Ryanair - surely this cannot be legal?

JJ_Egan

Swords Co Dublin is the airlines HQ .

Sandtree

JJ_Egan said:

Swords Co Dublin is the airlines HQ .

If you bought from their irish company. There is also RyanAir UK which has its head office at Stanstead Airport 

https://help.ryanair.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360017824778

Both companies sell flights with slightly different T&Cs as noted by the different options on the above page

steampowered

The easiest course of action might be to pay the £95, then after the flight either issue a chargeback OR issue small claims proceedings.

Given that Ryan Air didn't seem to bother responding to your complaint or the chargeback, I suspect you would end up with a CCJ against them very easily.

It is very easy to issue a small claim these days. Just log onto the government's moneyclaimonline website.

born_again

Topcatk said:

MattMattMattUK said:

Topcatk said:

Booked a flexible fare in April in full (luckily) using my credit card. Tried to change the flight online today and website said that I had an outstanding balance against this booking. After waiting for 901 people ahead of me to also talk to online chat, customer services told me that I had previously used chargeback for a previous booking (which Ryanair had cancelled due to COVID) and therefore (it seems) that they had used part of my payment for this flight to reimburse themselves. Therefore I need to pay another £95! I can’t access my boarding pass/ticket until I have paid. 

Surely this cannot be legal? Yes I had used chargeback for previous cancelled flight after Ryanair failed to refund me within the agreed timescales. The credit card company gave Ryanair chance to dispute the charge and they didn’t.  They took my money for a new booking for a new flight. The two transactions are totally separate. 

I was told I have to call their Finance team on Monday 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

Yes this is legal, no they will not let you fly without resolving it.

The fact that the chargeback went through does not establish on a legal basis that you did not owe they money or were entitled to the refund. It was also well known that where refunds were due the airlines were struggling to process them all due to the huge volumes they were having to deal with. From Ryanair's perspective you took an "agressive" action, before it was even established you were due a refund. You may well be able to get the matter resolved with their finance department if it can be established that you were originally entitled to a refund, but due to you previously using the chargeback it will take time to resolve.

Hi, interesting point of view - thanks. At no point has Ryanair contacted me to say that they believe I was refunded incorrectly or to say there was a debt on my account as such. I went through their complaints process and received no response. After waiting for the Ryanair published response times I contacted the credit card company. The credit card company gave Ryanair time to respond. I don’t believe they did. 

Therefore they have taken my money for a new flight - if they aren’t going to let me fly without paying more money, surely they have to give me an option of a refund? 

When you think how many people that travel with them each day & how much disruption Covid has caused to them. Do you honestly think they have the staff to contact each person due a refund, as well as monitor their accounts for people that have actioned chargebacks. You would be looking at tens of thousands.

Banks could not keep up with the number of chargebacks last year & that was with FULL staffing levels. Some were only just getting them actioned within the 120 days allowed. Many low value ones were simply written off to reduce work loads.
So how a company like Ryanair was expected to cope was pointless. They could not handle simple stuff pre covid.

brianposter

I think it is generally accepted that Ryanair have never had much interest in dealing properly with complaints and refunds. Had they wanted to do so they certainly could have coped.

MattMattMattUK

brianposter said:

I think it is generally accepted that Ryanair have never had much interest in dealing properly with complaints and refunds. Had they wanted to do so they certainly could have coped.

To be fair to RyanAir (and I am no fan of O'Leary at all), they have always dealt fairly with any complaints I have had and on the one occasion I needed a refund which was a valid claim they refunded me with no argument. I very much doubt that they could have chosen to cope, they would have needed to increase their customer care and accounting staff probably by a factor of ten or more, whilst also training them up from scratch on the systems. As the banks could not cope with all the Chargeback and Section 75 claims either, or Supermarkets could not scale up enough for the extra demand on deliveries etc. it is rather naive to expect any organisation to scale up that much in a short space of time, especially at a point when they are making huge losses and relying on government support to survive. 

Sandtree

brianposter said:

I think it is generally accepted that Ryanair have never had much interest in dealing properly with complaints and refunds. 

Personally I think there is some credit to Ryanair for the fact they say they are a cheap, no frills airline and thats exactly what they are.  Good service costs money but many budget options claim that you can get amazing prices and still have great quality and that is very rarely true.

Having done a fair amount of work with white labelling services for big high street brands etc where we offered enhanced services at a premium its surprising how poorly aligned the brand proposition and the selected enhancements were. Cheapo brands buying extras that push the price up (wholesale, the brand sets the consumer price) and top tier not adding any extras so getting the bargain basement version.