141–150 of 207 posts
Leaving this here, as I couldn't leave it on authors blogpost: I grew accustomed to these choices, so would navigate through them on autopilot. Once I was quick enough to get "We noticed suspicious activity indicating that you're a bot"; had to retry everything from beginning and hesitate when clicking :)
I consider myself kind of sensitive to being forced to do stuff, but Ryanair just doesn't seem that bad. Of course, you get a million offers for things you probably don't need, but I genuinely don't feel like they're trying to scam me. It's like ad-supported Spotify or something. Annoying, but not actively trying to vacuum up my credit card.
Yeah. I fly budget and mid tier all the time, they’re all the same trying to upsell a bazillion services. Just click no/decline/reject all the way, what’s so difficult about it?
Things like this:
> Don’t click “Upgrade to Priority & 2 Cabin Bags”. This one is particularly sneaky as it doesn’t have a “No” option, you must dismiss the window.
I just ordered a pizza from Uber Eats here in Taiwan and was offered the option to "Try Uber One". Clicking "Try now" in fact just signs you up for Uber One. So I suppose you are, technically, trying it. For money. Dirty. I'm Australian and I'm sure that wouldn't be legal.
Uber Taxis has started pushing "Uber Comfort" to the top of the list too, you get a discounted rate that's lower then the standard one. But you have to wait longer, and I assume it signs you up to another premium product. I had "Uber One" for a month then cancelled just before renewal around Christmas. :D
We talked and turns out the driver can earn as little as 1/3 of the price you paid. I asked if tips are also "taxed" like that and apparently no, so I just left a 100% tip.
I'm getting a normal taxi next time.
About 1/3 of their revenue is ancillary (the dark patterns are there to cause ancillary revenue). I just flew from Bournemouth to Alicante on Ryanair for £50. A similar flight in the US (DC to Miami, for example) would be easily 5x that, possibly 7-8x. The dark patterns took me about 10min to click through. Doing the math, that means my time would have to be worth $1500/hr which is higher than the take-home (not bill…
> would have to be worth $1500/hr which is higher than the take-home (not billable) of senior partners at law firms. 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, that's only $3 million/yr. If you've been at OpenAI for 10 years, you'll net more than that this year after they IPO.
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Aer Lingus is a slightly weird case; they have essentially become a budget airline (at least for their European business) to compete with Ryanair, but they haven't yet gotten around to adopting most of the dark patterns.
IIRC Aer Lingus could already be described like that 10-15 years ago. I remember it as cheap but decent.
If you book Ryanair, and your concentration slips up for a second, you WILL make a mistake and it WILL cost you money and/or inconvenience you. Then you might complain about that, and be met with smarmy, smug, smarter-than-you people who insist that they fly with Ryanair all the time and never pay too much, people who can't read shouldn't be allowed to book flights, etc. etc. It's worth avoiding Ryanair just to avoid…
I think a lot of the 'attitude' you see is when people complain publicly about things that are entirely their fault. e.g. "They charged me to print my boarding pass, I didn't know I had to do it digitally" - probably because you ignored the multiple emails they sent you over the last month warning you. Or "my bag was fine on the way over and now they say it's too big" - you never bothered to check the size and got lucky on the way over. All of these types of rules have been in place for decades now and it's always the seem people holding everyone up because they think the rules don't apply to them.
The worst experience I've had with booking _ever_ was recently and it wasn't Ryanair. Whizzair rejected my cards (all of them) and then said the only option was a bank transfer. No fucking way am I doing that. Then my partner tried on her app. Every time she went from the payment screen to her banking app to approve the transaction, she'd go back and the entire app had lost state.
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Thanks, I hadn't seen a price difference like that. I'm unsure about the following. Do you know if flights between London and Belfast be covered under EU airline rules regarding missed and delayed flights?
The UK copy-pasted EU261 into "UK261", which of course covers intra UK flights. That UK law would apply, not EU261 (London and Belfast are both in the UK)
My question was more to do with the European Single Market, and the considerations given to Belfast during Brexit negotiations. That's where my ambiguity came from.
Thanks for the info!
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Eh, we might be all better off if a lack of curiosity was more regularly financially excruciating.
Totally disagree. The cost of every single customer doing this for many different purchases is immense, and a completely unproductive use of time. It would be much better if pricing was as clear as possible so people can make make good purchasing decisions and move onto thinking about things that are actually interesting or useful.
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Maybe I am conditioned but I totally agree. I think what makes this kind of stuff not feel like a dark pattern to me is that they are very up-front about this setup being their business model. They are offering a cheap seat which may even be below their cost if you avoid all the add-ons. The consumer who skips all these add-ons feels smart. They feel like someone else is subsidizing their flight. Perhaps we can even…
The dark patterns are one thing; the criminal customer service once you're booked, however, seems much harder to game. Stories from this thread mean I'd never fly them (admittedly, I'll probably never have the opportunity): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48502935
2. Having utilised wheelchairs at airports you need to go very early. The airports don't have enough staff and they basically have to assign you someone for an hour to get you through security and on to the plane. The times I've done it, it's always airport staff and nothing to do with the airline.
About 1/3 of their revenue is ancillary (the dark patterns are there to cause ancillary revenue). I just flew from Bournemouth to Alicante on Ryanair for £50. A similar flight in the US (DC to Miami, for example) would be easily 5x that, possibly 7-8x. The dark patterns took me about 10min to click through. Doing the math, that means my time would have to be worth $1500/hr which is higher than the take-home (not bill…
Great. Now quit bachelor partying in Spain before they throw objects at you. I thought East Europeans were the worst tourists before I enountered the English and Russians. The elderly are usually fine.