MSE News: OFT accuses 'puerile' Ryanair of taunting passengers

At last!

About time the OFT uped the anti with Ryanair. Sure the charges are avoidable, but when over 90% of customers can't avoid the fees it is just treating customers unfairly and anti-competitive.

Hopefully the OFT will get the advertising rules changed so that the advertised price has to be available for payment with any UK debit card, whatever the brand.

Personally I think that any airline (or any other business) should only be able to exclude a charge from the advertised price if less than 25% of customers would not take the option.

So if 30% use hold luggage or use a normal debit card then Ryanair would have to include these charges in the advertised price. They could then offer a discount for hand luggage only or using a prepaid mastercard.

You should also not have to opt out of buying additional products such as insurance. If Ryanair wants to ensure that all its customers are insured it should buy the insurance and build it into pricing - not catch out less savvy customers.

R.

I do like Ryanair's reply:

Ryanair Head of Communications Stephen McNamara says: "Ryanair is not for the overpaid John Fingletons of this world but for the everyday Joe Bloggs who opts for Ryanair's guaranteed lowest fares because we give them the opportunity to fly across 26 European countries for free, £5 and £10.
"What the OFT must realise is that passengers prefer Ryanair's model as it allows them to avoid costs, such as baggage charges, which are still included in the high fares of high cost, fuel surcharging, strike-threatened airlines such as BA."

Does this mean MSE and the OFT are friends again? Just a few weeks ago MSE were implying that the OFT had no backbone, were talking nonsense etc.

PolishBigSpender wrote: »

Interesting, isn't it?

It seems to me as if the OFT are simply going for an easy target in Ryanair. I'm not sure how any user of this site can actually respect them after the way that they abandoned the fight against the banks - or do people really have that short a memory?

I have to agree, this story is the kind of thing the Daily Mail would publish, not a govt body.

richardw wrote: »

So if the OFT needs teeth, where are they going to get them from?

Good point, because they can give all the opinions they want, in reality they count for very little.

However I would hope that if they do get stronger statutory powers, they would choose their campaigns a little more carefully. There are much more important issues that need to be tackled before air travel, which is still to many people a luxury.

Well of course Pre-paid Mastercards are easy enough to obtain.

However when enough of their customers get these Mastercards they will cancel that arrangement and you will need to pay with a card issued by the First National Bank of Kabul(no postal/on-line applications -apply in Branch)