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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

#151

Post by free652 »

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.

This is pretty much everytime in Europe, not sure if the local terminals or the chase chip card always prompts me to pay with 1) USD 2) EURO

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

#153

Post by xp84 »

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 funny thing is that, at least for American consumers, there’s a good chance you’ll get mildly scammed by using your card in a foreign currency due to a 3%—4% junk fee that is common (I’d estimate 80% of non-premium cards have it). So the discovery of the “let us, the merchant, convert for you” scam has allowed merchants/payment networks to in some cases “steal” the scam from the card issuer (the card issuer then won’t take a fee if it’s in USD, but someone takes a fat margin on the currency). They’re all scumbags, all looking for ways to grift.

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

#154

Post by Izikiel43 »

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.

It’s been like that when visiting Europe for years now.

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

#155

Post by tyre »

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…

I remember when they were seeking approval to provide blow jobs on flights (free in business class iirc.) The only thing that they won’t up charge. They even tried to get approval to charge for bathroom access.

Wild company, but they are entirely on brand.

To be fair, consumers have driven airlines this way. They’ve shown that they’ll buy based almost entirely on price and suffer any amount of agony in exchange.

I just don’t find basic economy or early flights or shitty airlines worth the bad stress.

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

#156

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

tehjoker wrote: post #146
gs17 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Even in that quote 2% of people are possibly scammed out of their money, which is probably tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

An unknown percentage of people actually want the insurance. If only 2% bought it despite such an extreme dark pattern, the 98-percentile of customers is much better than I would have expected.

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

#158

Post by xp84 »

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. Reminds me of how my dad would do his taxes at H&R Block, and then every year take out their “refund anticipation loan” (despite not having some big urgent expense). They deduct their overpriced tax prep fee and a healthy 150%APR interest payment from the proceeds but you get the money same day. You could just not do that and still have your refund in like a week. The APR is unconscionable given they did the taxes — they can be nearly certain your refund will arrive. But they just gloss over those details, probably by saying “Do you want your refund today, or wait on the IRS? With the Today option you can also just deduct your tax prep fee from the refund and not pay out of pocket.” I have a feeling they get a LOT of people with that scam.

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

#159

Post by tyre »

free652 wrote: post #151
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.

This is pretty much everytime in Europe, not sure if the local terminals or the chase chip card always prompts me to pay with 1) USD 2) EURO

ATMs do this as well. Always decline the bank doing the conversion.

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

#160

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

latexr wrote: post #145
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…

To me, their general attitude and invasiveness is what puts me off. https://noyb.eu/en/want-book-ryanair-flight-prepare-face-sca...

My one and only experience with Ryanair was that they were rude and hostile even in places where they weren't trying to fleece you. From in-your face rude signs (official, corporate designed ones, not something printed from Word by a random employee), to a UI where you needed to concatenate strings in order to craft a valid input (something like "enter your credit card number, followed by #, followed by the MMYY validity date"). Maybe that was to make people fail checkin and force them to pay for checkin at the counter, but I think it was early in the booking flow, i.e. where they had no incentive to make it hard.
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