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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

#91

Post by rkomorn »

dmaa wrote: post #90

I don't understand this hate on Ryanair. Just treat it for what it is, a super cheap airline if you avoid all the upsells. No one is being forced do fly with them.

I don't fly with them, and likely never will, simply because a coworker once showed me their checkout flow (back in 2011) and I found the amount of dark patterns to try and get you to accidentally spend more than you meant so disgusting I swore I'd never do business with them.

Being cheap is one thing, trying every trick in the book to try and make money the customer didn't mean to spend is another thing altogether as far as I'm concerned. That is worthy of hate.

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

#92

Post by dmaa »

hexbin010 wrote: post #79
testing22321 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the comment you are replying to said - if you don’t want super cheap prices and super cheap service, fly with a more expensive carrier. Qantas, emirates, etc etc. You get what you pay for .

Firstly Ryanair don't fly the routes Qantas and Emirates do, so you have no idea what you're on about comparing them Second, Ryanair et al have dragged all the previous decent airlines down with them into the gutter and even paying more doesn't really get you service of years gone by. The only way they could compete was by slashing costs and prices to appear near the same ranking in the search results. You don't real…

If by 'the gutter' you mean cheaper - thanks Ryanair! I don't like the experience of flying either, but there is no denying that it is accessible to anybody today, 20 yrs ago it was still a luxury.

Regarding the destinations, yes, Emirates does not fly from Memmingen to Stanstead. But why would anybody, unless they live in the village next to either.

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

#93

Post by jakubmazanec »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #83
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…

Compare and contrast with: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=46364852

What's there to contrast? It's basically the same experience as I had.

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

#94

Post by dmaa »

rkomorn wrote: post #91
dmaa wrote: post #90

I don't understand this hate on Ryanair. Just treat it for what it is, a super cheap airline if you avoid all the upsells. No one is being forced do fly with them.

I don't fly with them, and likely never will, simply because a coworker once showed me their checkout flow (back in 2011) and I found the amount of dark patterns to try and get you to accidentally spend more than you meant so disgusting I swore I'd never do business with them. Being cheap is one thing, trying every trick in the book to try and make money the customer didn't mean to spend is another thing altogether a…

But you know this in advance! Try booking with Swiss, you also get a ton of upsell on insurance, car rental and what not. Then you sit in their business class seat and get an advert screened infront of you that you cannot skip. That makes me angry, not Ryanair.

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

#95

Post by BunsanSpace »

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.

The big scam is some terminals are configured with 17% forex fees (looking at your shady restaurants in Budapest), really funny when it's paired with tips in an EU country.

But this is why Revolut and WISE cards are a god send when travelling, just load them up with the local currency and these issues disappear.

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

#96

Post by RankingMember »

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.

What really pisses me off is that this stuff is annoying and sometimes fools us, tech savvy people on a hacker forum. I can't imagine how many elderly/non-techie people are being fleeced out of their money because of these kind of dark patterns.

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

#97

Post by rkomorn »

dmaa wrote: post #94
rkomorn wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't fly with them, and likely never will, simply because a coworker once showed me their checkout flow (back in 2011) and I found the amount of dark patterns to try and get you to accidentally spend more than you meant so disgusting I swore I'd never do business with them. Being cheap is one thing, trying every trick in the book to try and make money the customer didn't mean to spend is another thing altogether a…

But you know this in advance! Try booking with Swiss, you also get a ton of upsell on insurance, car rental and what not. Then you sit in their business class seat and get an advert screened infront of you that you cannot skip. That makes me angry, not Ryanair.

Me hating Ryanair in no way implies I have net positive feelings about other airlines.

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

#98

Post by miki123211 »

dwood_dev wrote: post #23
quokwok wrote: post #5

This is an odd story. Ryanair doesn't pay commission, so these resellers make money by charging extra fees to unsuspecting customers. I don't know why Ryanair wants to stamp out this practice (which doesn't cost them anything and brings extra sales), but I don't see why they should be prevented from stamping it out.

If you had ever purchased a RyanAir ticket you would understand. You get up charged for everything and have to deselect all the up charges at multiple screens. It is their operating model to sell basically free seats, and profit on upsells. Third parties eliminate a large portion of their upsell pipeline. Ryanair is cheap, they charge extra for everything. But the tradeoff is you get where you are going for cheap if…

Most airports have water fountains, even in Europe where they're not as common.

Whenever I fly, I always take an empty water bottle through security and then fill it in the secure zone.

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

#99

Post by arethuza »

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…

Ryanair used to do some things that were quite remarkably devious - the option to not by travel insurance was in the middle of drop-down list of countries!

To make sure I had remembered that correctly I looked it up and here is a description of it:

https://www.insurancetimes.co.uk/ryanair-to-change-hidden-tr...

NB I've travelled with Ryanair quite a lot and actually don't mind the actual flights but it is wise to manage expectations about the kind of company you are actually dealing with.

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

#100

Post by like_any_other »

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?

> Why isn't Ryanair allowed to prohibit use of their website by resellers?

To give a more general answer than the sibling comment, setting conditions on how a product may be used usually distorts the market, harms buyers, and reduces competition, naturally to the benefit of the one setting the conditions.

For example selling cars that you're not allowed to use for "professional" use, only personal (as Nvidia does with forbidding datacenter use of some of its GPUs, charging extra for it). There was also a self-driving company that forbade buyers from using their cars to create a taxi service, essentially reserving that market for themselves. It may have been Tesla, but I can't find the story right now. In general living in a world where we need manufacturer's permission to do anything is less than ideal.

In this case I'm sure Ryanair would like to spin it as resellers upcharging customers, but by complete coincidence, their practices also prevent someone knowledgeable in all their dark patterns from protecting customers from them by acting as an intermediary.

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