Ryanair threatens to cancel passenger tickets

[Clair]

The no frills carrier says that it will refuse to honour any online bookings

from Monday, unless they have been made through its own website.

[AnOther]

....as opposed to booking how..............?

 

[ams]

screenscraping web sites

 

ams

[Clair]

as opposed to booking via price comparison websites (click for details).

[AnOther]

I had no idea that it was possible to book RA via those routes. Why would you, surely it could only be more expensive [8-)]

Live and learn [;-)]

 

[AnOther]

Just been reading the relevant articles and it stinks. I appreciate Ryanair's point and if he wants to pursue this course then there has to be a cutoff date but surely the honourable thing to do would be to sell the affected passengers new tickets at the same price they have already paid and not as on the day, after all, anything over and above that represents pure profit and would be immoral.

But then honour and morals do not seem to be Mr O's strong suits.

I forsee riots at the airports [:-))]

 

[JMB]

I say good on you Ryanair. Protect your profits and your shareholders interests. If you want to book a ticket through a dodgy third party then you have to accept the consequenses.

[Stefan]

I don't have a dog in this fight but I have to ask who says these sites are dodgy? That's a pretty serious accusation

These comparison sites seem to allow customers to shop around for the cheapest flights....and just perhaps that is the motive for Ryanair's ban.  

[ams]

I do not believe that is the case.

 

I would imagine it is simply commercial. If one books on these sites then Ryanair is unable to sell you its additional services, such as insurance, car hire, hotels etc. In addition these sites cause huge delays in the Ryanairs computer systems by trawling through the systems.

 

At the end of the day the custemer pays more than if they went directly to the company site.

 

Some thing that I noticed, with the so called revamp of the booking system, they seem to have eliminated the "find lowest cost" feature, now it is necessary to plough through the system to get the lowest fare, leaving one exposed to the constant barrage of advertisments.

 

Still if one wants to get a bargin fare then it needs lots of patience, or wn the euro millions next week and then good by, welcome first class all the way. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

ams

 

 

[Ron Avery]

Has anyone actually booked a Ryanair flight directly through an agency site?

All the travel sites that show Ryanair as an option, and few actually do, usually take you to the Ryanair website when you click on the link anyway..

[dave21478]

Yeah, I have always been referred directly to the ryanair website from the comparison sites I use.

 

I can understand why he is doing this, but its completely the wrong way to enforce it. There are going to be a LOT of unhappy and angry people at checkin desks when this comes into effect, and its not really their fault. This is going to ruin many peoples holidays.

But then, all publicity, no matter whether good or bad, is what he wants to generate, and he is doing that well with this story.

 

[AnOther]

Still not a word in the news about this. I can only assume that this must be because the numbers potentially involved are so miniscule in relation to overall passenger bookings.

The Telegraph article mentions around 1000 bookings per day world wide which, if spread out over every airport that RA services, becomes statistically insignificant when they are flying what, 20m passengers PA ?

All of which makes Mr O's mean spirited stance even more indefensible, how many of those 1000 will have wanted to book hotels and/or cars anyway [:'(]

 

[MrCanary]

Ernie - it was mentioned very briefly on BBC TV's Look East news this morning. Other than that, I have not seen or read it anywhere else.

[gosub]

[quote user="Mel"]Ernie - it was mentioned very briefly on BBC TV's Look East news this morning. Other than that, I have not seen or read it anywhere else.[/quote]

It's just been on GMTV, it looks like people are travelling normally today, the fun starts tomorrow.

[Iceni]

Screen scraping without the owners permission to me is almost like theft. Google stops every site it can from doing this.

You have a legitamate site - someone from XXXXcountry scrapes your site for details and puts it on their own with an extra booking charge - which I 'think' is the problem. The extra booking charge is on an iffy site and they have no rights from RA to do this or take bookings.

Imagine if this was done in bulk? You who have paid your fare to RA and been delayed by an accident on the road could find when you arrived that your seat had gone to one of these people? This sort of thing was common in other areas a few years ago and I had a whole site copied (not scraped) but that person got about 4 years of our work to increase her standing in our work community.

