Advice needed- Screwed over by Ryanair!

[Deleted User]

adouglasmhor wrote: »

You missed out Erin o¬ dheas.

For non-Irish people attempting to translate that using Bing Translator there is no Irish into English option.
However, there is a Klingon to English one.

cherabelle

Just thought I would provide an update on this case, particularly to everyone who said it was my fault that I couldn't read a sign.

After contacting Ryan-air and the airport discussing this case with them, along with all the evidence provided I received a full apology and refund from Ryanair along with the other 8 passengers that I kept in contact with after the event.

They admitted that there were regular problems with the route and the information systems in place as well as the lack of safeguards to move passenger quickly around the 1 one way airport when they presented themselves with plenty of time.

As a bonus I have also received compensation in the form of a pair of return flights to the same value.

I don't know about the other passengers but it does show persistence pays off.

Carmen

Sorry if this has already been posted and I hope it is ok to post?
It made me laugh
Priceless!

Posted to Ryan Air today;
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing for the attention of your customer experience team. I am definitely a customer, and believe me, you didn’t fail providing us with an experience.
My wife and I had booked to fly from Stansted on the Thursday 17th April, evening flight to Bratislava. After 2 hours of fun, fun, fun, stuck on the M25 doing 20 mph, we arrived at Stansted check in with just one hour until the flight. Knowing the strict Ryan Air policy on ‘check in closes 40 mins before the flight’ as you are the Low Fare Taxi of The Skies, we went straight to the Ryan Air assistant and explained our plight. She said we were still within the time and all would be fine but we had to make the attendant at check in aware and he would assist from there.
We approached the attendant as instructed and explained. Unfortunately, in the main part, due to him being a child, and forgetting to bring his mother to work, he heard only half of the words before his brain fell apart like a wet cake. He led us to the line for closing gates, advised we should wait and all would be ok. We stood patiently in the line for 20 minutes. We got to the front of the line and the lady, who we shall from this point refer to a Vacant, explained that she had literally just that second closed the flight and we had missed it. We complained that we had done as instructed and she said it was the child’s fault because he should have advised her that we were trying to board a closing flight and that because he hadn’t told her it was therefore our fault we had missed the plane.
Confused by this process of blame apportioning, another check in clerk, who we shall refer to as Not That Bright, tried to blame us for not responding to the last call for the flight as we should have made ourselves known. I argued that the last call had not been made. Not That Bright then questioned Vacant on whether she had done a final call. Vacant did what she does best and looked, well,…… After establishing that the child had not informed Vacant we were here, and Vacant had forgotten to do a last call and that all of this was irreversible, and my fault, Not That Bright and Vacant conferred to agree this was not a problem they wished to deal with and told us to get in a very, very long line of very, very unhappy people at the quite wrongly titled ‘Customer Services Counter’ as it was in fact a Customer Shouting Desk. We complained and requested the attention of a manager.
Out came Colin, a man so angry all his hair had literally fallen out. He was so aggressive I can only assume he had accidentally inserted something sharp into somewhere private and been unable to remove it before he came to work. He was definitely a middle Gimp. I know this as Vacant and Not That Bright were clearly quite scared of him, and he can’t have been a Big Cheese as he was talking directly to customers and we all know from the papers that no-one in Big Cheese management at Ryan Air has ever seen, let alone spoken to an actual customer.
Middle Gimp had clearly listen hard at Ryan Air Middle Gimp school as he managed to take two perfectly calm and sane adults and in a matter of seconds reduce them to angry people considering violence.
‘Check in opens 3 hours before the flight’ he barked repeatedly as if it was the answer to every question in life. We tried to ask Middle Gimp direct questions about why it was necessary for us to miss the flight because the Child had forgotten to do his job, and Vacant had forgotten to do hers.
‘Why is this our fault, and why should we miss the flight because Ryan Air staff have admitted they made errors?.
‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’
‘Do you acknowledge we have just cause for complaint as we tried to do the right thing and the only reason we are not on the plane is because of communication failures with Ryan Air Staff?’
‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’
‘What colour are my trousers?’
‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’
‘Do you think economic sanctions on Russia will diffuse the escalating situation in Ukraine?’
‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’
‘Were Man Utd right to fire David Moyes?’
‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’
‘My tinkle is hurting, could you take a look if I promise not to tell anyone?’
‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’
