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

260 points by aquir 10mo ago

aquir 10mo ago
https://archive.ph/eipFD https://archive.ph/eipFD
aquir 10mo ago
TLDR "Ryanair’s tactics included rolling out facial recognition procedures for people who bought tickets via a third party, claiming that was necessary for security. It then “totally or intermittently blocked booking attempts by travel agencies”, including by blocking payment methods and mass-deleting accounts. The airline then “imposed partnership agreements” on agencies which banned sales of Ryanair flights in combinations with other carriers, and blocked bookings to force them to sign up. Only in April this year did it allow agencies’ websites to link up with its own services, allowing effective competition. The competition authority said Ryanair’s actions had “blocked, hindered or made such purchases more difficult and/or economically or technically burdensome when combined with flights operated by other carriers and/or other tourism and insurance services”.
dcminter 10mo ago
"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 got to the payment page and they tried to coax me into using my local currency instead of GBP and hid a £20 spread in the exchange rate I rage quit. I should have known better even then, but now I will only use them if I have literally no other choice. With luck that means "never." I'm always happy to see the various EU competition authorities pushing back on this kind of thing.
- andy99 10mo ago
  > 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.
  - dcminter 10mo ago
    Point of sale terminals also do this when travelling - it wasn't especially surprising, just one straw too many. Of course foreign exchange offices have been doing this scam since forever ("no fees!")... --- Edit - note that with a bureau d'exchange my objection is not that they charge for the exchange; clearly that is the exact business that they are in. It's the "no fees" etc. marketing that hides from the less astute punters exactly how (and how much) they are paying for the service. I'd like to see that outlawed and direct costs of the exchange up front (e.g. "Exchange £100 for $121.5 at a cost of £10 compared to the base rate")
    - rantallion 10mo ago
      > direct costs of the exchange up front Isn't that fairly easy to estimate? If they're showing you a buy rate and a sell rate, you know the interbank rate is going to be pretty much halfway between the two. I don't think anyone's changing money and thinking the bureau isn't profiting.
      - dcminter 10mo ago
        I beg to differ. All their verbiage about not charging fees is absolutely intended to create that impression in less educated customers.
      - xp84 10mo ago
        Honestly, to me the problem seems more like people don’t know they don’t have to use those things. Just pulling money out of an ATM (and yes, declining the currency conversion scam there as well) is a much more efficient and cheap way to acquire the local currency. People use these desks because they think that’s just “what it costs.”
quokwok 10mo ago
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.
- notahacker 10mo ago
  Ryanair (and to an extent other LCCs) generally doesn't like ticket sales through resellers because a substantial part of its profit margin comes from upsell of add-ons and partner services during the booking/reservation process
  - quokwok 10mo ago
    Thanks, that makes sense. Why isn't Ryanair allowed to prohibit use of their website by resellers?
    - mandelken 10mo ago
      I guess because travel agencies need to be able to show customers the most economical flights? By prohibiting agencies on their website, they can not give consumers (through their agents) the ability to compare different choices.
    - like_any_other 10mo ago
      > Why isn't Ryanair allowed to prohibit use of their website by resellers? To give a more general answer than the sibling comment, setting conditions on how a product may be used usually distorts the market, harms buyers, and reduces competition, naturally to the benefit of the one setting the conditions. For example selling cars that you're not allowed to use for "professional" use, only personal (as Nvidia does with forbidding datacenter use of some of its GPUs, charging extra for it). There was also a self-driving company that forbade buyers from using their cars to create a taxi service, essentially reserving that market for themselves. It may have been Tesla, but I can't find the story right now. In general living in a world where we need manufacturer's permission to do anything is less than ideal. In this case I'm sure Ryanair would like to spin it as resellers upcharging customers, but by complete coincidence, their practices also prevent someone knowledgeable in all their dark patterns from protecting customers from them by acting as an intermediary.
nottorp 10mo ago
Hmm the guardian has gone "accept tracking or subscribe". I wonder how that works out for them. I also wonder if the time is ripe for some company to disrupt advertising by simply doing what google did on launch in 2000.
- clickety_clack 10mo ago
  I didn’t know you were allowed to do that with cookies.
  - nottorp 10mo ago
    UK site. Not in the EU any more.
    - embedding-shape 10mo ago
      Did they really already get rid of all the laws EU enforced upon them before they left? One would think it'd take a decade at least, but I guess things can move fast when the government really wants to. The way regulation works in the EU is typically EU comes up with regulation for countries to implement, then they implement the laws via their national system, then everything is handled "locally". So just leaving the EU doesn't mean that all of those things just stop being active, you need to go through the process of removing the local laws before.
