA the finger with this, let alone two fingers to the rest of us who now have to work around it.

2010

There`s still a glitch in their system, I`ve just done a dummy run and when I enter the UK as my billing address and the Fairfx prepaid card, nothing is added.
When I enter UK and put in their own Ryanair card, it adds £6 each way!!!!!!!!!!!