Middle Gimp then conferred with Vacant and Not That Bright, and agreed that this was all our fault as we should have noticed that Child had made an error and we should have called the flight ourselves to assist Vacant in doing her job because she was clearly busy being, well,…... Middle Gimp then insisted we go to customer the Customer Shouting Desk, as he was definitely not going to do anything else. This was handy as the queue was very long so that by the time we would reach the front the plane would be half way to Bratislava and the problem would be solved.
We waited patiently in line as customer after customer stood at the desk to hear the same song;
‘No, no, I can’t do that, no, there are no Middle Gimps available, no, no, sorry, no, give me all your money’
We got to the Customer Shouting Desk and explained our plight to the lady there (who was actually very nice and clearly should not be working for Ryan Air as a result). She apologised but explained that Middle Gimp had finished being angry for the day and had returned to his padded cage and there were no other Middle Gimps around. We would have to book in to the flight for the next day and we would have to pay £110 each to change the ticket. When she tried to re-book the flight she said that the flight we had tried to get was actually delayed by 1 hour and still at the air port and that what we should do is run to the gate with all our luggage, she would call through and they would check our bags into the hold at the gate. We ran as fast as we could, which is not very fast because I am fat, to security to do as instructed. Security advised us that because our flight should have left, even though it hadn’t, the ticket machine would not open the barrier for us and we would need to return to the Customer Shouting Desk.
We waited patiently in the very long queue yet again for about 40 minutes to discover the nice lady had also gone home now so we had to explain the whole thing again to a new lady that looked like all the joy had been removed from her life at birth. She recited the Ryan Air customer services song with a sterling level of apathy and dreariness, I am surprised she could muster the will just to breather and stay alive.
‘No, no, I can’t do that, no, there are no Middle Gimps available, no, no, sorry, no, give me all your money’
She recited it with perfection, Middle Gimps across the world would have been in awe and the effectiveness of the techniques taught in Middle Gimp School. Seeing no other option but to hand over all our cash and come back the next morning we happily paid and got new flights.
As the new flight was at 6.25am in the morning we decided to get a hotel, we paid £79 for a room and got a taxi.
So, our customer experience was insightful and liberating. From the incompetent Child with a brain so full of girls and Vauxhall Corsa modifications he couldn’t actually listen or speak, through Vacant and Not That Bright who decided on reflection that anything they did wrong was our fault for not pointing it out to them, right through Middle Gimp who made a Tasmanian Devil look calm and Zen like, and the sad one, oh so sad, having every last drop of life sucked out of her by her chosen career at the Ryan Air Customer Shouting Desk. I very nearly jumped over the desk just to give her a cuddle and tell her everything would be alright if she could just muster the will to leave the Ryan Air Customer Shouting Desk and find a more fulfilling job, like starting the very first Israeli pork pie factory, or being a parking attendant in Tower Hamlets, or in fact just resigning herself to a slow and uncomfortable death would have been indistinguishable from the current position and would require much less effort.
The net result of this ‘experience’ was;
New Flights - £220
Hotel £79
Taxi x 2 £50
Worlds most expensive sandwich in the only hotel we could get £35
1 x significant breach of Tort Law (2008 as quoted by Lord Atkin) by Ryan Air, Google it, it’s a cracking read. I will leave you to decide the monetary value of this.
1 x very angry and upset wife, in particular with Middle Gimp for being so unbelievably rude.
1 x Missed wedding reception for our Slovakian family (sorry, forgot to mention this nugget earlier) who all turned up from all over the country to see us for an event we were forced to miss, because Child and Vacant are clueless at best and Middle Gimp has anger management issues.
So, thank you Ryan Air for a comfortable and enjoyable experience. I have watched a program called the news so I fully expect this to land on the desk of the customer services team underneath the empty bottles and sandwich wrappers that you also file there. You treated us badly, you cost us money and made us miss our wedding reception through a display of incompetence I have not seen since Greece was allowed to have money and a cheque book.
I sincerely doubt you will do anything about this, compensate us, apologise, or even respond according to the news, so I have sent this recorded and sign for delivery to absolutely confirm my opinion of Ryan Air and that it is not just ‘lost in the post’
Regards
You bunch of…………….
DJ Lockley
P.S. Maybe Middle Gimp in particular, but Child, Not That Bright, and Vacant should purchase one of your reasonable priced tickets and go to Slovakia (assuming they were actually allowed on the plane. The Ryan Air employees there are smart, clever, bilingual, helpful, and polite and they should in my opinion experience an example of how they should do their job. The Slovak staff could explain it to them, but they wouldn’t be able to understand it for them, so it may be a waste of time after all.

vicky_orlando

Just wondering if anything came of your experience with Ryan Air?

