'Ryanair, time to come clean: The latest rises are a step too far.' blog discussion

Paul_Varjak

I guess it proves that customers are always influenced by price, rather than by service! It is better to vote with your feet than grumble on here.

My friend travelled by RyanAir with her 20 month-old daughter. She was over the checked-in baggage limit and offered to buy an adult seat for her youngster so that she could have a second baggage allowance - this was way cheaper than the excess baggage charge. RyanAir refused and made her pay the excess baggage. She has vowed never to travel RyanAir again even if it means paying another airline more money!

If every aggrieved RyanAir customer did the same, Mr O'Leary would soon have to change his attitude or watch his company go under.

scottishgypsie

Well I've just booked Edinburgh to Grenoble for my wife and I because Ryanair are the only ones on this route.

Flight cost: £150 for the 2 of us

Total cost paid after £16 for mastercard (4x£4)
£48 for 2 bags each way and compulsory airport check in
taxes etc,

£310 total.

so the cost has more than doubled. I agree that it is clear these payments are required as you go through the site but you don't know the true cost until you have given them your information. At this stage I looked at using Easyjet going via bristol. IT is cheaper that way(just) but not as convenient.

As others have said, I don't mind paying for my flights, it's just the idiotic way of going about it I dislike.

Re: Electron being free?

This is because it means they don't have to show the £4 per flight per person charge as it is possible to avoid it. I guess they know that very few people have visa electron.

Still I'm going on holiday and will be ripped off much more in other areas.

Edinburghlass_2

Useful Christmas present to be had here....

http://www.personal.barclays.co.uk/BRC1/jsp/brccontrol?site=pfs&task=homefreegroup&value=12413

suttski

I tried to book a flight to Pisa from Liverpool on 4/1/09. Ryanair insisted that you had to have a bag and had to check in sum total £30. When I tried to just take one bag between the two of us Ryanair web site said that we would have to book seperately. So they wanted to charge us an extra £60 for checking in and then a further £20 for using a credit card. The reason they gave on a pop up was that security said we must check in at the airport not on line. No explanation was given for why we had to check in 2 bags??
Also they try and stitch you up with travel insurance you dont need to. I just phoned the Financial Ombudsman about it but they said they would not take it further cos I had not purchased the insurance?
How can Ryanair get away with treating its customers so badly. Decided to go to the Lake District instead...

dmg24

suttski wrote: »

I tried to book a flight to Pisa from Liverpool on 4/1/09. Ryanair insisted that you had to have a bag and had to check in sum total £30. When I tried to just take one bag between the two of us Ryanair web site said that we would have to book seperately. So they wanted to charge us an extra £60 for checking in and then a further £20 for using a credit card. The reason they gave on a pop up was that security said we must check in at the airport not on line. No explanation was given for why we had to check in 2 bags??
Also they try and stitch you up with travel insurance you dont need to. I just phoned the Financial Ombudsman about it but they said they would not take it further cos I had not purchased the insurance?
How can Ryanair get away with treating its customers so badly. Decided to go to the Lake District instead...

Probably the worst case I've seen of someone that doesn't bother to read what they are booking!

sodium_chloride

[
On 29th December 2008 I paid £622.25 for 3 return flights from Stansted to Salzburg including 5 bags and 1 ski equipment.. When booking it said each person was allowed 15kg each. After booking we decided that 3 x 15kg wasn’t enough and so I went online and added 2 more 15kg bags for an extra excessive fee of £60 (or so I thought). When we got to the check in desk I was asked for a further £480 for the outbound flight for excess baggage. It appears that I had paid an extra £60 so that I could spread my 15kg of luggage into 3 bags! ??????? The check in person must have been so embarrassed by his companys rules that after 15 minutes arguing he told us that our ski boots which were in our cases could have gone free as ski equipment and he knocked me 3 x 6kg off which was 18kg x £15 = £270 so I only had to pay an extra £210 one way for excess baggage (plus the £60 I had paid to carry 2 extra bags when I booked which didn’t include any weight allowance).
I paid no excess coming back. I checked in 3 bags of 15kg and I filled a suitcase with 3 pairs of ski boots, helmet and ski clothes and called it ski equipment. I had 2 pairs of skis in a ski box (which I extended to its full length and filled with heavy items).
What comprises ski equipment? I paid £50 for one ski equipment (Thomsonfly is £30)
quote=peterbaker;8404893]Well done, Martin You noticed :money:

I wrote what follows on Friday but wasn't sure whether to post it as a new Ryanair thread or to just stew on it without posting it, but now here's what I was thinking last week (and I apologise for hijacking a blog with a bit of a blog of my own )

Last year the Office of Fair Trading made a ruling that Ryanair and other airlines should quote the full price up front if they were to quote any price at all.