      - nottorp 10mo ago
        ... or no one bothers to enforce them any more? UK gov is too busy enforcing the death of anonymity online anyway.
        embedding-shape 10mo ago
        > ... or no one bothers to enforce them any more? I know it happens in other countries, but can you actually get away with this in a civilized and non-authoritarian country today? Eventually you're gonna have to do/say something about it, if people keep opening up new cases about it.
jakubmazanec 10mo ago
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 end it was Kiwi who sent me the rest, and in my view they truly are parasites (they also got a Covid loan from the Czech government). Maybe in the days of Skypicker when their search engine was good they provided some value, but nowadays I advise everyone to avoid them.
- Y_Y 10mo ago
  Had a very similar experience with eDreams. Absolute scammers, in hindsight it was foolish to trust an unnecessary middleman.
- dcminter 10mo ago
  Yes, after the flurry of Covid cancellations I avoid using OTAs. Where we had flights booked direct with the airlines getting our money back was much swifter than where we had gone through an intermediary. Also EU bookings were much quicker to refund than US ones.
- jonathantf2 10mo ago
  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
  - beAbU 10mo ago
    Have you tried a credit card charge back?
    - jonathantf2 10mo ago
      Did it on debit card, another lesson learned.
yakkomajuri 10mo ago
It is of course ironic since we're talking about Ryanair here but I'm genuinely curious as to why it's abusive to determine that your product/service must be sold via your platform? Legitimately welcoming discussion here as I'm keen to hear the other side.
- crazygringo 10mo ago
  Yeah, generally speaking the last thing I want to do is to defend RyanAir but I don't see how what they're doing here is wrong. I see no way in which this is abusing a "dominant" market position. If you only want to sell tickets via your own site, what on earth could be wrong with that?
  - chrisjj 10mo ago
    Indeed. Ryanair wins ‘screenscraping’ case against Lastminute in France https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2022/05/25/ryanair-wins-screenscraping-case-against-lastminute-in-france/ https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2022/05/25/ryanair-wins-...
Gormanu 10mo ago
[flagged]
- WXLCKNO 10mo ago
  Is there any way to report AI slop accounts on HN? This entire account is generic AI slop comments.
  - scottydelta 10mo ago
    I agree. Report it via email hn@ycombinator.com to @dang.
    - Gormanu 10mo ago
      You guys don't have any other problems than looking for AI slops in every message on HN?
  - Gormanu 10mo ago
    Why do you think I am an AI slop? If you don't like my opinion , it doesn't mean I am AI.
    - scottydelta 10mo ago
      The issue is not about liking your opinion. It's about use of AI to produce an opinion.
      - Gormanu 10mo ago
        I might be behind on modern tech, but what exactly gives me away as AI? I’m genuinely curious.
        chrisjj 10mo ago
        Don't tell it.
- 10mo ago
amelius 10mo ago
"Dear passengers, please have your credit card ready for the landing."
- hexbin010 10mo ago
  New "we got fined" fee
hexbin010 10mo ago
They'll contest it and won't pay it. Post again when they actually transfer the money lol
shoulderfake 10mo ago
[dead]
hs586 10mo ago
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 numbers. And I am also always confused about the non-transparency that people mention about their fees. When you do the checkout, you select the services you want and pay for those. There used to be a time when other airlines would have a lot of things included in the basic ticket price, but that's not the case anymore, so it's not different. And I think this was an inevitable in an industry with small profit margins where price differentiation would bring gains.
- hexbin010 10mo ago
  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
  - testing22321 10mo ago
    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 .
    - hexbin010 10mo ago
      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
throw-12-16 10mo ago
Ryanair would charge for air if they could.
dmaa 10mo ago
I don't understand this hate on Ryanair. Just treat it for what it is, a super cheap airline if you avoid all the upsells. No one is being forced do fly with them.
- rkomorn 10mo ago
  I don't fly with them, and likely never will, simply because a coworker once showed me their checkout flow (back in 2011) and I found the amount of dark patterns to try and get you to accidentally spend more than you meant so disgusting I swore I'd never do business with them. Being cheap is one thing, trying every trick in the book to try and make money the customer didn't mean to spend is another thing altogether as far as I'm concerned. That is worthy of hate.
  - dmaa 10mo ago
    But you know this in advance! Try booking with Swiss, you also get a ton of upsell on insurance, car rental and what not. Then you sit in their business class seat and get an advert screened infront of you that you cannot skip. That makes me angry, not Ryanair.
    - rkomorn 10mo ago
      Me hating Ryanair in no way implies I have net positive feelings about other airlines.
  - scottyah 10mo ago
    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?
    - rkomorn 10mo ago
      > 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.
christkv 10mo ago
This like two scam artists fighting over the right to rip off people.
Beijinger 10mo ago
Well, theirs scammy sales interface is similar to GoDaddy. But I had never problems flying Ryanair. For flight hacks wiht Ryanair, try kiwi.com As far as I understand they also cover the financial risk should there be a problem with the connection.
