This story by a Mr Macbeth…
====================================
After we had completed the on-line booking for a flight to Mallorca, and proceeded to accept the cost by supplying our card details, we were astonished when the confirmation arrived the following day, and a further £30.00 had been added for paying by card at the rate of £10 per passenger. This £10 is actually a £5 surcharge for each flight, outbound and inbound. By all accounts this is for the privilege of printing our own boarding passes since the check-in desks have been scrapped.
However, worse was to follow!
There was a stipulation that boarding passes had to be printed, not when purchasing the air fares, but BETWEEN 15 DAYS before flying, and up to within FOUR HOURS of take-off. This alone is seems to be a ploy guaranteed to net in more covert charges to the unwary – or in my case forgetful/naive as to this crucial ‘procedure’. On arrival at the Ryanair check-in area, we had to confirm our details on one of those dreaded computerised machines, to discover that we three had to pay an extra charge of £120 because we had omitted to print our booking passes within the required time slot. BE WARNED! Make sure you print your boarding passes or you’ll be subject to these extortionate charges!
While Ryanair simply respond by asserting that their covert charges are “not illegal”, if it takes legislation to make ANY business more transparent and honestly run, then this must be done. We already have a government who knows how to implement severe penalties upon their electorate who fail to toe the line in many aspects of daily life, so it can only be a well-practised procedure that needs applying to business as well.
Same thing happened to me and my family travelling last Friday. We did everything on the web, paid for me to check in one bag. Paid their extortionate £10 per person debit card surcharge and printed our own boarding passes. Got to the airport to drop off the bag and was told I would have to get a voucher from a check in terminal. As soon as I saw the chip’n'pin unit I knew worse was to come and got stung another £40 for airport check-in fee!
Complaining does nothing as the staff are impervious to any customer concern – well trained by their CEO – though the BAA staff were very sympathetic, though powerless. On returning to Stansted last night more complaints, this time from UK immigration who are fed up with getting complaints of the slow inbound processing. Queue was at least 60/70 people deep across 14 border desks. It took an hour to get through, not fun with tired kids. All because BAA (the bosses) and Ryan(con)air schedule so many late arrivals that the airport chokes. Cut costs, increase profits, stuff the customer. This is the last time I use Stanstead or Ryanair. BA/BMI or EasyJet from now on.
OMG you lot must be 100% dumb ass…it is VERY clear what you are being changed at the time and what you will if you do things wrong (extra for cards except Electron, extra for bags, extra for not printing your boarding pass)
Are you incapable of reading ????
It is transparent, you are just either thick or blind!?
I agree with Lisa, it is very clear what they will charge you. And that you have to do the on-line check in between 15 days and 4 hours prior to the departure.
It’s not the best airline but it certainly is the cheapest, and it allows people on low budgets to travel all around Europe which I think is great. We wouldn’t be able to do it otherwise.
You just have to read all the information in the website and not make assumptions so you don’t get surprises.
Hello Lisa,
Thanks for your heartfelt comments.
The fact of the matter is that many of the extra charges that Ryanair impose on passengers are NOT clear. Yes, it is possible to avoid these if you have been through the booking process before and know where the traps are, but people do get caught out and this is part of the Ryanair business plan.
If Ryanair advertised a price of £50 each way but this included all fees, charges, add-ons etc, everyone would be happy. But they choose to advertise flights at 50p and then sneakily add the extras on. People dont mind being charged, but in a transparent way.
Regards,
IHR Team
Hello admin,
You put things exactly how they are: tortuous bookings in order to tire the costumer ripping him of at every single step of booking with fake taxes & charges.
Todays experience was that I wanted to print out the boarding passes for my wife+infant and me: well, how strange, but the infant didnt apear on the bookingconfirmation, so I had to call the reservation service @1,50 €/call 4 times before getting somebody on the line. And yes, my daughter is booked, but she is “only an infant” so she doesnt appear on the screen. In the mean time that makes an extra 13.5 € for Ryanair + 30′ of my precious time lost.
Lets fight this vicious, pennypinching, humiliating and time consuming business attitude with the same weapons: I am for a civil movement where we costumers delay passively the airplanes. Lets just arrive a bit late at gates (say 5 to 10 minutes). For security reasons Airplanes can not start without a passenger if his luggage is on board. And looking after it in the luggage compartment takes minimum 10 minutes. Ryanair makes fun of us – well just give ryanairs management their change (every minute of not flying airplane & crew cost a lot of money).
