Ryanair refusing to reimburse cancelled flight

b-madden

Hi, I hope someone can help or point me in the right direction.

In June I went to Copenhagen for my birthday weekend. Our return flight on a Saturday evening was cancelled by Ryanair. The next flight back they had was not until the Wednesday. I spotted Easyjet had some seats left on the Monday evening on the same route, so I booked those as we needed to get back for work.

There was a lady on the desk at Copenhagen airport - I don't think she was a Ryanair employee. She told us that the best thing to do is to book accommodation and flights ourselves and ask Ryanair to reimburse you. In fact she went as far as saying we could call Ryanair customer services, but we would be on hold for ages and they'd just tell us the same thing she did. So we booked a hotel and planned to take the Easyjet flights.

Since we returned I have been back and forth with Ryanair about this and it's only now - 5 months later that something is being done. I submitted all our receipts and expenses to them. However, today I received an email to say the maximum we are entitled to is €250 (£215) each. This is sufficient to cover our accommodation and some of the additional expenses on the other days we were in Copenhagen, but definitely didn't stretch to cover the flights with Easyjet. Ryanair said they had no obligation to reimburse us for the new flights because apparently the process is we needed to go to Ryanair to tell them they cancelled our flights and they would find us a suitable alternative. Only if the alternative is not suitable, that is when they would reimburse to fly on a different airline. Given what the lady at Copenhagen Airport told us, we felt we were ok to book wiht Easyjet. And also like she said we could be waiting hours to get through to their customer service to get us on a new flight, by that time the seats on the Easyjet flight could have been sold and we'd miss on days at work.

Has anyone experienced this before or know what to do? All I want is to be reimbursed for the Easyjet flights because Ryanair cancelled our original flight.

Thanks

Westin

I think RyanAir are chancing their luck.  

The lady at Copenhagen Airport had probably seen this before and IMHO gave the right information to you. Getting hold of FR in these circumstances is likely difficult, especially when overseas. Every chance that even if you did reach anybody at FR they would have tried to either push you towards another FR flight, or tell you to sort out your own arrangements and contact their customer services team once back from your trip.

Expecting you to wait from Sunday to Wednesday for another FR service is unreasonable. I would have taken the same actions you did.

Make sure you completed the online claim correctly, but do push FR again.  If they dig their heals be prepared to take further via the regulator in Ireland.