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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

#61

Post by embedding-shape »

nottorp wrote: post #58
embedding-shape wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... 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.

Who's going to open a case and where? Is there any point in complaining to a local authority in an EU country about an UK web site? Esp since the guardian probably has zero business presence on the continent...

If you're a UK citizen, and you see UK law being broken you report that to your local authorities. I'm not sure where other EU countries come into the context?

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

#62

Post by rcxdude »

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…

They did not. The rules are still basically the same just from a practicality point of view.

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

#63

Post by rcxdude »

clickety_clack wrote: post #13
nottorp wrote: post #6

Hmm 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.

There's been some GDPR-related rulings in EU courts which seem to be allowing this kind of thing at least by some interpretations.

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

#64

Post by dwood_dev »

andy99 wrote: post #8
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…

> 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.

ATMs all over are like this. Very annoying. I have to decline conversation all the time. The ATM conversation rate is usually 15-25% markup. No thanks, my bank charges nothing, just passes on the Visa 1% fee for fx.

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

#65

Post by mandelken »

quokwok wrote: post #36
notahacker wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ryanair (and to an extent other LCCs) generally doesn't like ticket sales through resellers because a substantial part of its profit margin comes from upsell of add-ons and partner services during the booking/reservation process

Thanks, that makes sense. Why isn't Ryanair allowed to prohibit use of their website by resellers?

I guess because travel agencies need to be able to show customers the most economical flights? By prohibiting agencies on their website, they can not give consumers (through their agents) the ability to compare different choices.

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

#66

Post by nottorp »

embedding-shape wrote: post #61
nottorp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's going to open a case and where? Is there any point in complaining to a local authority in an EU country about an UK web site? Esp since the guardian probably has zero business presence on the continent...

If you're a UK citizen, and you see UK law being broken you report that to your local authorities. I'm not sure where other EU countries come into the context?

In the context of this thread where I'm hypothesising that it's either legal or not enforced in the UK. An EU citizen may have grounds to complain if it's illegal in their jurisdiction, but to who?

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

#67

Post by embedding-shape »

nottorp wrote: post #66
embedding-shape wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a UK citizen, and you see UK law being broken you report that to your local authorities. I'm not sure where other EU countries come into the context?

In the context of this thread where I'm hypothesising that it's either legal or not enforced in the UK. An EU citizen may have grounds to complain if it's illegal in their jurisdiction, but to who?

You said:

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

Which is strange, because why wouldn't the UK enforce UK law? There is no such thing as "EU-wide laws" as I previously explained, so again I'm not sure why other EU citizens are being pulled into context here, it literally doesn't matter.

If no one is enforcing UK law, then obviously that's bad, but on another level. I'm not sure what point you're trying to do here. For example, if a company today breaks GDPR and I want to report them, then I'm gonna be engaging with my local agencies for that, regardless of where the company is based, assuming I'm in a EU country. There is no "EU bureau" you report to, since the company is breaking your local laws, you report them to your local authorities.

As far as I can tell by the context, you don't quite grok how EU regulations are actually implemented in reality, which is why you keep bring up other EU citizens, but it really doesn't matter. When GDPR came into effect, it's because the countries themselves have written and implemented local laws in their countries that align with GDPR, there isn't one "GDPR-law" that is enforced by an EU entity across the entire union.

> An EU citizen may have grounds to complain if it's illegal in their jurisdiction, but to who?

If I'm in Italy, and a German company is breaking some Italian law, then I'm reporting them to the Italian authorities.

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

#68

Post by hexbin010 »

hs586 wrote: post #57

I have found myself to be the only person in many conversations defending Ryanair. People complain about legroom, everything being a paid add-ons, you name it. The key is to treat it like a bus that takes you from A to B, sometimes cheaper than a bus, not some sort of luxury experience. The times when flying was luxury is over. And I benefitted from it greatly as a student, so have many shown by Ryanair's passenger n…

Ryanair weren't just a bystander in this race to the bottom, they were primary drivers of creating it, along with Easyjet, undercutting competition and forcing everyone else to become a low cost carrier.

They're a total success commercially you can't deny it, but my god what a horrible experience for everyone involved, passengers and staff alike

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

#69

Post by jonathantf2 »

jakubmazanec wrote: post #11

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…

I booked direct on Ryanair.com and they refused to refund our tickets because the flight technically ran even though we weren’t legally allowed to leave our homes. Lesson learned, I’ve got travel insurance now
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