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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

#241

Post by dasil003 »

onli wrote: post #12
doikor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't anything new though. Been like that for the last 15 years at least. Always pay in the local currency (your bank/visa/mastercard will give you a better rate then the merchant)

It seems to be built into the credit card terminals. So it's a visa thing, not on the shop. I had that with very small shops in non-touristy areas of Mexico where it was absolutely clear to not be a scam attempts by the shops owner. They had no idea what the terminal asked.

What makes you think Visa is the only player in the payments chain between the merchant and your bank?

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

#242

Post by onli »

dasil003 wrote: post #241
onli wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be built into the credit card terminals. So it's a visa thing, not on the shop. I had that with very small shops in non-touristy areas of Mexico where it was absolutely clear to not be a scam attempts by the shops owner. They had no idea what the terminal asked.

What makes you think Visa is the only player in the payments chain between the merchant and your bank?

The visa logo printed on the terminals where this behaviour occurred.

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

#243

Post by xandrius »

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…

Either you got used to their evolved dark patterns or you haven't booked with them recently.

I was also Pro-Ryanair: they allowed to see friends and family across Europe with a student budget.

Now, it's an 8-step booking process where you try to figure out what is actually optional and avoidable and what's included in the advertised fare. Depending on the airport, they threaten to charge you if you don't print your boarding pass beforehand. Depending on the flight, they become pretty aggressive in weighing your carry on, mainly to try to catch you out and make an extra 50 euro.

The company went from no frills budget airline to antagonistic and aggro where literally anything is cranked up to 11 to extract value from you.

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

#244

Post by lucketone »

expedition32 wrote: post #233
tchalla wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dark patterns favor the patient readers who are able to think through and make informed choices. That wouldn’t be most of the younger tech literates.

I made the mistake of not checking a bag when I ordered at the website. Had to pay 70 euro dropping off my suitcase at the airport. It's a mistake that I will only make once and never again!

Like a bootcamp training.

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

#245

Post by scottyah »

rkomorn wrote: post #202
scottyah wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the true advantage of a competitive marketplace, your parent commenter votes yes to dark patterns where the person who can dodge them wins, and you vote for honest, open checkouts for a higher price. Luckily, you two don't have to agree and as long as there enough of you, both will coexist. Imagine if you had to agree and compromise on a single airline?

> This is the true advantage of a competitive marketplace No thanks. There can be a world where we don't let companies behave in the most abject ways possible. > Imagine if you had to agree and compromise on a single airline? This is literally a "the bar is in hell" take.

We already live in a world where we don't let companies behave in the most abject ways possible. You just want to force your own values on everyone, and we've already seen that people are at odds with them. You replied to someone who demonstrated their liking to that method, yet you STILL think only your way is right.

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

#246

Post by riffraff »

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 Will always be grateful to Ryanair for having allowed young me to travel cheaply, and I accepted most dark patterns, but I draw the line at the fact they appear to force you to book near seats when traveling with minors, even tho, by law, they have to allocate seats to you like that.

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

#247

Post by elAhmo »

anonymousDan wrote: post #170

I will always fly Ryanair ahead of other low cost carriers in Europe as unlike easyJet for example they don't overbook. The most painful experience I've had was to arrive at an airport with a young family and get all the way to the easyJet flight gate to be told the flight is overbooked. And unlike the US where this starts an auction it's basically tough luck. Should be outright fraud in my opinion.

I honestly don't know would I be able to keep it together if something like that happened to me and my family. Definitely should be fraud and compensated VERY HEAVILY if it happens to someone due to a technical glitch or something similar.

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

#248

Post by riffraff »

im3w1l wrote: post #223
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.

You can use keyboard to navigate a dropdown box by typing initial letters.

The problem is you would expect the option for "no insurance" to be separated from the rest or at least not be under the letter "d".

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

#249

Post by elAhmo »

mixu wrote: post #150

Good! If you are wondering what this looks like in practice, I booked 3 flights this year with Ryanair and EVERY single time my tickets (directly purchased from their site) were flagged as "made through a third-party travel agent". The "verification" workflow is super obtrusive: either pay them to use facial recognition technology or do slower verification (which I assume would be too slow if you saw this last minute…

Ryanair.com tickets were flagged as such? I can't believe this, have used the website in the past two years 10 or so times, never had this.

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

#250

Post by scottyah »

gxs wrote: post #200

Ryanair heavily advertises on their site that their tickets are refundable It turns out, they aren’t - there is a ton of fine print and if you happen to qualify they “refund” you in miles Both in the US and Europe, it’d be great if the government used some of their overreaching powers they use to pass laws to spy on us to also pass laws to protect us as consumers for products and services across the board It would be…

It's just a cat and mouse game. Some intern comes up with a brilliant way to shaft people, a VP takes that idea and forces devs to work overtime on it, it generates a lot of revenue (and fat bonus for the VP), then the lawyers on both sides to get to spend a lot of time slowly arguing with each other while taking money from the company and taxpayers. By the time it gets to this point, the company already has five other schemes in the works.
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