Are Ryanair up to no good?!!

kimberleyallen

Last night I booked 2 flights, return Manchester / Malaga. The total price was £100.94, the return flight was £47.99 so the outward flight must have been £52.95. I went through the payment process and at the final stage I was returned an error saying my card couldn't be processed. I went back a couple of stages and tried again but the area to re-enter my card details was greyed out. I tried refreshing the page, going back a few more stages, but still the area to enter my card details was greyed out. I tried starting again from scratch but still had the same problem. I thought maybe my browser was the problem so opened Firefox and started again. However the price had increased in those few minutes to £130.94. The outward flight had increased by £30 to £82.95 in just a few minutes. As it said there were only a few seats left at that price I went ahead and booked. Whilst I understand that someone may have purchased available seats at the lower price in those few minutes whilst I had started the process again, surely with my original transaction I should have been able to purchase the flights at the price I had originally committed to. I didn't take a long time to go through the payment process, I book flights all the time and know what I'm doing!

This morning I looked at the flights again and was surprised to see that the total cost had now reduced to £121.94, the outward flight had been reduced, even though when I had booked it said that there were only a few seats left at that price. 10 minutes later I checked again and it was back to £130.94, the price I have paid.

When they say there are only a few seats left at a price surely when they're gone, they're gone. How can the price go down?

I found it very strange that my original transaction wouldn't go through, then this morning when the price had gone down, and then went back up when I looked again, makes me wonder whether there's something going on here! It's almost as if the system said ok, we know you want that flight, so we'll return an error on the card so that you have to start again and by then we'll have put the price up. Equally if you look at a flight and leave the page, when you go back it has remembered your request and the price has gone up again! What is going on?!!

mcfisco

makes me wonder whether there's something going on here!

There is, the system saw all the failed requests as demand and adjusted the price accordingly
Try Googling "Yield Management"

antenna

And they say "the more times you look the higher the price" cannot be prooved.

kimberleyallen

mcfisco wrote: »

There is, the system saw all the failed requests as demand and adjusted the price accordingly
Try Googling "Yield Management"

Thanks for that, I understand now. Still, there was nothing wrong with my card, it worked later, so why did it return an error the first time... just to drive the price up? Would be interested to know how to get round the system as it seems when you're searching for flights you are inadvertently pushing the price up. Would you be better to use Sky Scanner or does that have the same effect?

jpsartre

kimberleyallen wrote: »

Would be interested to know how to get round the system as it seems when you're searching for flights you are inadvertently pushing the price up.

Don't believe that conspiracy nonsense. Try to do some random searches multiple times and you'll almost certainly find prices stay the same. In your case there was either a glitch on the website or (more likely) the cheaper fares simply sold out. Ryanair adjust their prices constantly, both up and down.

_Andy_

Sorry to disappoint you but there is no conspiracy here.

budgetflyer

But the cheaper fare returned the next day after kimberleyallen paid the higher fare.

It is possible that Ryanair could experiment with bait and switch tactics on say a random 5 or 10% of bookings to analyse the data. It may even be worth their while to lose a few bookings. Only their bean counters will know.

You would have thought that implementing captcha software would have reduced bookings, but the opposite happened. The ratio of search to bookings went up.
This experiment was initially tried out on the UK and Ireland. Its only now being rolled out across the rest of their network.

jpsartre

budgetflyer wrote: »

But the cheaper fare returned the next day after kimberleyallen paid the higher fare.

Nothing unusual about that. As noted, Ryanair adjusts prices constantly, both up and down.

pompeyrich

budgetflyer wrote: »

But the cheaper fare returned the next day after kimberleyallen paid the higher fare./QUOTE]

Although the original transaction ultimately failed, the seats that were trying to be bought were possibly put on hold until the transaction went through, or for a reasonable time to allow someone to enter all the required details, 15 mins maybe longer.

They would then not show on any, soonish, subsequent search by the op or anyone else. If they were the last 2 seats at the cheaper price then if the op had been succesful the new higher fare would apply but as the transaction failed the seats on hold were eventually released and were then on show again later at their original, lower, price.

This is an alternative theory to the conspiracy type and may be niave, who knows?

tamiami

The flights would have been taken out of the system temporarily as their booking system would think they were in the payment process. After the allowed time for booking, if they are not booked, then they will go back into the system and therefore revert back to the original price. You just need to keep checking until they come back down.

You may have entered a number wrong on your card, or some other small mistake and that is why it didn't book.

budgetflyer

With ryanair, anything is possible.
What other business would advertise competitors on the booking page.
RYANAIR DO!

Search for flights and after you have battled thru the captcha or successfully answered the online quiz you are presented with their prices and to the right, a selection of google ads advertising their competitors. Ie monarch, easyjet, travelzoo and opodo on my last search
It would be interesting to know how much their adsense earnings are.