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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

#71

Post by beAbU »

jonathantf2 wrote: post #69
jakubmazanec wrote: post #11

Just before Covid when everything was cancelled I booked some tickets through Kiwi and it was the worst decision - I spent year (!) getting my money back. I'm not saying Ryanair is a good company, but for their flight (i.e. one of those which I booked through Kiwi) they reimbursed me immediately. The second flight was EasyJet and they said they already sent the refund to Kiwi, while Kiwi said they got nothing. In the…

I booked direct on Ryanair.com and they refused to refund our tickets because the flight technically ran even though we weren’t legally allowed to leave our homes. Lesson learned, I’ve got travel insurance now

Have you tried a credit card charge back?

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

#72

Post by baq »

dcminter wrote: post #25
exasperaited wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. O'Leary is an antihero at best and a villain at worst.

He's very good at marketing his airline (often with outrage inspiring press releases) and very good at finding ways to squeeze more blood out of the stone of budget travellers. I don't really care whether he's "good" or "bad" but I would like to see the regulators shut down more of these aggressive tactics as they emerge.

Bezos invented 'your margin is my opportunity' (at least that's where I heard it first), but O'Leary has that phrase in his blood instead of hemoglobin.

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

#73

Post by testing22321 »

hexbin010 wrote: post #68
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…

Ryanair weren't just a bystander in this race to the bottom, they were primary drivers of creating it, along with Easyjet, undercutting competition and forcing everyone else to become a low cost carrier. They're a total success commercially you can't deny it, but my god what a horrible experience for everyone involved, passengers and staff alike

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 .

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

#74

Post by Satam »

hexbin010 wrote: post #68
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…

Ryanair weren't just a bystander in this race to the bottom, they were primary drivers of creating it, along with Easyjet, undercutting competition and forcing everyone else to become a low cost carrier. They're a total success commercially you can't deny it, but my god what a horrible experience for everyone involved, passengers and staff alike

I disliked them a bit, but then they stopped flying to a certain destination. I quickly realized that the other airlines were 3x more expensive. I realized I actually cared about price much more than any possible extra leg room or other perks, and that their super cheap flights are quality by itself.

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

#75

Post by halapro »

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…

The funny part is how most OTAs are pretty awful with addons themselves. I know for a fact that certain OTAs will sell tickets at a loss hoping you trip up on one of their checkboxes, like the 15€ automatic checkin service many offer.

I just now booked a ticket on gotogate, paid 80 euro and received a receipt from ITA airways for 120 euro. They apparently lost 40 euro on this sale, I only had to click "no" on about 18 questions.

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

#76

Post by rob74 »

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.

When O'Leary accuses others of "scamming and ripping off unsuspecting consumers", what he really means is that only Ryanair should have the right to scam and rip off Ryanair passengers...

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

#77

Post by 0_____0 »

dwood_dev wrote: post #64
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.

ATMs all over are like this. Very annoying. I have to decline conversation all the time. The ATM conversation rate is usually 15-25% markup. No thanks, my bank charges nothing, just passes on the Visa 1% fee for fx.

*conversion

Although it is amusing to imagine an ATM that accosts you verbally with smalltalk when you use it.

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

#78

Post by philipwhiuk »

quokwok wrote: post #39
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…

It's easy to book a Ryanair ticket without being upsold. You select the ticket, probably add a bag for about £40, skip the car rental and hotels screens etc, then book. What's the problem?

It's during the "etc" that I start to get pissed off personally. YMMV

(The number of upsells is such that it made a song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id-zzOGnN6A )

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

#79

Post by hexbin010 »

testing22321 wrote: post #73
hexbin010 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ryanair weren't just a bystander in this race to the bottom, they were primary drivers of creating it, along with Easyjet, undercutting competition and forcing everyone else to become a low cost carrier. They're a total success commercially you can't deny it, but my god what a horrible experience for everyone involved, passengers and staff alike

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 .

Firstly Ryanair don't fly the routes Qantas and Emirates do, so you have no idea what you're on about comparing them

Second, Ryanair et al have dragged all the previous decent airlines down with them into the gutter and even paying more doesn't really get you service of years gone by. The only way they could compete was by slashing costs and prices to appear near the same ranking in the search results. You don't really get what you pay for flying short haul in Europe. Even business is mostly "low cost economy plus" rather than true business class in Europe

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

#80

Post by amiga386 »

quokwok wrote: post #59
amiga386 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're using Ryanair's own-issued payment card, to avoid the mandatory fees it charges for every other payment option? You forgot to mention picking the "No I don't need travel insurance" option shoved in the middle of the list of travel insurance prices, which defaults to you buying travel insurance from Ryanair. Do you already have their spyware app installed and tracking you on your phone, to avoid being charge…

You're a few years out of date. You don't get charged extra for using any credit card. And clicking "I don't need insurance" is easy.

It was there the last time I used Ryanair (which is one time too often IHMO)

They didn't choose to remove those fees - they were legally compelled to: https://www.dw.com/en/german-court-forbids-ryanair-from-char...

Dark patterns are still sketchy and unconscionable, regardless of how easy you find them to get past. They're put there by unscrupulous businesses to catch some people -- can you say no Ryanair customer has ever accidentally purchased Ryanair insurance they didn't need?

Similarly, their latest wheeze, that you skipped over, is to compel people to use their "app". The trading standards regulators need to smack Ryanair about the head with a cricket bat and again force them not to apply such bollocks.

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/ryanair...

> Indeed, when I checked in for my 12 November flight to Germany a day ahead, I was told: “Make sure to print and bring your boarding passes to the airport or access them through the Ryanair app” and even “boarding passes must be printed for use”.

> But Ryanair says those are no longer acceptable. Oddly, though, you can use a paper boarding pass that is printed out at the airport by ground staff working for Ryanair – at no charge.

Such utter bollocks. They are totally capable of accepting paper boarding passes (or screenshots or PDFs of boarding passes shown on a phone -- better airlines let you download a PDF from their website once checked in, and you can put it on your phone or print it out; no proprietary app needed), they just want to compel you to install their app and get tracked and dinged and marketed at and upsold up the wazoo with zero benefit to you. It is not necessary at all, and I will continue to never travel with them.

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