Ryanair in typical fashion more or less have given two fingers to that ruling and continue to tip our travel expectations on their head.

I can’t easily see a total price for my summer holiday flights now without laboriously inputting my personal data. All I know, is that the price Ryanair are quoting just for bags is suddenly £54 alone (for 3 bags return) and that they have said they will keep putting up the bag price until customers stop checking them in. That’s not a nice thing to do. Massive amounts of UK taxpayers money is expended on maintaining and regulating a model of aviation that upholds national security, keeps us safe and upholds our expectations. Ryanair is constantly rocking that model.

Let me repeat that Ryanair are heavily subsidised by the British taxpayer. They are permitted to buy as much fuel as they like in UK completely tax free. You have seen on the news recently how much fuel tax normally gets added to the price of a litre of the fuel the rest of us buy. Think how much Ryanair save by being exempt from paying it. That is an enormous tax advantage to be given to a business. Farmers used to be given similar subsidies in return for growing our food and being guardians of the countryside. Growing food and promoting good husbandry of the land were good things to promote last century, and in any event, the farmers’ tractors didn’t gulp down fuel anywhere near as fast as 737s do. Farmers generally behaved as good citizens and when their spokespersons came on tv to make political statements, they were made carefully.

Yet in the new millennium, despite using all that public money they acquire through tax exemption and through the perks of tax collection, Ryanair are not behaving as good UK citizens when they use pornography in advertisements and then give two fingers when told off about it. They constantly appeal to the natural rebellious trend of younger minds on the street, but less so to the will of the mainstream who weave the real fabric of society by quietly building achievement and providing the foundation of a stable country. Ryanair are so big that they cause real upheaval not just in their industry but in our country. Whatever they do becomes the norm because they control such a large slice of the people moving industry in Europe. I fully accept they have created a large part of their business from thin air. They have caused more people to take up flying regularly than any other airline. But at what cost to UK? They have done it all on the back of massive fuel tax subsidy and they are not even British!

We have a horrendously awful people trafficking problem now. Half of it is associated with ease of obtaining minimum wage work because so many legitimate “jobs” are now at little above £5.52 per hour and of the type which Ryanair have themselves created, and almost as many illegitimate “jobs” are available at less than the minimum as a result of trafficking and the continual shifting of poorer citizens across the continent in search of happiness with a £ sign attached. Our employment market has been damaged irreparably by this dumbing down that means indigenous UK workers with much higher standards and expectations have been completely priced out purely because they believe in first world health and safety, in equality, and in security in retirement which are all costs that admitted low cost businesses do their best to abdicate to others. The other half of the trafficking problem is associated with the sex-trade, and that makes Ryanair’s pornographic advertising doubly offensive.

Coupled to this, we have an overwhelming legitimate economic immigration problem overloading our public services meaning that we are reduced to breeding more like animals in the UK than ever before (we must apparently expect a significant number of babies and mothers to die in childbirth because or standards are lower than other civilised countries). Presumably because it has not been fashionable for young people to be “top of the class” for at least the last 20 years then most Brits are conditioned to be happy just not to come bottom when they read country statistics like that. Yet we are also told that 1 in 10 of us are “rich”.

If that is true, it just doesn’t make sense. It makes our country look a bit like the Boeing 777 did in the last moments before it crashed at Heathrow the other day – lurching from one extreme to another, then smacking down barely under any control but followed by congratulatory hype about how well it was controlled and what a fine outcome it was. I don't much like big businesses which propound myths like that.

Let’s not kid ourselves that people would move about Europe irrespective of the ease of low cost air travel. Of course they would not do so in anywhere near such large numbers.

I don’t mind Ryanair being top dog in the European aviation industry, but do object to the way they behave - treating us all like Pavlov’s dogs in order to force rapid change. These changes are not for our own benefit really. Ryanair couldn’t give a toss how much it’s aircraft actually weigh when they take off. They know that their chosen aircraft has some slack designed in to performance, and they don't generally use actual weights in the calculations they do on the flight deck unless the captain is particularly rigorous about measuring actual performance after he has taken off.

No, Ryanair's corporate whims seem to amount to not much more than to dumb us down to the lowest common European denominator, and then to herd us around like animals to the highest bidding airport/local chamber of commerce like all good compliant directionless unwashed European pax can be made to do if they get a sniff of a promotional fare.

Please don’t respond to this with the boring “if you don’t like them don’t use them” cliche. I want them to become better, but I do not believe they are always themselves the best judge of how to achieve it. Since Ryanair use so much taxpayers’ money, they periodically need some heavy encouragement/inducement from the UK government I think.

For example, I am sure it might appeal to Michael O’Leary’s sense of humour if the government (on a whim of course!) removed the fuel tax subsidy overnight to all overseas domiciled operators and impounded all his aircraft until cash was paid for the tax on the fuel in the tanks before taking his fleet elsewhere.

