Ryanair not budging on Italian flights despite both 16m person quarantine and an FCO warning

Lairy40

Our insurance has said that we have to go via Ryanair they will not cover us. I was going to make the change to our booking instead until i found out how much Rynair wanted to charge...... 

I was happy to re-arrange my flights to later on in year until I saw the price that Ryanair wanted to charge…….

First I went onto the Ryanair website to see what flights they had available I saw that they had the flight i was happy to change to for September £57.84 per person considerably cheaper than what I had paid for my original flight for March. However I understand that this was part of their terms. So imagine my surprise when I logged into my Ryanair account to make the change to my booking and Ryanair wanted to charge me £216.84 per person on top of that there is an admin fee of £35 per person.

I have tried to contact Ryanair to discuss, unfortunately i have been in a queue on their online chat since 12:21 - and the time is now 13:53 - forget phoning in that is even worse.

I have reported them to the CMA as i believe they Exploiting the current Coronavirus outbreak situation. 

Update as of 15:49 on 10/03/2020

I Finally got through to Raynair via chat after a 1.5 hour wait, and they are going to refunded both my outbound and inbound flights the reason, is that all their international flight to and from Italy from 24:00hrs Fri 13 Mar until 24:00hrs Wed 8 Apr are cancelled. If you have the return flight inside the time period, you will be able to get a refund, just tell them that your outbound and return flight are on two separate bookings.

leylandsunaddict

Rheumatoid said:

They have budged now but still seem to be flying until the weekend. Not sure how I stand with a flight out tomorrow and a return next Wednesday but will wait and see. Expecting to be offered a refund as they can not honour return trip - unless they expect me to come back on Friday!

Ryanair don't sell return tickets, you just buy 2 x one way tickets, but they "should" refund for the outbound as well. 

Heliflyguy

Could be several reasons why the new fare is higher. Might be the class you are currently booked in isn't available and a higher class must be booked, you can very rarely downgrade. It maybe cheaper to lose the money paid and make a new booking. But it's Ryanair so who knows... 

lisyloo

Heliflyguy said:

Could be several reasons why the new fare is higher. Might be the class you are currently booked in isn't available and a higher class must be booked, you can very rarely downgrade. It maybe cheaper to lose the money paid and make a new booking. But it's Ryanair so who knows... 

I don't think ryanair offer business or first. It's very much no frills only. They might like other businesses have tranches of tickets at different prices.

bagand96

Lairy40 said:

I was happy to re-arrange my flights to later on in year until I saw the price that Ryanair wanted to charge…….

First I went onto the Ryanair website to see what flights they had available I saw that they had the flight i was happy to change to for September £57.84 per person considerably cheaper than what I had paid for my original flight for March. However I understand that this was part of their terms. So imagine my surprise when I logged into my Ryanair account to make the change to my booking and Ryanair wanted to charge me £216.84 per person on top of that there is an admin fee of £35 per person.

I have tried to contact Ryanair to discuss, unfortunately i have been in a queue on their online chat since 12:21 - and the time is now 13:53 - forget phoning in that is even worse.

I have reported them to the CMA as i believe they Exploiting the current Coronavirus outbreak situation. 

The Ryanair website would have been offering a flight change under the default T&C's .  It's an automated process and wouldn't have been taking into account Coronavirus.  You would need to get in touch with an actual person at Ryanair who can override the booking system to issue a refund or change of itinerary penalty free.

Lairy40 said:

Update as of 15:49 on 10/03/2020

I Finally got through to Raynair via chat after a 1.5 hour wait, and they are going to refunded both my outbound and inbound flights the reason, is that all their international flight to and from Italy from 24:00hrs Fri 13 Mar until 24:00hrs Wed 8 Apr are cancelled. If you have the return flight inside the time period, you will be able to get a refund, just tell them that your outbound and return flight are on two separate bookings.

So Ryanair have come through and resolved the situation.  

People need to be patient here and give the airlines a bit of credit.  It's a dynamic situation, it's changing almost hourly, and the airlines are having to play catch up as official advice from Governments changes.

Westin

bagand96 said:

Lairy40 said:

I was happy to re-arrange my flights to later on in year until I saw the price that Ryanair wanted to charge…….

First I went onto the Ryanair website to see what flights they had available I saw that they had the flight i was happy to change to for September £57.84 per person considerably cheaper than what I had paid for my original flight for March. However I understand that this was part of their terms. So imagine my surprise when I logged into my Ryanair account to make the change to my booking and Ryanair wanted to charge me £216.84 per person on top of that there is an admin fee of £35 per person.

I have tried to contact Ryanair to discuss, unfortunately i have been in a queue on their online chat since 12:21 - and the time is now 13:53 - forget phoning in that is even worse.

