[HN Gopher] Ryanair fined EUR256M over 'abusive strategy' to lim...
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Ryanair fined EUR256M over 'abusive strategy' to limit ticket sales
by OTAs
Author : aquir
Score : 222 points
Date : 2025-12-23 10:53 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| aquir wrote:
| https://archive.ph/eipFD
| aquir wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| _" 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 PS20 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 wrote:
| > they tried to coax me into using my local currency instead of
| GBP and hid a PS20 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 wrote:
| 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 PS100 for $121.5 at a cost of PS10 compared to the
| base rate")
| rantallion wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| I beg to differ. All their verbiage about not charging
| fees is absolutely intended to create that impression in
| less educated customers.
| xp84 wrote:
| 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."
| doikor wrote:
| 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)
| onli wrote:
| 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.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I don't think parent is claiming that the shop owner is
| trying to scam someone. But these prompts have been
| around for at least 15 years, I'm also sure about that,
| this isn't new by any measure. And yeah, also came across
| shop owners who don't know what it is about, and then you
| have to chose.
|
| Makes sense that shop owners in non-touristy areas
| haven't seen them before, as you'll only see that when
| the card has a default currency that differs from the
| default currency of the terminal.
| amiga386 wrote:
| On the other hand, _almost every_ merchant and waiter in
| Spain told me, when handing me the card terminal, to
| select "local currency" (decline the first swindle
| attempt) then "don't convert" (decline the second swindle
| attempt). There's obviously some required workflow where
| they must pass the terminal to the customer, but they are
| wise to the payment gateway's trick to extract additional
| value from the transaction. They don't want their
| customer bilked, or to take the reputational damage when
| the customer leaves an angry review.
|
| So if your Mexican merchants "don't know" what their
| terminal says? Either you were their first foreigner, or
| they're useful idiots, or they know.
| davnicwil wrote:
| I just think they genuinely don't know. I was years into
| travelling before I learned about this 'trick'.
|
| For my part, I'd just always assumed the charge would be
| ultimately converted by my bank in any case. Seems
| obvious now I look back, but I honestly just didn't think
| about the trick.
|
| Just as an example that gives evidence for this,
| sometimes you'll go to the same place multiple times and
| the norm is they ask but occasionally someone won't. So
| it's not a policy.
|
| I presume the people who don't just don't know about it,
| don't want to bother me and aren't aware it will make a
| difference.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| > _Either you were their first foreigner_
|
| He could have merely been the first to do the math and
| bring it up. I could easily see most tourists overlooking
| this sort of thing, or not mentioning it because they're
| already accustomed to it.
| alibarber wrote:
| It's absolutely the shop.
|
| Their payment processor (the people they rent the machine
| off of) offers them this oppurtunity to 'unlock hidden
| revenue for merchants'[1][2][3] and they are happy to do
| this.
|
| Visa in fact tried to ban it:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_currency_conversion
|
| Of course, there are regulations and agreements with
| various institutions that should be followed - but it's
| free money for the shop, nothing else.
|
| [1] https://www.shift4.com/blog/dynamic-currency-
| conversion-unlo...
|
| [2] https://www.fexco.com/payments-and-fx/currency-
| conversion-so...
|
| [3] https://docs.adyen.com/point-of-sale/currency-
| conversion/
| onli wrote:
| I doubt it. One person shops with no relevant contact to
| foreigners. Maybe the enterprise organising a credit card
| terminal for them activates it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I've had one person shops try to convince me to pay in
| USD when I try to pay in the local currency.
| dasil003 wrote:
| What makes you think Visa is the only player in the
| payments chain between the merchant and your bank?
| onli wrote:
| The visa logo printed on the terminals where this
| behaviour occurred.
| monerozcash wrote:
| > Been like that for the last 15 years at least
|
| Charging significantly more to accept foreign currencies
| goes back thousands of years.