Easyjet could then be given any slots he no longer wanted and I’d be able to see at an easier glance, how much my summer fares might actually cost!

Interestingly, Declan Curry, BBC News 24's Business Presenter, just presented his latest interview with Michael O'Leary because their latest profits are 25% down on last year. Michael was suffering from a bit of a cold and looked a bit older and leaner today, but as usual I enjoyed listening to what he had to say, even though as usual I was trying to read between the lines. He was successfully plugging away his lowest fares from Ryanair message as usual, and only referred to "bloody politics" once. He was interestingly being a bit contrary about governmental actions to avoid recession. He thinks the Federal Reserve were too hasty in dropping US interest rates. In Europe anyway, he is now for maintaining interest rates and suffering a bit of recession 'cos it might do us some good (and get oil prices down). He also said something about how despite the increased baggage charges, Ryanair's overall fares were still just as low as before. Not entirely convincing, that. And he chose to say that Ryanair had put up their hand baggage allowance from 7kg to 10kg (that news is as ancient as the pair of jeans he was wearing :rolleyes:) and he said BA's limit was still 7kg (not sure of the relevance of that since BA is not their main competitor, nor why he didn't mention that Easyjet have long had no hand baggage weight limit 'within reason').

Michael O'Leary talked of tightening our belts and cutting costs further ... a little worrying if it means you catch a cold and start looking a bit frayed and wearing old clothes ... In aviation we need to maintain very high standards especially when the going gets tough.[/quote]

arunadasi

My gripe with Ryanair is the misleading descrption of its airports. I don't know about other countries, but: Frankfurt-Hahn is nowhere near Franlfurt. Karslruhe is nowhere near Karlsruhe. Hamburg airport is actually in Luebeck (they do add this in parenthesis). Now, it's Ok for me because I know this. I regularly fly to Hahn, and it is a small airport which services ONLY Ryanair, out in the German sticks. We fly there regularly butreluctantly, because if you are going anywhere other than Frankfurt (to which there is a regular hourly shuttle bus) it is a major hassle, and the unsuspecting traveller has no idea. It would be more truthful to call this airport Koblenz, as that city is much nearer than Frankfurt.

And calculating in the travelling costs once you get to these airports can easily more than double your bill.

Unless you make the same mistakes I did last Saturday, and end up paying over EUR 300 for the return trip to what was once a EUR 20 per person round trip, inclusive everything! I'll post a detailed account of what happened in the next post.0

arunadasi

Just back from five days in Deutschland, and what a story my return trip was!

I was actually picking up hubby, who is disabled and had spent christmas with Mutti. I had the trip to Hahn airport neatly planned out: train to Heidelberg main station, then shuttle bus to Hahn. I went to Eberbach ticket office on Friday to buy tickets for the train in advance, which was not possible. I clearly said the tickets were for TOMORROW and specifically asked if the station would be open on Saturday. The lady said no, it would be closed, I had to buy tickets on the station bla bla bla.
What she did NOT tell me is that the bloody trains don't even run on a Saturday!!!! I trusted her; usually train information is very reliable in Germany.
But it was not my day.
So there we were luggage and all at 6.40 am punctually at the station, and no sign of life. Only then did I have misgivings, checked the timetable, and saw: no Saturday train!
The only option was Plan B: a taxi to Heidelberg. Half an hour away. EUR 52
The airort shuttle bus, at least, was a sure thing, and had checked the departure times
when I'd arrived a few days before. I lood forward to settling into my seat and enjoying the tqo ad a half hour ride to Hahn.


But again, no sign of life. And then, again, I read the small print: NO SHUTTLE BUS ON SATURDAYS!!!

Can you imagine? I mean, this is an airtport bus,and surely Saturday
is a big day for travellling! But no shuttle at 7.40 am.
All I cna say to that is: typical German. For germans, holidays and weekends are sacred. Only a few years ago all the shops including supermarkets closed at 6 on weekdays, midday on Saturdays, Sunday openings are illegal and most post offices and other public offices and many stores close for an hour at lunchtime.


Anyway.


On to Plan C: train to Frankfurt Main Airport, EUR 49 for both of us. I fgured form there I could gert a shuttle bus to Hahn. They wouldn't dare not run that one!
Remember my husband is disabled and can walk only with difficult. We had two pieces of handluggage and one heavy suitcase. Getting connections is NOT easy with him.



