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And a last, most sneaky one: At checkout if you pay with credit/debit card don't use Ryanair's "guaranteed exhange rate" if the cost of the flight is not in your card's currency (ticket by default, at least two clicks to find and untick it). That's ~6% gap from mid-market exhange rate, the worst cards do better than that.
That “Don’t Insure Me” option hidden in the middle of a country list is pure evil. I’m used to seeing dark patterns everywhere but that’s a first for me. From where I stand, it’s not fair to charge the hell out of people who fall for these tricks while giving steep discounts to the ones who don’t. Maybe there’s a “fool me once” aspect to Ryanair’s shenanigans, so at least their impact might be limited somehow.
Eh, we might be all better off if a lack of curiosity was more regularly financially excruciating.
I don't really have a problem with offering discounts to members of X program, or if insurance is pre-selected.
But the advertised price should be inclusive of everything (taxes, fees, charges, etc) and the price available to the general product before membership-exclusive pricing.
So if you advertise a product for $100 then any normal person can pay $100 and get it for that.
Want to sell it from cheaper to members of your reward program? Go ahead. But it can't be the most prominent price advertised for it.
You want to sell insurance pre-selected? No problem but again the default advertised price needs to include it. Even if they can opt out for a cheaper price.
There are sure to be edge cases. But the point being is that the price you advertise most prominently needs to be the all-inclusive price any member of the public can get without having to fight to select the correct option.
We don't accept misleading and deceptive practices in other areas, why do we let airlines, hotels and hire car places do it?
It's amazing; I take maybe five or six Ryanair flights a year, and every single time checkin is worse than the time before. Unfortunately, they're often the only option from Dublin->wherever with reasonable times; unless I want to go at five in the morning or something I am stuck with them.
And this the big problem. Normally, competition would take care of this. Someone would come along and offer a better service. Unfortunately there are many instances of no competition - which then leads to abuse.
Ryanair is genuinely a good product. You get what you pay for. The website reflects their corporate attitude, which i think is okay.
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…
Stories from this thread mean I'd never fly them (admittedly, I'll probably never have the opportunity):
In Europe, it is pretty common to continue onwards to your actual destination by train!
The funny thing about our era is that there is no censorship on corporations, but the state is very active in censoring individuals. Sometimes I feel that legal action is needed against the UX dark patterns of these corporations
And a last, most sneaky one: At checkout if you pay with credit/debit card don't use Ryanair's "guaranteed exhange rate" if the cost of the flight is not in your card's currency (ticket by default, at least two clicks to find and untick it). That's ~6% gap from mid-market exhange rate, the worst cards do better than that.
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Can we stop with all this Newspeak, already? Words should flow with the conversationalists, not political spindoctor lexicologists.
I want to remind everyone just how bad of a deal travel insurance is. Yes, there are instances where travel insurance makes sense or may be practically a requirement. Health and/or evacuation insurance for foreign travel and/or cruising may be practically a necessity. You don’t want to be paying tens of thousands of dollars when you need a helicopter to take you off your cruise ship to a hospital. But if your primary…
> Rental cars That's a whole new can of worms though. Their scams can be a lot more expensive, and are usually after the fact (although they'll try them at the pickup counter too). It's one of those things I will specifically always arrange through a third party that covers insurance as well, which is really an insurance against the rental companies scams.