- latexr 10mo ago
  > As far as I understand they also cover the financial risk should there be a problem with the connection. You have to pay for the service, though, and if you’re already flying Ryan Air, cost is probably a factor. The service used to be free, and while it was a bit frustrating to go through it, it did save me once. On the other hand I have a friend who, upon me telling my positive story with Kiwi support, told me her negative one. So your mileage may vary. It’s still a good first site to check to get a general idea of what’s available where, though.
  - Beijinger 10mo ago
    "It’s still a good first site to check to get a general idea of what’s available where, though." Depending on what you are looking for, Wiki Airport pages and this can be good: https://www.flightconnections.com/ https://www.flightconnections.com/ But then we are talking about serious travelers and airports, where flights are scare.... ;-)
    - latexr 10mo ago
      I wasn’t familiar with that one, will check it out. Thank you.
mixu 10mo ago
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). If you missed the email, you'd end up having to pay 55 eur to fix the issue. I was able to complain to customer service but it was definitely incredibly user hostile, intrusive and just ridiculous given that I booked directly via their site. > Dear AAA this booking, AABBCC, appears to have been made through a third-party travel agent who has no commercial relationship with Ryanair to sell our flights. Therefore, Ryanair has blocked this booking. > As third-party travel agents often do not provide Ryanair with the correct passenger email address and payment details, we need to verify a passenger's identity before they can manage their booking and check-in online. > Ryanair needs to carry out this verification process in order to ensure we can comply with safety and security requirements. > Once a passenger on the bookings has completed Ryanair's verification process, we will provide full access to the booking, including to the ability to make changes to the booking, add additional services, and complete online check-in. > Express Verification is available at a cost of EUR 0.59c per booking. > This fee covers the cost of the verification. Ryanair does not benefit commercially from this. There is no charge for Standard Verification. > Passengers who do not avail of online verification (Express Verification or Standard Verification) to verify their bookings can verify at the Ryanair ticket desk in the airport, however they will be charged an airport check-in fee of up to €/£55.
- elAhmo 10mo ago
  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.
bluecalm 10mo ago
Why are OTAs entitled to sell Ryanair tickets in the first place?
sbennettmcleish 10mo ago
At least it's a wonderfully round number :)
lentil_soup 10mo ago
What's going on on this thread? why are so many people defending Ryanair? I understand it's cheap and you get what you pay for but to defend this race to the bottom and scammy UX is so weird. Why do we need to simp for companies like this? It's great to have cheap options but we can also expect more from life. I'm sure we all here know how to navigate the dark patterns on the website but millions of people don't, so we just don't care anymore? Do we just shrug and go "as long as I get a cheap flight"?
- scottyah 10mo ago
  Yes, especially for a short flight I do not have high expectations. I don't want to be charged an extra $10 so I can get a "free" half sized water bottle or tea hat's been brewing since the late 90s. I don't need extra baggage, legroom, or any of the other add-ons that other airlines try to provide and charge for. I don't love the dark patterns, but believe the CEO when he says they are basically traps that enable the low prices for the people that don't fall for them.
  - lentil_soup 10mo ago
    > I don't love the dark patterns, but believe the CEO when he says they are basically traps that enable the low prices for the people that don't fall for them. I don't know what to respond to this. Are you saying you're fine with other people falling for the dark patterns if that allows for a cheaper ticket for you?
    - scottyah 10mo ago
      Yes, they've always had a model of "people in the know" being subsidized by others. Didn't pre-print out your ticket? 100 euro fine. Your bag is too large at the gate? Same thing. It's the airline of Compound Interest- "He who understands it, earns it... he who doesn't... pays it" An airline that isn't purely catered to the rich, but to those who are intelligent, knowledgeable, and don't mind the lack of frills. It's like an airline crafted for grad students.
anonymousDan 10mo ago
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.
- perceptronas 10mo ago
  Interesting, are you at least entitled to rule 261 compensation?
- elAhmo 10mo ago
  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.
baxtr 10mo ago
Why not €512M?
a10x 10mo ago
Flying is not the safest thing you could choose to do for a couple hours
gxs 10mo ago
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 a decent consolation prize Sort of off topic here but lack of consumer protection AND shitty airlines across the world are both subjects that really trigger me (not really)
- scottyah 10mo ago
  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.
childintime 10mo ago
When you fly you feel like you're playing Russian roulette, many times over. The flying experience is trash. RyanAir may be the worst, but just by a little. At least they fly on time and they seem to know what they're doing. Then in the Netherlands you pay 30€ in airport tax for a 39€ ticket. Yet they fine RyanAir, not themselves ;)