I have reported them to the CMA as i believe they Exploiting the current Coronavirus outbreak situation. 

The Ryanair website would have been offering a flight change under the default T&C's .  It's an automated process and wouldn't have been taking into account Coronavirus.  You would need to get in touch with an actual person at Ryanair who can override the booking system to issue a refund or change of itinerary penalty free.

Lairy40 said:

Update as of 15:49 on 10/03/2020

I Finally got through to Raynair via chat after a 1.5 hour wait, and they are going to refunded both my outbound and inbound flights the reason, is that all their international flight to and from Italy from 24:00hrs Fri 13 Mar until 24:00hrs Wed 8 Apr are cancelled. If you have the return flight inside the time period, you will be able to get a refund, just tell them that your outbound and return flight are on two separate bookings.

So Ryanair have come through and resolved the situation.  

People need to be patient here and give the airlines a bit of credit.  It's a dynamic situation, it's changing almost hourly, and the airlines are having to play catch up as official advice from Governments changes.

Amen to this.

Lairy40

Thank you for your feedback  bagand96 Westin. My first post was to really highlight in my opinion the extortionate prices to change flights, then later on my update was to let people know that if their flights home were cancelled they can can get refund on the flight out, I felt my post was wordy enough without giving warts and all. I see now that whilst most people would have seen/ understood that, other would not have. I have seen the error of my ways.  I do thank you for your interest, and as you appear to be interested enough to give an opinion, let me try to fill in some gaps. 

A week ago, I had already looked up the Ryanair polices in short it mentioned if the Foreign office advises only essential travel, if non-essential then they refund. My friend who I was travelling with also contacted them to clarify

On Monday 9th March I looked up travel advice on Foreign Office website, in short it mentioned only essential travel to Italy don’t go if non-essential. Tried to get a refund from Ryanair - no refund, they would only allow me to change my flights, which in my opinion wasn’t in line with their policy, but as I knew we wanted to go to Rome at some point and because I didn’t want a fuss, I was happy to change to much later in the year. Until I saw how much they wanted to charge, that was a problem. It was difficult to get in touch with an actual person that day and as I wasn't getting anywhere, I decide to try to sort the next day.

In regards to contacting CMA; I believe that I can prove that prior to yesterday lunchtime, they were trying exploit the situation of the outbreak, as they were in my opinion charging a lot more than normal to change flights, having made changes to fight in the past with Ryanair (I could explain my reasons but it’s quite a lengthy), suffice to say I'm happy I can give my reasons/ evidence to CMA, it’s for them to decide if there is a case to answer or not.  If other people feel that they have been unfairly charged or feel they had no choice but to change flights as a refund wasn’t forthcoming, they too can contact CMA (their choice).

Yesterday mid morning still no option to refund my flights, they could only change flights, for in my opinion extortionate amount of money. Then lunch time yesterday the situation changed and Ryanair started to cancel some flights, they cancelled my flight home which was next week, but not my flight out which was scheduled for tomorrow (so not a lot of time to sort), hence why I decide to try to contact them again. Eventually via Chat I managed to get through, and eventually they did agree to cancel my flight out, but I had to push for it, even when I pointed out that they had cancelled my flight home, the refund wasn't forthcoming. They wanted me to contact them again at the of the week, which would have been too late for tomorrows flight, I received woolly responses which didn’t make sense or were not clear, it felt like they were stalling. I spent 1.5 hours waiting for an agent to take the chat, it was approx. another 2 hours on the chat trying to get a refund, a total of  3.5 hours! That’s without the stuff that happen on previous days! 

I think I was more than a little patient, I was factual and at no time was I rude or judgemental to the agent, in fact I was sympathetic - as they must have been run off their feet. But at the end of the day, this situation needed not to have been so onerous, all Ryanair needed to do was to adhere to their policies, be reasonable in their prices for changing of flights (this could have been sorted on Monday). The length of time taken on chat should not have taken 3.5 hours, that is on them (I have the transcripts). I was totally right to persist to get to a conclusion, otherwise if I had waited for Ryanair my family & I could have been hundreds of pounds out of pocket.

Heliflyguy

lisyloo said:

Heliflyguy said:

Could be several reasons why the new fare is higher. Might be the class you are currently booked in isn't available and a higher class must be booked, you can very rarely downgrade. It maybe cheaper to lose the money paid and make a new booking. But it's Ryanair so who knows... 

I don't think ryanair offer business or first. It's very much no frills only. They might like other businesses have tranches of tickets at different prices.

Class as in G, O, W, B, Y or whatever letters Ryanair use in the same cabin, Economy.