| andy99 wrote:
| This isn't that. I understand if you came to a US store
| with Canadian dollars, they'd be unlikely to give you the
| posted exchange rate for them, if the took them at all.
| Here we're talking about paying with a credit card that
| will automatically pay in the local currency, and having
| the POS terminal, on whoever's behalf, try and
| intermediate that to charge a higher rate than the credit
| card would have, under the false pretence of simplifying
| payment somehow. It's not convenience, it's preying on
| ignorance.
| clan wrote:
| Almost. To such a degree I would call it a very dark
| pattern.
|
| There is however one very good argument for. Currencies
| with very high volatility. Think extreme inflation. If
| you accept their conversion you know what you pay in your
| own currency. You have then mitigated a risk. If your own
| currency is volatile then you might gamble and win. If
| the foreign currency is volatile you will usually win by
| paying in the foreign currency. If both are volatile then
| it is a blind gamble.
|
| The important part here are the settlement dates. Your
| bank usually do not calculate the exchange rate of the
| eaxct purchase time.
|
| That is the excuse for the "service". But it is still not
| wanted and I consider it evil.
|
| When traveling places with rampant inflation you will
| notice that sellers always negotiate 2 prices. One in the
| local currency and one in what is considered an easy to
| use hard currency such as USD or Euros. Forgeries and
| less cash flowing around has made it harder to use other
| less know but otherwise hard currencies.
|
| So sellers never care what currency you choose to settle
| in as very close to zero sellers have multiple accounts
| on the same terminal. And those who really need it will
| always negotiate in different currencies.
|
| You might have experienced something like this at times
| when visiting Argentina or Turkey.
|
| So the "service" is only there for those who want to
| understand what they pay in their own currency or
| mitigate a settlement date. And will pay for it!
|
| Local terminal holders rarely care. But the ATM mafias
| (such as EuroNet) do very much so. Because they actively
| are playing the mitigation game and are allowed to add
| fees.
|
| I strongly feel this field should be very heavily
| regulated. But too much money is involved. And if you
| look at where VISA and MasterCard are located you will
| understand that is not a regulation happy corner of the
| planet.
| kalleboo wrote:
| Historically (like, 15+ years ago when I did the SEA
| backpacking circuit) there have been some cards with
| ridiculous fees for international transactions. Like, a
| flat $10 per transaction. Back then when I saw prompts
| like this on card terminals I assumed it was targeted at
| those cardholders (or people who had heard stories of
| those and were unsure and worried what they would be
| charged and wanted to be reassured by a number in their
| home currency)
| xp84 wrote:
| I think that's _exactly_ a big part of why this scam was
| developed. If you aren't that informed, don't know your
| credit card terms by heart, but you've heard about those
| "foreign fees" it's very plausible that this service
| would save you money. Not likely of course, since the
| scam is obfuscated and hidden in a dollar amount
| presented without the computation.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| Just so everyone is aware, it is still considered a
| foreign transaction regardless of which option you pick.
| So if you are using a card that charges for that, then
| you will be charged a foreign transaction fee. It is a
| foreign _transaction_ fee, not foreign _currency_ fee.
| MrMorden wrote:
| Except American Express, which does have foreign currency
| fees (on some cards).
| fn-mote wrote:
| I don't agree with this.
|
| If you're in a place that wants dollars or euros because
| their currency is "bad" (volatile or unable to freely
| exchange for dollars), they prefer dollars. You can tell
| because you get a better than official exchange rate.
|
| I have to say I've never been somewhere that the currency
| was so volatile the settlement date mattered. Carrying
| local currency would be part of your risk? This could
| only come up in the almost-all-digital-currency modern
| world.
| dcminter wrote:
| Ubiquitous currency exchange at the point of sale does
| not though.
| xp84 wrote:
| Very true, but the other half is to ensure you don't use a
| card with a foreign transaction fee, which will cost you
| 3-4%. There are free cards like the Amazon Prime Visa that
| don't have it, but that fee is very common.