We arrived at Stansted on the 5th August 3 hours early for our flight to Palermo at 5pm. As we were so early we indulged in a toilet visit and a costa, before we joined the mammoth checking in queue. As experienced before they took so long to check us all in. I believe this is due to Rayn air just check everyone in under the sun, rather than by destination - therefore you may have people checking in who's flights are after yours!

Following other queues, check on the pram, liquids etc and a long walk to the gate, which we discovered is a train platform. Then lifts to our gate as we had a 3 year old in a buggy so no quick escalators for us. We eventually got to our gate and told it was closed - no getting on the plane for us.

We have two children looking at our plane right in front of us - it hadn't left. To our amazement they spent 20 minutes dragging our cases from the plane, rather than letting us on.

I have learnt that Ryan Air DO NOT play fair as other airlines do. I have been on other holidays and have seen late comers rushing onto the plane before take off. We were told the gate had been closed for half an hour.

We were then escorted back through the airport and the bus that picked us up drove right passed our plane. We could have understood if the flight had gone - but it didn't even leave on time.

Of course ryan Air have a 'tough s_____t' approach' but I would just like someone's take on this. So many people have told me to take this further but I don't hold out much hope.

I did ring them to say we didn't need our return flight and we had missed it as they took so long to check us in we had missed getting to the gate on time. I was advised to 'just do not turn up at the airport madam.'

6 years previously we flew home from Palermo - we had paid for seating and priority boarding. Again 3 hours early and they took over 2 and a half hours to check bags in, leaving us running to our gate. A horrible little man then shouted at us for being late. Thankfully my husband could fluently give him what for back - but their attitude is disgusting We said then we would never use them but found we had to when returning this year.

We drove to Sicily - with a 3 year old and 7 year old - so that they would not miss out on our holiday and seeing family over there. As we drove through Switzerland we took great pleasure at sticking our fingers up to the planes over head! It was an adventure but we could have done without the shock and losing a £1000!

Voyager2002

vicky_orlando wrote: »

Just wondering if anything came of your experience with Ryan Air?

We arrived at Stansted on the 5th August 3 hours early for our flight to Palermo at 5pm. As we were so early we indulged in a toilet visit and a costa, before we joined the mammoth checking in queue. As experienced before they took so long to check us all in. I believe this is due to Rayn air just check everyone in under the sun, rather than by destination - therefore you may have people checking in who's flights are after yours!

snip

Sorry to hear of your dreadful experience.

One detail that puzzles me: you say that you and many other people were queuing for check-in, but virtually all Ryanair passengers will check in over the internet and so there cannot be any queue at the airport. Do you mean that there was a long queue to hand over your checked baggage, or to pass through security? A delay at security would be the fault of the airport rather than the airline.

And before you make a complaint you should work out how long before the flight you joined the first queue: a toilet break and visit to a coffee shop could have taken as much as 90 minutes, which would have been cutting things rather fine.

Caz3121

Stansted security queues do not have the best reputation and travelling during peak holiday time I think I would have allowed more time and waited to get coffee until safely through security and close to the gate

jpsartre

vicky_orlando wrote: »

As we were so early we indulged in a toilet visit and a costa, before we joined the mammoth checking in queue.

Well that was foolish, they have toilets and coffee shops after security. Unfortunately it's your responsibility to be at the gate on time.

holidaysforme

Your responsibility to be at the gate on time.! You had loads of time.
I always have to laugh at threads like these. They always have one thing in common,- blaming Ryain Air for something that is blatantly their own fault.

fairy_lights

vicky_orlando wrote: »

As experienced before they took so long to check us all in. I believe this is due to Rayn air just check everyone in under the sun, rather than by destination - therefore you may have people checking in who's flights are after yours!

Are you talking about checking suitcases in, or going through security? If it's the latter, then it's not Ryanair's fault there was a queue. As for them not letting you board the plane even though you could see it hadn't taken off yet - it's not like jumping on a bus, there are also sorts of security and safety procedures they have to carry out before taking off.
Next time go through security and find out what time your gate closes before you settle down for a coffee.

phatbear

fairy_lights wrote: »

Next time go through security and find out what time your gate closes before you settle down for a coffee.

no need for that as its quite clearly printed on the boarding pass what time the gate closes.

im a tad suspicious of someone who has signed up just for a moan.