260 points by aquir 10mo ago

aquir 10mo ago

https://archive.ph/eipFD https://archive.ph/eipFD

aquir 10mo ago

TLDR "Ryanair’s tactics included rolling out facial recognition procedures for people who bought tickets via a third party, claiming that was necessary for security. It then “totally or intermittently blocked booking attempts by travel agencies”, including by blocking payment methods and mass-deleting accounts. The airline then “imposed partnership agreements” on agencies which banned sales of Ryanair flights in combinations with other carriers, and blocked bookings to force them to sign up. Only in April this year did it allow agencies’ websites to link up with its own services, allowing effective competition. The competition authority said Ryanair’s actions had “blocked, hindered or made such purchases more difficult and/or economically or technically burdensome when combined with flights operated by other carriers and/or other tourism and insurance services”.

dcminter 10mo ago

"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 got to the payment page and they tried to coax me into using my local currency instead of GBP and hid a £20 spread in the exchange rate I rage quit. I should have known better even then, but now I will only use them if I have literally no other choice. With luck that means "never." I'm always happy to see the various EU competition authorities pushing back on this kind of thing.

andy99 10mo ago
> 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.
- dcminter 10mo ago
  Point of sale terminals also do this when travelling - it wasn't especially surprising, just one straw too many. Of course foreign exchange offices have been doing this scam since forever ("no fees!")... --- Edit - note that with a bureau d'exchange my objection is not that they charge for the exchange; clearly that is the exact business that they are in. It's the "no fees" etc. marketing that hides from the less astute punters exactly how (and how much) they are paying for the service. I'd like to see that outlawed and direct costs of the exchange up front (e.g. "Exchange £100 for $121.5 at a cost of £10 compared to the base rate")
  - rantallion 10mo ago
    > direct costs of the exchange up front Isn't that fairly easy to estimate? If they're showing you a buy rate and a sell rate, you know the interbank rate is going to be pretty much halfway between the two. I don't think anyone's changing money and thinking the bureau isn't profiting.
    - dcminter 10mo ago
      I beg to differ. All their verbiage about not charging fees is absolutely intended to create that impression in less educated customers.
    - xp84 10mo ago
      Honestly, to me the problem seems more like people don’t know they don’t have to use those things. Just pulling money out of an ATM (and yes, declining the currency conversion scam there as well) is a much more efficient and cheap way to acquire the local currency. People use these desks because they think that’s just “what it costs.”