|
| The other thing I hate to see is people using the currency
| conversion desks at airports, or buying foreign currency
| from their banks in advance of trips. They give you awful
| rates.
|
| Assuming you're traveling to a civilized country, just
| stick your card in an ATM when you land and pull out the
| cash you need. Good banks don't even charge their own ATM
| fee, so your total cost is the $3-4 that the ATM owner
| charges, and you get a pretty fair rate.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| What is this "cash" you speak of?
| SR2Z wrote:
| The physical medium which can be exchanged for goods and
| services?
| Ziomislaw wrote:
| When the ATM withdrawal usually costs you nothing, or in
| some cases when the bank does not have an agreement with
| the ATM company it can cost you 1,39$ then 3-4$ is a
| ripoff.
|
| Also people buy currency locally - before the trip -
| where I am from, and all the rates are displayed, both in
| a bank or in currency exchange. You can compare. And even
| when someone is lazy they can just ask friends which
| place has the best rates, everybody seems to know which
| (and the answers are true and conistent, I checked).
| Buying locally at a currency exchange is the cheapest
| option.
| csomar wrote:
| Do they suggest that you pay in your home currency, or do
| they give you the choice to select on the ATM? Only once a
| cashier made a suggestion and it was to warn me of the spread
| and that generally it'd be better to do it in USD and let my
| bank do conversion.
| maccard wrote:
| You get a prompt on the terminal. I've never had a cashier
| suggest anything to me, and I don't really want their
| input. The correct answer is always pay in local currency
| and let your bank handle it.
| rjsw wrote:
| I once came across a cashier that thought you had to
| select the foreign currency option. When I tried to pay
| in the local currency she cancelled the transaction.
|
| Needed to get another member of staff to explain to her
| that the local currency option would work fine.
| dwood_dev wrote:
| 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.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| *conversion
|
| Although it is amusing to imagine an ATM that accosts you
| verbally with smalltalk when you use it.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Coming soon , LLM to an ATM near you
| xp84 wrote:
| Great question. Let's take a deep dive on money. Getting
| $100 at the right time can be a game-changer! It's not
| only a store of value -- it's a means of exchange!
| MrMorden wrote:
| Surely if the ATM were to taunt you it would use C, or
| maybe JavaScript.
| rob74 wrote:
| 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...
| bgbntty2 wrote:
| Years ago when paying with PayPal, there were 2 choices - for
| them to convert currencies or to rely on my bank to convert
| them. There was a warning that if I chose the second option,
| it could cost a lot. Turns out, with my bank the conversion
| was good and with PayPal's conversion I'd lose like 10%.
|
| Stuff like that is what I say "years ago" - I haven't used
| PayPal for a while now, and I won't use it again.
| Jap2-0 wrote:
| This disappeared a few months ago for me, unfortunately.
| xp84 wrote:
| Why do you say unfortunately? Are you saying PayPal now
| doesn't allow you to pay directly in the foreign currency
| and let your bank convert?
| BunsanSpace wrote:
| The big scam is some terminals are configured with 17% forex
| fees (looking at your shady restaurants in Budapest), really
| funny when it's paired with tips in an EU country.
|
| But this is why Revolut and WISE cards are a god send when
| travelling, just load them up with the local currency and
| these issues disappear.
| robrenaud wrote:
| Paying the local currency with your own cards seems simple
| and works?
| albumen wrote:
| If "your own cards" are with non-neobanks, they tend to
| offer poor exchange rates, and add commission on top.
| starfallg wrote:
| Yes, zero Forex fees cards work. But the terminal detects
| that your home currency is different to the local
| currency and you still have to choose the right option.
|
| For example, just the other day I fat fingered the screen
| and chose the wrong currency.
