Advice about Ryanair please???

Atha_Cliath

I recently booked two tickets for my mother and my father to fly from Dublin to Gatwick. My dad could not make the flight and my brother came in his place. I rang Ryanair to change my fathers name on my ticket to my brothers name and they charged me £70 for the privilage!!!!!!!

Now we all know that Ryanair and Michael O leary will screw you as much as they can but this I believe to be going beyond the limit. £70 for changing one name! Which brings me to my question....

In much the same way that we have all reclaimed our bank charges for excessive cost for the actions required, could this also apply to Ryanair and should I follow up the bank reclaim procedure and apply it to Ryanair by threatening to bring them to court if they cannot justify the charge?

richardw

http://www.ryanaircampaign.org/

alanrowell

How much would it have cost to buy a new ticket?

And could your father have made a flight at a later date so you would have *only* paid the £17 flight change fee (plus difference in ticket price)

If the UK / EU makes name change fees illegal all that will happen is that O'Leary will say you can't make changes and you have to buy a new ticket

Atha_Cliath

No he is ill and could not make the flight at all. On reflection it would have been cheaper to forego my fathers booking and make a new seperate booking for my brother.

I know I always say this but I will never ever ever put my bum on one of their seats again. They are mafia and one day their lack of interest in serving their customers and ripping them off at every available opportunity will come back to haunt them!

The latest rumours were that Michael O leary was going to put a 50p usage charge for the toilet on board!

richardw

There will always be people interested in flights for £/€0.01, excl taxes, fees and charges.

mystic_trev

I like Ryanair and have flown with them ever since they started over 20 years ago, when they ran 2 BAC 1-11's on the Luton to Dublin run! The flights are now considerably cheaper than they were then!How many things are cheaper now than they were 20 years ago?

I have to smile when people slag off the Budget Airlines, WYSIWYG - Which is why I like them. Traveling back from Seville last week I had to smile, about one in three people had to pay for excess baggage and were moaning and whinging! Don't people read the T&C's?

Keep up the good work Mr O'Leary yer doing a grand job!

budgetflyer

Yes, I wonder why they have 50 million passengers ?Answer- Its cheap Service is stripped to the bone. A to B no frills, exactly what it says on the tin.
If you want flexibility,pre asigned seats,customer service look elsewhere and pay accordingly.Aer Lingus also fly that route.
I use ryanair purely on the understanding that my cheap fare gets me where I want to go (per their absolutely inflexible t&cs)

grumpypug

I wonder if anyone else has come across this Ryanair money-spinning scam? Checking in recently for a flight from Eindhoven to Barcelona (actually ... Gerona) I had to pay for a name change because the name on my passport was different from the one on my reservation. Booking on-line I put my forename as Rob; on my passport it says Robert. That cost me 100 euros. Ryanair's emailed condescending reply to my letter of complaint (you have to write to Dublin Airport) said they were sorry I hadn't understood their terms and conditions. Whichever way you look at it Mr. O'Leary is taking the Micky ... or Michael.

Regards,
Rob(ert) Atkey

Donnie

I'm sure that you can appreciate that there would be a roaring trade on ebay for Ryanair's cheaper flights if there was not a punitive cost for name changes.

Imagine, some greedy person buys up ALL of the 1p (incl of Taxes & Charges) flights during a sale period and then puts them up for sale on his ebay shop.

The 70 pounds(100 Euro) charge effectively stops this trade.

You can be reasonably sure that this kind of thing would occur were it not for the punitive name change charge.

dzug

Atha_Cliath wrote: »

In much the same way that we have all reclaimed our bank charges for excessive cost for the actions required, could this also apply to Ryanair and should I follow up the bank reclaim procedure and apply it to Ryanair by threatening to bring them to court if they cannot justify the charge?

I may be wrong on this, but I believe Ryanair have to be taken to court in Dublin and that the laws on unfair practices may be different there. There are also rumours (and again they may be false) that Irish judges tend to side with their own airline.

By all means try - but don't have too high hopes.

Jennifer_Jane

I flew recently for the first time with Ryanair and having read the Ts &Cs everything was fine. You do have to watch the extras (paying for check-in, priority boarding etc), but everything was good, and I would certainly fly with them again. I always make sure that ticket names are those that are on the passport, I thought all airlines were strict about this.