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Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

theguardian.com

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Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#41

Post by nottorp »

embedding-shape wrote: post #27
nottorp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK site. Not in the EU any more.

Did they really already get rid of all the laws EU enforced upon them before they left? One would think it'd take a decade at least, but I guess things can move fast when the government really wants to. The way regulation works in the EU is typically EU comes up with regulation for countries to implement, then they implement the laws via their national system, then everything is handled "locally". So just leaving the…

... or no one bothers to enforce them any more?

UK gov is too busy enforcing the death of anonymity online anyway.

Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#42

Post by Gormanu »

scottydelta wrote: post #38
WXLCKNO wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any way to report AI slop accounts on HN? This entire account is generic AI slop comments.

I agree. Report it via email hn@ycombinator.com to @dang.

You guys don't have any other problems than looking for AI slops in every message on HN?

Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#43

Post by amiga386 »

onli wrote: post #12
doikor wrote: post #10

Earlier 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)

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.

On the other hand, almost every merchant and waiter in Spain told me, when handing me the card terminal, to select "local currency" (decline the first swindle attempt) then "don't convert" (decline the second swindle attempt). There's obviously some required workflow where they must pass the terminal to the customer, but they are wise to the payment gateway's trick to extract additional value from the transaction. They don't want their customer bilked, or to take the reputational damage when the customer leaves an angry review.

So if your Mexican merchants "don't know" what their terminal says? Either you were their first foreigner, or they're useful idiots, or they know.

Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#45

Post by hardlianotion »

maccard wrote: post #21
dcminter wrote: post #4

"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…

I’m not defending this behaviour with Ryanair, but this is not unique to them at all. It’s an industry “standard”. I’m Irish but live in the UK - when we make card transactions it asks what currency we want to pay in, and hides the exchange rate spread. > I will only use them if I have literally no other choice Even with the £20 increase they were likely cheaper than the alternative, if it exists. If this is going to…

> Even with the £20 increase they were likely cheaper than the alternative, if it exists.

Honestly, on many routes, I think this is true far less often than it used to be.

Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#46

Post by potatototoo99 »

rjsw wrote: post #31
clickety_clack wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t know you were allowed to do that with cookies.

Why wouldn't they be allowed to do it? You have the choice of not viewing the website.

That's non-compliant with GDPR. When shown to EU readers, they cannot block access based on accepting a privacy policy. Only essential cookies that really are needed for it to function are required.

Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#47

Post by lkramer »

dcminter wrote: post #4

"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…

The one I found most devious was the ATMs in Stansted that offers to pay out Euro. I was going to Spain and knew I would need some cash on arrival, so I thought I could save a bit of time. They had cleverly swapped the exchange rate so in big letters they showed a reasonable figure, like 0.85 and then in smaller type in the corner showed that actually it was in favour of Euros, so you would pay over 350 pounds for 300 euros. I luckily realised in time, but I expect a lot of people don't. Also it's drilled in from the bad old days that you need to take out cash before going on holiday to avoid being scammed. A whole exploitive service industry seems to exist solely on that misconception.

The only place in I've had any troubles paying with card (or easily find a cashmachine) in recent time have been Turkey outside the big cities.

Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#48

Post by scottydelta »

Gormanu wrote: post #40
WXLCKNO wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any way to report AI slop accounts on HN? This entire account is generic AI slop comments.

Why do you think I am an AI slop? If you don't like my opinion , it doesn't mean I am AI.

The issue is not about liking your opinion. It's about use of AI to produce an opinion.

Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#49

Post by amelius »

dcminter wrote: post #25
exasperaited wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. O'Leary is an antihero at best and a villain at worst.

He's very good at marketing his airline (often with outrage inspiring press releases) and very good at finding ways to squeeze more blood out of the stone of budget travellers. I don't really care whether he's "good" or "bad" but I would like to see the regulators shut down more of these aggressive tactics as they emerge.

I just wish the airlines were forced to put their booking behind an API so we could book flights without having to go through mazes that are different for every airline.

Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#50

Post by embedding-shape »

nottorp wrote: post #41
embedding-shape wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they really already get rid of all the laws EU enforced upon them before they left? One would think it'd take a decade at least, but I guess things can move fast when the government really wants to. The way regulation works in the EU is typically EU comes up with regulation for countries to implement, then they implement the laws via their national system, then everything is handled "locally". So just leaving the…

... or no one bothers to enforce them any more? UK gov is too busy enforcing the death of anonymity online anyway.

> ... or no one bothers to enforce them any more?

I know it happens in other countries, but can you actually get away with this in a civilized and non-authoritarian country today? Eventually you're gonna have to do/say something about it, if people keep opening up new cases about it.

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