On the train I called a friend and asked her to see if she could find
out the times of shuttle buses from Frankffurt airport to Hahn.
There would have been a brilliant connection, if we could manage the
10 minutes between arriving at the airport,and departure of the bus.
I might have made it alone, but hubby cannot run and anyway, the train was late.
So, on to Plan a rental car. The Eurocar counter was free so I went to them and got a car for EUR 79 for the day. I asked the lady for general directions and she said I had to take the A3 towards Koblenz, and
I knew that Hahn is quite near Koblenz. So I followed signs to Koblenz. Silly me,
though, for staying on the A3! That was quite wrong. By the time the plane took off we were meandering somewhere among the snowcovered forests of Hunsrueck, after I got totally lost trying to find my way back to Hahn.
We arrived at the airport 2 hours after last check-in.
So, on to plan E: re-booking our flights. The Ryanair lady told me that rebooking would be EUR 75 each.
Oh, wait a minute. I had an online check-in, so I would have to make an entirely new booking, for EUR 250. (Hubby, who did not have online check in,
could still re-book for 75). That was for the late night flight.
But, she said, if I booked online for the next day, I could get it cheaper. So I did that (Plan E). The website would not accept my GB solo card so I had to use my Visa, though I knew I was near my limit and I wasn't sure if it would be accepted. Thankfully, it was, though there'll be a bank charge of £12 for going over the limit.

Flights the next day cost EUR 156 in total for both of us. (Are you adding up? EUR 52 + 49 + 79 + 156 up to now).
That done (I had left hubby with the luggage eating a Pretzel).
Anyway, at least the hotel was nice and I flung myself on to the bed and watched TV for the rest of the day!
One is tempted to ask why these things happen and maybe becuase it was full moon. But there is often a straneg coincidence that occurs when things go wrong, and the next day it happened indeed: Right behind us at the check in counter, my favourite cousin and his girlfriend! I hadn't seen them for months so we sat together on the flight and caught up with the news.
However, it would have been cheaper to visit them in London for a day. Sigh.
Just when I am getting my finances in order and paying off all my debts!

OK, none of this is Ryanair's faults but people do need to be aware of the problems that arise from
them using small, out of the way airports. This is not the first time we have missed
a return flight due to bad connections, weather, traffic and so on. Hahn really is in the middle of nowhere.
el at a
restaurant!) I had to find a hotel. Luckily, the cheapest was just
across the road from the airport, and cost EUR 56 for a double room.
(Plan F)
Meanwhile, my mobile phone broke down. Was that you, calling,Ann,
around 3 pm? (because nobody else has that new SIM number. ) Because
I tried to answer but the screen was black and nothing happened when I
pressed the button. The screen remained black. I had to somehow notify
Lina, Miro's girlfriend, who was supposed to pick me up. I had sent
her an SMS earlier. Finally I had to email back home to get them to
email me Lina;s mobile number to arrange for a pick up next day.
Anyway, at least the hotel was nice and I flung myself on to the bed
and watched TV for the rest of the day!

One is tempted to ask why these things happen and maybe becuase it was
full moon. But there is often a straneg coincidence that occurs when
things go wrong, and the next day it happened indeed: Right behind us
at the check in counter, my favourite cousin Rod and his girlfriend! I
hadn't seen them for months so we sat together on th eflight and
caught up with the news.

However, it would have been cheaper to visit them in London for a day.
Sigh.
Just when I am getting my finances in order and paying off all my debts!

Parisien

Gee......such a resonance of endless on-loop complaints.........

The guy is expanding the market, more planes, bases, jobs, opportunities......every year.........!!!!!!!...........if you are careful, read the info, use an electron card......its very cheap......

Sure I've had the odd crap experience with Ryanair.......but also with other airlines..........shall we collectively get over it????

PolishBigSpender

sodium_chloride wrote: »

For example, I am sure it might appeal to Michael O’Leary’s sense of humour if the government (on a whim of course!) removed the fuel tax subsidy overnight to all overseas domiciled operators and impounded all his aircraft until cash was paid for the tax on the fuel in the tanks before taking his fleet elsewhere.

Easyjet could then be given any slots he no longer wanted and I’d be able to see at an easier glance, how much my summer fares might actually cost!

This is quite possibly one of the most idiotic things I've read on this website yet.

For one, the government wouldn't be allowed to discriminate against EU carriers in such a way. I'm sure they could if they withdrew from the EU - but would UK shoppers be terribly happy with the return of the 200 cigarettes/1 litre of alcohol days? I doubt it.

Secondly, Easyjet also operate a non-EU carrier - Easyjet Switzerland.

Thirdly - all foreign carriers? So that would mean Flybe (registered in Jersey, thus outside UK and EU), Lufthansa (which since their takeover of BMI has a significant amount of slots at Heathrow), Wizz Air (Hungarian - many good flights to/from UK) and so on would all be taxed. Heathrow would be destroyed as a hub overnight - and BA are so incompetent that it's unlikely they could capitalise.

But then again, it might satisfy your Little Englander desires to do so.