quokwok 10mo ago

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.

notahacker 10mo ago
Ryanair (and to an extent other LCCs) generally doesn't like ticket sales through resellers because a substantial part of its profit margin comes from upsell of add-ons and partner services during the booking/reservation process
- quokwok 10mo ago
  Thanks, that makes sense. Why isn't Ryanair allowed to prohibit use of their website by resellers?
  - mandelken 10mo ago
    I guess because travel agencies need to be able to show customers the most economical flights? By prohibiting agencies on their website, they can not give consumers (through their agents) the ability to compare different choices.
  - like_any_other 10mo ago
    > Why isn't Ryanair allowed to prohibit use of their website by resellers? To give a more general answer than the sibling comment, setting conditions on how a product may be used usually distorts the market, harms buyers, and reduces competition, naturally to the benefit of the one setting the conditions. For example selling cars that you're not allowed to use for "professional" use, only personal (as Nvidia does with forbidding datacenter use of some of its GPUs, charging extra for it). There was also a self-driving company that forbade buyers from using their cars to create a taxi service, essentially reserving that market for themselves. It may have been Tesla, but I can't find the story right now. In general living in a world where we need manufacturer's permission to do anything is less than ideal. In this case I'm sure Ryanair would like to spin it as resellers upcharging customers, but by complete coincidence, their practices also prevent someone knowledgeable in all their dark patterns from protecting customers from them by acting as an intermediary.

nottorp 10mo ago

Hmm the guardian has gone "accept tracking or subscribe". I wonder how that works out for them. I also wonder if the time is ripe for some company to disrupt advertising by simply doing what google did on launch in 2000.

clickety_clack 10mo ago
I didn’t know you were allowed to do that with cookies.
- nottorp 10mo ago
  UK site. Not in the EU any more.
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    Did they really already get rid of all the laws EU enforced upon them before they left? One would think it'd take a decade at least, but I guess things can move fast when the government really wants to. The way regulation works in the EU is typically EU comes up with regulation for countries to implement, then they implement the laws via their national system, then everything is handled "locally". So just leaving the EU doesn't mean that all of those things just stop being active, you need to go through the process of removing the local laws before.
    - nottorp 10mo ago
      ... or no one bothers to enforce them any more? UK gov is too busy enforcing the death of anonymity online anyway.
      - embedding-shape 10mo ago
        > ... or no one bothers to enforce them any more? I know it happens in other countries, but can you actually get away with this in a civilized and non-authoritarian country today? Eventually you're gonna have to do/say something about it, if people keep opening up new cases about it.

jakubmazanec 10mo ago

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 end it was Kiwi who sent me the rest, and in my view they truly are parasites (they also got a Covid loan from the Czech government). Maybe in the days of Skypicker when their search engine was good they provided some value, but nowadays I advise everyone to avoid them.

Y_Y 10mo ago
Had a very similar experience with eDreams. Absolute scammers, in hindsight it was foolish to trust an unnecessary middleman.
dcminter 10mo ago
Yes, after the flurry of Covid cancellations I avoid using OTAs. Where we had flights booked direct with the airlines getting our money back was much swifter than where we had gone through an intermediary. Also EU bookings were much quicker to refund than US ones.
jonathantf2 10mo ago
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
- beAbU 10mo ago
  Have you tried a credit card charge back?
  - jonathantf2 10mo ago
    Did it on debit card, another lesson learned.

yakkomajuri 10mo ago

It is of course ironic since we're talking about Ryanair here but I'm genuinely curious as to why it's abusive to determine that your product/service must be sold via your platform? Legitimately welcoming discussion here as I'm keen to hear the other side.

crazygringo 10mo ago
Yeah, generally speaking the last thing I want to do is to defend RyanAir but I don't see how what they're doing here is wrong. I see no way in which this is abusing a "dominant" market position. If you only want to sell tickets via your own site, what on earth could be wrong with that?
- chrisjj 10mo ago
  Indeed. Ryanair wins ‘screenscraping’ case against Lastminute in France https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2022/05/25/ryanair-wins-screenscraping-case-against-lastminute-in-france/ https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2022/05/25/ryanair-wins-...

