MSE News: Ryanair forces ALL customers to pay booking charge

jpsartre

tobiascurious wrote: »

Not really. Ryanair are charging £6 per person per one-way flight, whereas Easyjet charge £9 per booking.

But those are now included in the advertised price, rather than added at the last stage of the booking.

You are right of course that the total price is still dependent on things like checked luggage or seat selection so we don't have total transparency.

Dave_save

tobiascurious wrote: »

Anyone could avoid the £6 fee but it was a bit of a faff to get the Electron / Cash Passport so many occasional travellers just paid it.

I was making the following point which you seem to have missed. You are advising that 'anyone' could save by use of cash passport or non charging cards. You then went on to say that the 'hidden fee' campaigners have now made the price higher for everyone.

By virtue of the fact that Ryanair do not want to make a loss, the 'low' cost flights (those excluding booking fees) are currently being subsidised by those paying the fees. On top of this Ryanair are hiding the fees, or at best making it difficult to avoid them.

The prices should go up for some and down for others. In other words, one passenger won't be subsidising another, just so that O'Leary can advertise low prices on his website headlines.

Now they've been rumbled, it means that EVERYONE will now be able to see the cost of the flight up front. What on earth is wrong with that?

signol

Mr_Wang wrote: »

This afternoon I am heading to Poland and the ticket cost (including admin fee) £21

You've been had... I booked a return trip for a grand total of £11.52 including all fees to Warsaw. Cost breakdown:
£4 outbound flight
£6 outbound credit card fee
PLN8 (£1.52) return fare
PLN0 return credit card fee (used Caxton prepay Mastercard).

Unfortunately I've also had to pay £11.99 for 1 day's parking in the Stansted mid-stay car park...

signol

tobiascurious

Dave_save wrote: »

Now they've been rumbled, it means that EVERYONE will now be able to see the cost of the flight up front. What on earth is wrong with that?

The problem is that everyone is now going to have to pay the fee, which actually is £48 for a return flight for a family of four.

tobiascurious

Dave_save wrote: »

.
By virtue of the fact that Ryanair do not want to make a loss, the 'low' cost flights (those excluding booking fees) are currently being subsidised by those paying the fees. On top of this Ryanair are hiding the fees, or at best making it difficult to avoid them.

This subsidisation is inherent in the wonderful yield management strategies that have led to airlines and train companies offering shockingly low prices. Surely no-one wants to go back to the days of BA offering all European flights at £200+.

Dave_save

tobiascurious wrote: »

The problem is that everyone is now going to have to pay the fee, which actually is £48 for a return flight for a family of four.

How do you know that's the way these prices will go? Initially, Ryanair will want to make it look as if it's the UK Government and UK legislation that is hurting consumers. So they'll add on the fee to the basic price and blame the legislation. Eventually, they will be forced to compete on an equal basis and advertise their prices to include it. I'm sure O'Leary will find other ways around it, but let's ignore that for now.

All Ryanair will want to get from this is no loss of revenue.

I have no idea how many passengers on O'Leary's planes avoided the booking fee. But I guess his business model made an assumption that a large percentage would pay the fee through apathy etc, and a small percentage would make the effort. His business model also relied on the fact he could headline the £12 flight, and small print the booking fee.

Let me give you an example using the £12 and £6 flight/'fee' breakdown.

If on a plane there are 100 passengers, 20 have paid using a cash passport and 80 without, the total revenue for Ryanair would be £1680.

To achieve the same revenue for 100 passengers who have to pay an equal ‘booking fee’ included within the up front ticket price, Ryanair would charge £16.80 per seat. Twenty passengers are worse off, 80 are better off. If, as you say, 'everyone' is going to pay more, then Ryanair are pocketing the extra £120.

The losers in the above example are 20 out of 100 passengers.

Tony5101

Nobody would mind paying these fees if they were proportionate to the fees charged by the card handling companies. (which is what these fees were allegedly introduced to cover)
It is pure marketing garbage to have a low fare then add a mandatory fee on top - when it's all going into the same pot.
Ryanair's excuse/explanation of the additional charges to everyone is just a very sad attempt at pointing the finger at someone else.

callum9999

WickedWolfie wrote: »

No, the way to improve things is for everyone to follow the clearly set out legal requirements rather than let one particular company, which is proud of its "maverick" reputation (never forget Mr O'Sleazy was publicly called a liar by an Irish judge!), as a bare minimum bend and in extremis drive a coach and horses through the rules.

If I had my way O'Sleazy would be prosecuted every time he tried to bend the rules until he either cleans up his act or ships out!

They ARE following the legal requirements... What rules exactly is he bending? It sounds like you are just throwing a hissy fit because you are either too lazy or too inept to understand a set of rules I'm confident the average 8 year old could follow...

He has created the (I believe) largest airline in the EU by international passenger numbers from scratch over the course of a few years. It is CLEARLY working, so I see no need at all for it to change. In fact, I'd say it's doing a service to people as because of the "maverik" stuff, everyone should be making the effort to follow the rules instead of thinking it's just like BA etc. And in fact, the vast majority do.

The_Groat_Counter wrote: »

Good. Advertised prices should be available to everyone paying with a standard debit card.

The very loose justification that processing card payments costs £6 / €6 per passenger, per flight is just totally absurd.

Markets work best when pricing is transparent. Ryanair will still be lower cost much of the time, so they have nothing to worry about in being honest with their pricing.

I don't believe it has EVER been claimed that they pay £6 per passenger per flight.

As has been mentioned time and time and time and time and time again, their pricing is perfectly honest. You can get a list of every single fee they charge by clicking a link right at the top of their homepage. The quotation system then tells you every single charge they levy and advises you how to avoid them. If you find that difficult to understand then you either deserve to be "fleeced", or should look into getting some sort of nanny to look after you.

callum9999

Tony5101 wrote: »

Nobody would mind paying these fees if they were proportionate to the fees charged by the card handling companies. (which is what these fees were allegedly introduced to cover)
It is pure marketing garbage to have a low fare then add a mandatory fee on top - when it's all going into the same pot.
Ryanair's excuse/explanation of the additional charges to everyone is just a very sad attempt at pointing the finger at someone else.

What exactly is this excuse you are blasting? The only "excuse" I've heard off them is basically "because we can".

callum9999

MarkBargain wrote: »

And why does it state that? Because Ryanair were made to put it there by the OFT and pressure to comply with the law.

On the next screen the prices are shown without the admin fee and it is added as a note at the bottom.

If this is all so clear, why don't Ryanair just include it in the flight prices all the time then rather than have an 'admin fee' at all? Customers do not care about an airline's administration, just a ticket price they have to pay.

Just give it a rest already... Or at least stick with your "we need to protect morons" stance instead of fabricating outrage at something non-existent. It's irrelevant WHY it's there, it IS there - end of. All people and companies do certain stuff only because they are "pressured to do so by law", I hardly see how that could possibly be a valid criticism. And it's not included in the individual flights on the next screen yet because it is not a non-optional fee until December 1st.

Because for the millionth time, people with an ounce of brain cells can use the previous system to get a cheaper flight. Because of this "help our idiots" campaign, my flights with Ryanair will shortly cost £6 extra. Thanks...