| RankingMember wrote:
| What really pisses me off is that this stuff is annoying and
| sometimes fools _us_ , tech savvy people on a hacker forum. I
| can't imagine how many elderly/non-techie people are being
| fleeced out of their money because of these kind of dark
| patterns.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yup
|
| I can never remember which option should I pick. And to be
| really honest I don't remember if I tried to see if it
| matched my bank's rate or not
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Whenever I travel out of the country I always re-read my
| credit card policies on foreign currency conversion. Some
| cards are quite reasonable, some are ripoffs.
| xp84 wrote:
| Yup. Reminds me of how my dad would do his taxes at H&R
| Block, and then every year take out their "refund
| anticipation loan" (despite not having some big urgent
| expense). They deduct their overpriced tax prep fee and a
| healthy 150%APR interest payment from the proceeds but you
| get the money same day. You could just not do that and
| still have your refund in like a week. The APR is
| unconscionable given they did the taxes -- they can be
| nearly certain your refund will arrive. But they just gloss
| over those details, probably by saying "Do you want your
| refund today, or wait on the IRS? With the Today option you
| can also just deduct your tax prep fee from the refund and
| not pay out of pocket." I have a feeling they get a LOT of
| people with that scam.
| andrepd wrote:
| In 2025 it's decidedly old-fashioned to even _think_ of
| interfering with the march of the orphan-crushing profit-
| maximising machine. Each quarter demands a fresh way to rip
| off people.
|
| How quaint even the 90s seem today, and we though _that_
| was hyper capitalism!
| SoftTalker wrote:
| You don't think people were ripping each other off in the
| '90s?
|
| How old a saying is _caveat emptor_?
| jeffwass wrote:
| I see the opposite quote a lot.
|
| Advertised "No Fee" currency conversions, but a HUGE spread
| built into the conversion rate that comes out to a massive
| fee.
| free652 wrote:
| This is pretty much everytime in Europe, not sure if the
| local terminals or the chase chip card always prompts me to
| pay with 1) USD 2) EURO
| tyre wrote:
| ATMs do this as well. Always decline the bank doing the
| conversion.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Depends where in Europe. I saw it all the time in Spain but
| never in France.
| xp84 wrote:
| The funny thing is that, at least for American consumers,
| there's a good chance you'll get mildly scammed by using your
| card in a foreign currency due to a 3%--4% junk fee that is
| common (I'd estimate 80% of non-premium cards have it). So
| the discovery of the "let us, the merchant, convert _for you_
| " scam has allowed merchants/payment networks to in some
| cases "steal" the scam from the card issuer (the card issuer
| then won't take a fee if it's in USD, but someone takes a fat
| margin on the currency). They're all scumbags, all looking
| for ways to grift.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| It's been like that when visiting Europe for years now.
| fennecbutt wrote:
| I mean American companies have done the "$1000, well that's
| also PS1000 then!" bullshit for ages.
| exasperaited wrote:
| Right. O'Leary is an antihero at best and a villain at worst.
| dcminter wrote:
| 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.
| amelius wrote:
| I just wish the airlines were forced to put their booking
| behind an API so we could book flights without having to go
| through mazes that are different for every airline.
| baq wrote:
| 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.
| maccard wrote:
| I'm not defending this behaviour with Ryanair, but this is not
| unique to them at all. It's an industry "standard". I'm Irish
| but live in the UK - when we make card transactions it asks
| what currency we want to pay in, and hides the exchange rate
| spread.
|
| > I will only use them if I have literally no other choice
|
| Even with the PS20 increase they were likely cheaper than the
| alternative, if it exists. If this is going to push you into
| not using them, basically every other airline will be ruled out
| for you. EasyJet are exactly the same. BA/KLM/Air France/Aer
| Lingus are all the same on their short hop flights (I've
| actually never flown Lufthansa so I can't comment on them). The
| short haul European routes are a race to the bottom.
| dcminter wrote:
| To be clear, the currency scam was a last straw, not the
| major dark pattern.