Gormanu 10mo ago

[flagged]

WXLCKNO 10mo ago
Is there any way to report AI slop accounts on HN? This entire account is generic AI slop comments.
- scottydelta 10mo ago
  I agree. Report it via email hn@ycombinator.com to @dang.
  - Gormanu 10mo ago
    You guys don't have any other problems than looking for AI slops in every message on HN?
- Gormanu 10mo ago
  Why do you think I am an AI slop? If you don't like my opinion , it doesn't mean I am AI.
  - scottydelta 10mo ago
    The issue is not about liking your opinion. It's about use of AI to produce an opinion.
    - Gormanu 10mo ago
      I might be behind on modern tech, but what exactly gives me away as AI? I’m genuinely curious.
      - chrisjj 10mo ago
        Don't tell it.
10mo ago

amelius 10mo ago

"Dear passengers, please have your credit card ready for the landing."

hexbin010 10mo ago
New "we got fined" fee

hexbin010 10mo ago

They'll contest it and won't pay it. Post again when they actually transfer the money lol

shoulderfake 10mo ago

[dead]

hs586 10mo ago

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 numbers. And I am also always confused about the non-transparency that people mention about their fees. When you do the checkout, you select the services you want and pay for those. There used to be a time when other airlines would have a lot of things included in the basic ticket price, but that's not the case anymore, so it's not different. And I think this was an inevitable in an industry with small profit margins where price differentiation would bring gains.

hexbin010 10mo ago
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
- testing22321 10mo ago
  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 .
  - hexbin010 10mo ago
    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

throw-12-16 10mo ago

Ryanair would charge for air if they could.

dmaa 10mo ago

I don't understand this hate on Ryanair. Just treat it for what it is, a super cheap airline if you avoid all the upsells. No one is being forced do fly with them.

rkomorn 10mo ago
I don't fly with them, and likely never will, simply because a coworker once showed me their checkout flow (back in 2011) and I found the amount of dark patterns to try and get you to accidentally spend more than you meant so disgusting I swore I'd never do business with them. Being cheap is one thing, trying every trick in the book to try and make money the customer didn't mean to spend is another thing altogether as far as I'm concerned. That is worthy of hate.
- dmaa 10mo ago
  But you know this in advance! Try booking with Swiss, you also get a ton of upsell on insurance, car rental and what not. Then you sit in their business class seat and get an advert screened infront of you that you cannot skip. That makes me angry, not Ryanair.
  - rkomorn 10mo ago
    Me hating Ryanair in no way implies I have net positive feelings about other airlines.
- scottyah 10mo ago
  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?
  - rkomorn 10mo ago
    > 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.

christkv 10mo ago

This like two scam artists fighting over the right to rip off people.

Beijinger 10mo ago

Well, theirs scammy sales interface is similar to GoDaddy. But I had never problems flying Ryanair. For flight hacks wiht Ryanair, try kiwi.com As far as I understand they also cover the financial risk should there be a problem with the connection.

latexr 10mo ago
> As far as I understand they also cover the financial risk should there be a problem with the connection. You have to pay for the service, though, and if you’re already flying Ryan Air, cost is probably a factor. The service used to be free, and while it was a bit frustrating to go through it, it did save me once. On the other hand I have a friend who, upon me telling my positive story with Kiwi support, told me her negative one. So your mileage may vary. It’s still a good first site to check to get a general idea of what’s available where, though.
- Beijinger 10mo ago
  "It’s still a good first site to check to get a general idea of what’s available where, though." Depending on what you are looking for, Wiki Airport pages and this can be good: https://www.flightconnections.com/ https://www.flightconnections.com/ But then we are talking about serious travelers and airports, where flights are scare.... ;-)
  - latexr 10mo ago
    I wasn’t familiar with that one, will check it out. Thank you.

