Just before Covid when everything was cancelled I booked some tickets through Kiwi and it was the worst decision - I spent year (!) getting my money back. I'm not saying Ryanair is a good company, but for their flight (i.e. one of those which I booked through Kiwi) they reimbursed me immediately. The second flight was EasyJet and they said they already sent the refund to Kiwi, while Kiwi said they got nothing. In the end it was Kiwi who sent me the rest, and in my view they truly are parasites (they also got a Covid loan from the Czech government). Maybe in the days of Skypicker when their search engine was good they provided some value, but nowadays I advise everyone to avoid them.
Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs
11–20 of 278 posts
Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they tried to coax me into using my local currency instead of GBP and hid a £20 spread I’m finding this more and more. Uber does it, and even Walgreens does it when I’m in the US and tap my card it suggests that I pay in my home currency. This seems to be a new vector companies have found for ripping off their customers.
This isn't anything new though. Been like that for the last 15 years at least. Always pay in the local currency (your bank/visa/mastercard will give you a better rate then the merchant)
It seems to be built into the credit card terminals. So it's a visa thing, not on the shop.
I had that with very small shops in non-touristy areas of Mexico where it was absolutely clear to not be a scam attempts by the shops owner. They had no idea what the terminal asked.
Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs
#13Hmm the guardian has gone "accept tracking or subscribe". I wonder how that works out for them. I also wonder if the time is ripe for some company to disrupt advertising by simply doing what google did on launch in 2000.
I didn’t know you were allowed to do that with cookies.
Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they tried to coax me into using my local currency instead of GBP and hid a £20 spread I’m finding this more and more. Uber does it, and even Walgreens does it when I’m in the US and tap my card it suggests that I pay in my home currency. This seems to be a new vector companies have found for ripping off their customers.
This isn't anything new though. Been like that for the last 15 years at least. Always pay in the local currency (your bank/visa/mastercard will give you a better rate then the merchant)
> Been like that for the last 15 years at least
Charging significantly more to accept foreign currencies goes back thousands of years.
Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs
#15Just before Covid when everything was cancelled I booked some tickets through Kiwi and it was the worst decision - I spent year (!) getting my money back. I'm not saying Ryanair is a good company, but for their flight (i.e. one of those which I booked through Kiwi) they reimbursed me immediately. The second flight was EasyJet and they said they already sent the refund to Kiwi, while Kiwi said they got nothing. In the…
Had a very similar experience with eDreams. Absolute scammers, in hindsight it was foolish to trust an unnecessary middleman.
Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs
#16"O’Leary accused the travel agent industry of scamming and ripping off unsuspecting consumers by charging extra fees and markups on ticket prices." That is ... pretty rich. A couple of years ago I was going to go see my brother in the UK who lived near Stansted. As such Ryanair would have been the most convenient airline. The shere number of dark patterns I encountered trying to book the ticket was such that when I g…
Right. O'Leary is an antihero at best and a villain at worst.
Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't anything new though. Been like that for the last 15 years at least. Always pay in the local currency (your bank/visa/mastercard will give you a better rate then the merchant)
> Been like that for the last 15 years at least Charging significantly more to accept foreign currencies goes back thousands of years.
This isn’t that. I understand if you came to a US store with Canadian dollars, they’d be unlikely to give you the posted exchange rate for them, if the took them at all. Here we’re talking about paying with a credit card that will automatically pay in the local currency, and having the POS terminal, on whoever’s behalf, try and intermediate that to charge a higher rate than the credit card would have, under the false pretence of simplifying payment somehow. It’s not convenience, it’s preying on ignorance.
Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't anything new though. Been like that for the last 15 years at least. Always pay in the local currency (your bank/visa/mastercard will give you a better rate then the merchant)
> Been like that for the last 15 years at least Charging significantly more to accept foreign currencies goes back thousands of years.
Ubiquitous currency exchange at the point of sale does not though.
Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs
#19Hmm the guardian has gone "accept tracking or subscribe". I wonder how that works out for them. I also wonder if the time is ripe for some company to disrupt advertising by simply doing what google did on launch in 2000.
I didn’t know you were allowed to do that with cookies.
UK site. Not in the EU any more.
Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs
#20"O’Leary accused the travel agent industry of scamming and ripping off unsuspecting consumers by charging extra fees and markups on ticket prices." That is ... pretty rich. A couple of years ago I was going to go see my brother in the UK who lived near Stansted. As such Ryanair would have been the most convenient airline. The shere number of dark patterns I encountered trying to book the ticket was such that when I g…
> they tried to coax me into using my local currency instead of GBP and hid a £20 spread I’m finding this more and more. Uber does it, and even Walgreens does it when I’m in the US and tap my card it suggests that I pay in my home currency. This seems to be a new vector companies have found for ripping off their customers.
Do they suggest that you pay in your home currency, or do they give you the choice to select on the ATM? Only once a cashier made a suggestion and it was to warn me of the spread and that generally it'd be better to do it in USD and let my bank do conversion.