|
| When you compare list prices for flights with them versus
| almost any other airline you are comparing apples with
| oranges. The only way to figure out exactly what you'll pay
| is to go through the entirety of their checkout procedure. My
| experiences with those other airlines for short haul flights
| are quite different.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| I also hate that it continues through the whole flight. I
| don't want to find out I have to pay to have my boarding
| pass printed, or that I need to pay for a glass of water on
| the plane. The other carrier might be more, but the things
| that come in the bundled fare make the trip easier with
| less friction points.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| > Even with the PS20 increase they were likely cheaper than
| the alternative, if it exists.
|
| Honestly, on many routes, I think this is true far less often
| than it used to be.
| quokwok wrote:
| It's easy to book a Ryanair ticket without being upsold. You
| select the ticket, probably add a bag for about PS40, skip the
| car rental and hotels screens etc, then book. What's the
| problem?
| amiga386 wrote:
| 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 charged PS50 for a plain
| boarding pass which you print yourself?
|
| You're describing some other airline's website, surely. If
| you'd used Ryanair's site you would not be unaware of its
| fuckery.
| quokwok wrote:
| 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.
| amiga386 wrote:
| 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.
| patall wrote:
| > And clicking "I don't need insurance" is easy.
|
| If you take your time and read carefully. Because
| sometimes the colored choice is free, and sometimes it is
| the non-colored one. 100% dark pattern. As is disabling
| "paste" on check-in, forcing you to remember the
| 6-alphanumeric char booking code if you do not have a
| second device/pen&paper at hand.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| 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 )
| lkramer wrote:
| The one I found most devious was the ATMs in Stansted that
| offers to pay out Euro. I was going to Spain and knew I would
| need some cash on arrival, so I thought I could save a bit of
| time. They had cleverly swapped the exchange rate so in big
| letters they showed a reasonable figure, like 0.85 and then in
| smaller type in the corner showed that actually it was in
| favour of Euros, so you would pay over 350 pounds for 300
| euros. I luckily realised in time, but I expect a lot of people
| don't. Also it's drilled in from the bad old days that you need
| to take out cash before going on holiday to avoid being
| scammed. A whole exploitive service industry seems to exist
| solely on that misconception.
|
| The only place in I've had any troubles paying with card (or
| easily find a cashmachine) in recent time have been Turkey
| outside the big cities.
| throw9023093209 wrote:
| Ryanair was fastest airline when refunding tickets at start of
| pandemic. Lufthansa just ghosted me.
|
| OTAs were blocked because they just run scam, and Ryanair
| customer supports had many problems with dealing with them.
|
| Some example from Kiwi:
|
| - if flight gets cancelled and refunded, OTA pockets the
| refund, does not give anything to custemer
|
| - OTA does not provide customer with email used to make
| booking. Makes any changes like extra luggage or seat difficult
|
| - If flight gets rescheduled, OTA may not inform customer
|
| - Not possible to add extra child etc...
|
| I would only use OTA like Kiwi when booking flight in very
| exotic country, and I have no idea how to checkin in chinese.
| GordonS wrote:
| Wow, not my experience of Ryanair at all! I was only able to
| get a refund by calling my bank and opening a section 75
| dispute.
| BloondAndDoom wrote:
| I still don't know why all these dark patterns are simply not
| illegal. What happened to consumer rights? It be a such a
| widespread practice, I think we will look back at this at one
| point and will say things akin "how did we let people smoke in
| planes". One of those things utterly ridiculous in hindsight
| arethuza wrote:
| 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 manage expectations
| about the kind of company you are actually dealing with.
| gs17 wrote:
| > 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.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Even in that quote 2% of people are possibly scammed out of
| their money, which is probably tens or hundreds of
| thousands of people.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| An unknown percentage of people actually want the
| insurance. If only 2% bought it despite such an extreme
| dark pattern, the 98-percentile of customers is much
| better than I would have expected.