Site scraping is copying is theft in my book. The unwary lose out, but when did they not. You say you are taken to the RA site - are you sure? I was gaily putting my details into Paypal when I realised it was a scraped or Phishing site and I have been dealing with this sort of thing in the work environment for years.

Don't blame RA - they did nothing wrong. If it had been BA or Lufthansa they would have done the same thing. They are NOT RA  issued tickets.

This really is Di

[BJSLIV]

How do Screen scrapers acting as price comparison sites differ from the many insurance and electricity price comparison sites?

Aren't they performing the same function?

Are you saying that the likes of moneycomparison.com are acting like thieves?

 

[La Guerriere]

I am alone in finding price comparison sites really really irritating ? You want to buy something or book something, you Google, and find yourself in one of these blasted comparison sites. I think they should be banned.[:@]

[Théière]

I booked through a web site and had to pay extra for using a debit card which cost the same as a credit card. Oh that was Ryanair!

lower card costs by using Electron card from the post office.

Also I have noticed that the airport taxes are not always the same, is that the revenue & customs or Ryanair being generous?

Sometimes I do not use the flights I have booked, I want to reclaim the airport tax as I did not leave the country I should not have to pay departure tax, does anyone know how?

Buzz went out of business, hope Ryanair does not make the same mistake.

Has anyone noticed the price hike for Hertz car rental? Used to pay £135.00 ish currently they would like me to pay £280.00 ish.

[AnOther]

[quote user="teapot"]I want to reclaim the airport tax as I did not leave the country I should not have to pay departure tax, does anyone know how?[/quote]Forget it, it's never going to happen. Even if you get a response from them they'll just spin you a line such as the handling fee exceeds what you're trying to reclaim.

[Mik from LA]

I believe that the French word for "flight" and for "theft" are the same.

[Ron Avery]

And your point is what exactly??  Do you think that a flight for 10€ is theft as opposed to BA and the bigboys who charge 20 times as much plus a fuel surcharge for a one hour flight?

If a customer decides not to fly for some spurious and not enforced reason, just why should there be any refund?  Try getting a refund from the ferry companies on any "saver" ticket[:P]

[Stefan]

Ron, in the interests of credibility at very least stick a "sometimes" in your statement as in: "the bigboys who sometimes charge 20 times as much"....I frequently fly from the France to the UK, have a choice of airlines from my region, including  BA, Air France, Easyjet and Ryanair, and if I run a comparison I rarely if ever see differences in fares of "20 times". It's not unknown that one of the afformentioned bigboys has given me the cheapest deal ( including all the charges/surcharges).

Fuel surcharge: Agreed Ryanair has no such thing, but Ryanair's policy on fuel hedging over the last few months has been somewhat entertaining to watch - somewhere in Ryanair's fare structure you either are, or certainly will be, paying for the hike in the price of oil.

 

[Théière]

No not a refund of the ticket, a refund of the tax paid, you know the stuff that goes to the revenue not Ryanair.

[Ron Avery]

T Pot Why should you get any refund, didn't you choose not to fly?  If you follow your arguement that you are entitled to claim back taxes try claiming back VAT on ferry journeys not undertaken. 

Stefan, you are indeed lucky that you have the services of BA Easy Jet AirFrance and Ryanair and can take your pick, the rest of us are eternally grateful that Ryanair fly from an airport near us.  I was looking at Toulouse to London for a price comparison,  not served by Ryanair unfortunately but in comparison to say Rodez  to London the big carriers rarely and indeed including EasyJet have anything less than 100 to 400€ for a single flight, but you are right I should qualfy that comment with "typically".

The other month I wanted to go to Manchester for a funeral, not the sort of thing that you can plan, unfortunately London was not an option so Ryanair at £80 including taxes from  Rodez was out of the question, and the cheapest that I could get to Manchester was £600 return each with no direct flight and a minimum journey of 5 hours with KLM.

[chrisb]

The story was covered on CHannel4 news tonight.

Someone from Bravofly was quoted as saying that they would continue to sell Ryanair tickets regardless of the ban. I would have thought that this amounted to fraud - surely you can't sell something to a person knowing that it won't be usable? (unless you're Microsoft of course)