mixu 10mo ago

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). If you missed the email, you'd end up having to pay 55 eur to fix the issue. I was able to complain to customer service but it was definitely incredibly user hostile, intrusive and just ridiculous given that I booked directly via their site. > Dear AAA this booking, AABBCC, appears to have been made through a third-party travel agent who has no commercial relationship with Ryanair to sell our flights. Therefore, Ryanair has blocked this booking. > As third-party travel agents often do not provide Ryanair with the correct passenger email address and payment details, we need to verify a passenger's identity before they can manage their booking and check-in online. > Ryanair needs to carry out this verification process in order to ensure we can comply with safety and security requirements. > Once a passenger on the bookings has completed Ryanair's verification process, we will provide full access to the booking, including to the ability to make changes to the booking, add additional services, and complete online check-in. > Express Verification is available at a cost of EUR 0.59c per booking. > This fee covers the cost of the verification. Ryanair does not benefit commercially from this. There is no charge for Standard Verification. > Passengers who do not avail of online verification (Express Verification or Standard Verification) to verify their bookings can verify at the Ryanair ticket desk in the airport, however they will be charged an airport check-in fee of up to €/£55.

elAhmo 10mo ago
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.

bluecalm 10mo ago

Why are OTAs entitled to sell Ryanair tickets in the first place?

sbennettmcleish 10mo ago

At least it's a wonderfully round number :)

lentil_soup 10mo ago

What's going on on this thread? why are so many people defending Ryanair? I understand it's cheap and you get what you pay for but to defend this race to the bottom and scammy UX is so weird. Why do we need to simp for companies like this? It's great to have cheap options but we can also expect more from life. I'm sure we all here know how to navigate the dark patterns on the website but millions of people don't, so we just don't care anymore? Do we just shrug and go "as long as I get a cheap flight"?

scottyah 10mo ago
Yes, especially for a short flight I do not have high expectations. I don't want to be charged an extra $10 so I can get a "free" half sized water bottle or tea hat's been brewing since the late 90s. I don't need extra baggage, legroom, or any of the other add-ons that other airlines try to provide and charge for. I don't love the dark patterns, but believe the CEO when he says they are basically traps that enable the low prices for the people that don't fall for them.
- lentil_soup 10mo ago
  > I don't love the dark patterns, but believe the CEO when he says they are basically traps that enable the low prices for the people that don't fall for them. I don't know what to respond to this. Are you saying you're fine with other people falling for the dark patterns if that allows for a cheaper ticket for you?
  - scottyah 10mo ago
    Yes, they've always had a model of "people in the know" being subsidized by others. Didn't pre-print out your ticket? 100 euro fine. Your bag is too large at the gate? Same thing. It's the airline of Compound Interest- "He who understands it, earns it... he who doesn't... pays it" An airline that isn't purely catered to the rich, but to those who are intelligent, knowledgeable, and don't mind the lack of frills. It's like an airline crafted for grad students.

anonymousDan 10mo ago

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.

perceptronas 10mo ago
Interesting, are you at least entitled to rule 261 compensation?
elAhmo 10mo ago
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.

baxtr 10mo ago

Why not €512M?

a10x 10mo ago

Flying is not the safest thing you could choose to do for a couple hours

gxs 10mo ago

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 a decent consolation prize Sort of off topic here but lack of consumer protection AND shitty airlines across the world are both subjects that really trigger me (not really)

scottyah 10mo ago
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.

childintime 10mo ago

When you fly you feel like you're playing Russian roulette, many times over. The flying experience is trash. RyanAir may be the worst, but just by a little. At least they fly on time and they seem to know what they're doing. Then in the Netherlands you pay 30€ in airport tax for a 39€ ticket. Yet they fine RyanAir, not themselves ;)