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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

#111

Post by kalleboo »

clan wrote: post #102
andy99 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Almost. To such a degree I would call it a very dark pattern. There is however one very good argument for. Currencies with very high volatility. Think extreme inflation. If you accept their conversion you know what you pay in your own currency. You have then mitigated a risk. If your own currency is volatile then you might gamble and win. If the foreign currency is volatile you will usually win by paying in the forei…

Historically (like, 15+ years ago when I did the SEA backpacking circuit) there have been some cards with ridiculous fees for international transactions. Like, a flat $10 per transaction. Back then when I saw prompts like this on card terminals I assumed it was targeted at those cardholders (or people who had heard stories of those and were unsure and worried what they would be charged and wanted to be reassured by a number in their home currency)

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

#112

Post by anovikov »

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…

In fact i find Ryanair booking page the most smooth in user experience out of all major airlines. I am mostly tied to Aegean because i have a top loyalty level, and it is incredibly frustrating to go through extremely slow loading pages, page after page, to do every trivial task, and having to enter SMS OTP on every step. With Ryanair is't one and done, i barely remember it. And every action is blazing fast, pages load in a blink, no spinners.

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

#113

Post by starfallg »

robrenaud wrote: post #106
BunsanSpace wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Paying the local currency with your own cards seems simple and works?

Yes, zero Forex fees cards work. But the terminal detects that your home currency is different to the local currency and you still have to choose the right option.

For example, just the other day I fat fingered the screen and chose the wrong currency.

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

#114

Post by gs17 »

arethuza wrote: post #99
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 man…

> However he disagreed that the ‘don’t insure me’ option was hidden, and said that 98% of Ryanair’s passengers could “find a way to decline insurance”.

I'm not surprised, but still a bit impressed by the ability to lie like this. Somehow I doubt even 9% of their passengers would know it was between Denmark and Finland.

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

#115

Post by embedding-shape »

hluska wrote: post #89
embedding-shape wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can’t figure out why you’re being simultaneously argumentative and dismissive. But you’re being argumentative and dismissive while talking about a totally different subject than the person you’re replying to. EU citizens would have reason to be concerned about this. It’s not clear how an EU citizen would deal with this nor is it clear this would even be prohibited since there have been some recent rulings that mudd…

I guess if I disagree it seems argumentative, not sure how to disagree without others believing it's argumentative, it kind of is by definition. It isn't my intention. Regardless.

> > > Hmm the guardian has gone "accept tracking or subscribe".

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

> UK site. Not in the EU any more.

This is the initial context for me in this conversation. As I understand things, whether UK is in the EU or not, they can still have laws active in the country that were introduced while the UK was in the EU.

Then someone said:

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

Which I guess is where I lose track a bit of what the actual subject is. We're talking about UK laws, that they may or may not still have as active in the UK, but at that point I already suspect that they're talking about some "EU-wide laws" or similar instead, which for me muddy the waters.

> Who's going to open a case and where?

Then this appears, which has obvious answers; if you're a UK citizen and someone broke UK law, you report to UK authorities. If you're from $EU_COUNTRY, then you report it in $EU_COUNTRY.

If you're in $EU_COUNTRY and UK company breaks your national laws, same applies as for any non-EU country, you report it in $EU_COUNTRY.

Going back to the initial question, can The Guardian ask "let us track you, or pay to visit this website"? For entities covered by the DMA, the answer is clear: No (so Meta cannot do this, which is why they're changing it). Otherwise, the answer isn't so clear, yet.

Now I don't know what I'm being dismissive about, I feel like I did my best following how the subject seemingly changed across comments, but I can acknowledge I lost track of the initial questions, for that I apologize. I guess I loose track of the discussion as the questions seems to get less specific, rather than more specific.

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

#116

Post by notahacker »

Kwpolska wrote: post #87
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 .

Legacy carriers run a hub-and-spoke model. Ryanair specialises in direct flights. If I can choose between a direct flight with Ryanair, or a connecting flight with a legacy airline, I'm going to choose the former to limit time spent in airports.

You can get point-to-point connections with legacy airlines all over Europe (the hub and spoke model means you can also get onward connections including to non-European destinations). Might not be exactly the same airport pair (and there are sometimes good reasons to prefer the second tier airport Ryanair flies too rather than the main city airport), but there aren't many city pairs you're forced to use Ryanair or a connection, provided you're happy paying more money and flying at a different time.

But yeah, you're not going to be flying Qantas or Emirates, you're going to be flying BA or Aer Lingus or Air France or even another LCC

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

#117

Post by chrisjj »

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…

> Third parties eliminate a large portion of their upsell pipeline.

This is nonsense. Third parties cannot provide extra luggage space, priority boarding etc.

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

#118

Post by Stevvo »

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…

A bus is generally a far more pleasant experience. When taking bus you are not herded like cattle into pens based on priority queue status. When a bus has technical issue, they don't hold you hostage on-board for hours to avoid paying compensation. in Europe, a long-distance bus has the comfort of a business class airplane seat.

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

#119

Post by raverbashing »

RankingMember wrote: post #96
andy99 wrote: post #8

Earlier 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.

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.

Yup

I can never remember which option should I pick. And to be really honest I don't remember if I tried to see if it matched my bank's rate or not

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