Has Ryanair’s commercialism gone too far in a Covid-19 world?

I may not make myself popular by confessing that I have always quietly admired Ryanair’s willingness to buck authority and stick to its ultra-low fare approach, which is funded by a very aggressive attitude to baggage and admin fees.

After all, it boils down to customer choice and Ryanair’s undoubted success has been driven by customers seeing flights as a bus service and buying primarily based on price, with little concern for what happens if something goes wrong and amendments are needed.

However, my position has changed radically during Covid-19 because of the unreasonable and potentially illegal dirty tricks that Ryanair have deployed on my personal bookings. And yes, after my earlier confession I realise I may deserve all that I have got!

The first incident happened right at the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak in March, when I tried to move forward by a year, my 14th of March departure to Barcelona, booked to attend the Inspire Tech Ski Trip. The Ryanair site confirmed that free movement was allowed, and indeed new flights could be searched, however, the site was “conveniently” broken at this stage stopping any flights being moved online. After trying for hours to get through to customer services, I and every other trip member trying to move flights, were forced to let them fly empty, as no refunds were available at that stage.

During the full Covid-19 lockdown, Ryanair was forced to allow customers to cancel or move flights to future dates. But actually, getting a refund from Ryanair has been proven extremely difficult, with a minimum 120 days delay and little or no communication post clicking the “Blackhole” refund button (illegal under EU261)

On Thursday 9th July, I was due to fly with Ryanair to Ibiza for a friend’s 50th Birthday weekend, retuning again with Ryanair on Sunday. A week before, I received an email telling me they outbound flight was cancelled and with no flights available on the Friday or Saturday, I was forced to abandon the trip.

Even though it was Ryanair’s decision to cancel the outbound flight, in legal terms Ryanair had sold me two individual flights and therefore the fact that I could no longer use the inbound was my problem. To be fair, although annoying, this is still a better policy than those of traditional schedule carriers, who automatically cancel a return flight if you don’t use any element of the outbound!

Ryanair did explicitly say on its site that I could amend this cancelled flight free of charge, however, when I did try to move the weekend out a year, I was still charged 4 X ￡45 or ￡180 amendment fee. Hence, Ryanair charged me for moving a flight they had cancelled, which even if legal, which I don’t think it is, steps over the reasonableness line for me.

More importantly, how can Ryanair justify amendments fees of ￡180 for an online transaction completed by the user in a matter of minutes. Where exactly is the supposed Admin cost for Ryanair?

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2019/04/holiday-firms-warned-over-unfair-cancellation-rules/

In a pre-Covid-19 world, customers may have assumed that their flights would rarely need to be changed, but in the post-Covid-19 world, with millions of Ryanair customers having faced months of delays getting a refund or unreasonable amendment fees, things will have changed. Having been stung once, many will now hesitate before booking Ryanair’s supposed “ultra-low fares”, when there is a high chance of further disruption to travel plans.

All of the above charges may be argued by Ryanair to be legal “commerciality”, however, the final dirty trick they seemed to have pulled on me, in my opinion, is a straight theft of my money.

On checking the email confirmation for my original flight, I had paid ￡531.96 (Bank statement confirms this), but when calculating the increase in price in order to move the flights, Ryanair only credited me with an opening balance of ￡431.96, thereby increasing the difference in cost to be paid by ￡100! Bluntly, Ryanair appear to have deliberately under accounted by ￡100 and I cannot see any legally justifiable reasons for deducting ￡100.

Although I have written to Ryanair’s customer service department and have escalated the matter to their PR department via travel journalist Ian Taylor, I still have not received any explanation or response. I provided screenshots of every page of the booking process.

I deliberately completed the booking, so that I had a legally documented booking trail showing the entire process, as I wonder how many other Ryanair customers, will not have noticed if Ryanair had not accurately brought forward the correct balance paid on the original booking. My experience may be a one-off system error, but I somehow doubt it.

At the moment I’m afraid I believe Ryanair’s commercialism has gone far too far when it comes to the airline’s amendment process. This is damaging them badly in the eyes of direct customers and travel agents who historically have always sold many more flights than Ryanair realise.

When this is combined with a “black hole” refund, process taking more than 120 days, the motto “buyer beware” has never been truer for Ryanair.