Michael, is that possible? Next time my firm books me a Ryanair flight Ill sit there until they have called my name at least 5 times and then Ill board. If they ask me where I have been Ill tell them I was deliberatly delaying the flight because I hate them. I might even book in an empty suitcase for a laugh…..
Also I love the way that Ryanair staff come on this site to slag off their customers, with their now familiar (same person?) “you must be thick” type comments. Yes, we must be thick, to have ever flown with your disgusting airline.
They charge £5 per transaction to use your debit card, when they are probably charged less than £1 by the banks – for a return ticket they therefore charge £10 making an estimated profit of 400% on the 2 transactions (assuming banks charge them £1 – which is HIGH). You could use an electron card, correct, but that would mean to open a specific bank account just for this and frankly I believe this is unacceptabl. Why should I affect my credit rating or downgrade my account? only 7% of the UK use a VISA electron!
They charge £10 for ONLINE check in, again, assuming it costs them £1 to manage the online check-in per flight, they make further 400% profit. Aren’t these hidden charge?
They charge £10 per baggage to check in, with allowance of 15Kg (other companies have an allowance of 20kg) adn that’s £20 for a return flight
The most recent ticket I purchased cost £223.88, making these charges a whopping 17.9% of total transaction. If the ticket were cheaper the impact of these fees would have been even higher.
I have not paid less than £150 for any ticket purchased with them in the last 2 years. For that price I flew FIRST class with BA to Barcelona in June.
The thing that p***es me the most is the fact that consumers are not protected and this company is ripping us off without anyone stopping them.
This seems to be another scam,booking a flight for a friend I put her name in the white boxes at the top of the page,scrolled down and filled in the yellow boxes by autofill. When I received the confirmation e-mail it had changed the passengers name to mine! Ok I thought, get back onto the website and change the passengers name back. Easy and it only cost me £110 !!!Thieving barstewards.
Well, Lisa, I assume that you work for this cattle transport company. Ryanairs’ contempt for its customers seeps off your reply. I regard the airline for which you work as a gang of thieves which manages to stay within the law while perpetrating its thievery. I do not accept your airlines’ vicious and mean rules and regulations, so I boycott it. It is true: Ryanair punishes people severely for their mistakes, more proof of Ryanairs contempt for its customers. People should repay contempt with contempt and thus stop flying on your airline. I hope that CrookAir will soon reap what it has been sowing for many years. BTW: Why should I get another credit card, just to please your airline? When will paying with an Electron card start to be charged, just like all other credit cards?
Why complain?
Dont fly with the fucking airline in the first place. You know what they are like.
We fly with Ryanair from Liverpool on Sat, having read all the comments i am a little worried!!!!! watch this space…
To an extent I’ve got to agree with Iain.
After all the bad publicity, it should be obvious to everyone that flying with Ryanair is no longer viable.
I wasn’t on the ball when I booked recently.
I didn’t realise that Ryanair now have a total luggage allowance per passenger of only 15 kilos, 10 kilos below the single suitcase alloowance of other airlines and that Ryanair would try to charge my £180 extra at the airport. At least I found the solution to that – stick the heavy stuff in my hand luggage and check in the half empty suitcase.
I also didn’t realise when trying to get my return flight that Ryanair wouldn’t even be able to fly (technical failiure because Ryanair don’t do maintenance, they just subcontract to the cheapest local company) and would try to get out of paying compensation for the resulting 14 hour delay.
At least now I’ve learnt my lesson: NEVER EVER EVER FLY RYANAIR!
There is another problem: airlines use a ‘time out’ for bookings on the internet. If you take too much time going through the booking, at the end when you want to pay, you will get a message that your reservation has been timed out, cut off ‘for security reasons’ and you have to start all over again. I would rather think they use that trick to force you to go as quickly as possible through the booking process, so that you make errors and can be punished for them with extra charges!
I have been stung for at least £100 name change because of the website time out setting. My wife and I were determined not to make any mistakes but the system kept timing out again and again that in the end we had to race through and must have got one of the four names wrong. I’ve just paid the charge by mastercard so they’ve probably charged me extra for that. I’ve learnt my lesson the hard way. I won’t be flying with them again – I don’t care how cheap they appear to be…unless you like gambling, DON’T FLY WITH RYANAIR. I believe their trick tactics are pure evil.