News story: Ryanair bans passengers who got Covid Chargeback refunds

eskbanker

michael1234 said:
your bolded statement is true but so is the converse. In particular it isn't 100% clear whether or not they should refund but for some reason you chose to focus on it not being clear that they _should_ refund.

The MSE article puts it in this way:
Ryanair wasn't necessarily wrong to refuse a refund in the first instance as this is a grey area.

Sorry, but that's a facile argument - if a customer expects a refund then the burden of proof rests with them to explain why they should have one, not on the airline (which of course famously only sells non-refundable tickets) to say why they shouldn't!  As ever, the Ts & Cs must be accepted as the underlying basis for such analysis (unless they conflict with statutory rights of course), so the customer has to be able to make a case for a refund from those terms (or wider legislation or regulation).

michael1234 said:

In general, the tone of yours and your colleague's commentary is markedly much more hostile to the passenger than MSE themselves and I don't understand why that is given that this is a consumer focused forum. I did find out that at least one person commenting here runs a travel agency so that would explain their view but not sure about the other "regulars". 8-)

I make no apology for calling it as I see it and am not particularly interested in taking sides for the sake of it.  As I've suggested above, I don't see Ryanair's conduct as particularly defensible in terms of belatedly pressurising customers, but don't see that as negating their rights in the first place, so don't see any value in pretending otherwise, there's no point in giving people false hope in the name of 'consumer focus'....

[Deleted User]

Ryanair announces change of refund policy. Not clear what this means re refunds for people who could not travel due to COVID restrictions, but it's certainly a big change from "we are no refunds airline".

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/28/ryanair-to-shakeup-refunds-policy-after-pandemic-criticism

eskbanker

[Deleted User] said:

Ryanair announces change of refund policy. Not clear what this means re refunds for people who could not travel due to COVID restrictions, but it's certainly a big change from "we are no refunds airline".

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/28/ryanair-to-shakeup-refunds-policy-after-pandemic-criticism

It doesn't mean anything for people who couldn't travel, in that it relates only to flights that are cancelled, where they're legally obliged to refund within seven days (i.e. the five working days they now promise) anyway.

https://corporate.ryanair.com/news/ryanair-improves-industry-leading-customer-service/

No noticeable sense of irony in labelling themselves as having industry-leading customer service!