| tehjoker wrote:
| It's true you don't know who wants it, but I thought
| capitalism was supposed to work by mutual consent and
| transparency of contract. If even one person is deceived,
| that's a scam! I doubt out of tens or hundreds of
| thousands of people all of them figured this out and
| wanted the insurance.
| im3w1l wrote:
| You can use keyboard to navigate a dropdown box by typing
| initial letters.
| riffraff wrote:
| 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".
| dabeeeenster wrote:
| I've told people this before as I distinctly remember it
| being a thing and no one ever believes me!
| harrybr wrote:
| I have this example archived. Screenshots and explanation
| here: https://old.deceptive.design/trick_questions/
|
| Conference video showing this example from 2010:
| https://youtu.be/zaubGV2OG5U?si=8PkLWhxHFSGQWuWw&t=597
| gs17 wrote:
| It's not quite as bad as I expected (still bad), since it
| does at least clearly tell you how to not buy it, in normal
| size type even. Except then they decided to make it out of
| place alphabetically (and it seems to have moved at least
| once, since the other article says it was "between Denmark
| and Finland" because it was sorted under "don't").
| arjie wrote:
| Cool website. It's a pity it's no longer a wiki. Perhaps if
| you used the extension RequestAccount with a restriction of
| editing to only confirmed users you would be able to keep
| it a wiki.
| tyre wrote:
| I remember when they were seeking approval to provide blow
| jobs on flights (free in business class iirc.) The only thing
| that they won't up charge. They even tried to get approval to
| charge for bathroom access.
|
| Wild company, but they are entirely on brand.
|
| To be fair, consumers have driven airlines this way. They've
| shown that they'll buy based almost entirely on price and
| suffer any amount of agony in exchange.
|
| I just don't find basic economy or early flights or shitty
| airlines worth the bad stress.
| arethuza wrote:
| The advantage of Ryanair and a lot of the other low cost
| carriers is that they do a lot of point to point flights
| between regional hubs - for example we flew Edinburgh to
| Marrakesh with them a few years back which was fine and I
| think they were the only airline offering direct flights.
| Going via Heathrow, Gatwick or CDG would have been a
| nightmare and we were only going for a few days.
| petesergeant wrote:
| I assumed you were making some poorly executed joke, but
| no!
|
| https://www.smh.com.au/national/ryanair-ceo-talks-free-
| sex-o...
|
| > He then asked the translator the German word for oral
| sex. After being told there wasn't one, he remarked
| "terrible sex life in Germany".
| chopin wrote:
| Which, of course, isn't true.
| newppc wrote:
| Yea quite devious, in a weird way I suppose the dark patterns
| also serve as an IQ test that favors younger tech-literates
| who are familiar with web patterns and are also on a budget
| (though not all).
|
| I used Ryanair a lot while studying abroad in Europe and the
| EUR20 flights were real if you jumped through the hoops,
| which was quite magical.
|
| I once had a flight booked to Paris, but it landed in an
| airport 2 hours outside of Paris and the train/bus would've
| been 2x the flight cost, so being short of money I just
| didn't take the trip and lost EUR20 :)
| tchalla wrote:
| 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.
| expedition32 wrote:
| 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!
| lucketone wrote:
| Like a bootcamp training.
| riffraff wrote:
| 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.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| Ryanair does lots of shitty things, but I dont see why an
| airline should be forced to resell to shitty agencies taking a
| an unecessary cut instead of consumers buying directly with the
| Airline.
| patall wrote:
| I actually wonder how much traffic they lose this way. My
| employer doesn't allow me to book with them because the agent
| doesn't list them. Even though I want to go to Cambridge,
| quite annoying.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| If your job is paying, why do you complain?
| sokoloff wrote:
| I try to spend the company's money with as much care as I
| spend my own.
| anovikov wrote:
| In fact i find Ryanair booking page the most smooth in user
| experience out of all major airlines. I am mostly tied to
| Aegean because i have a top loyalty level, and it is incredibly
| frustrating to go through extremely slow loading pages, page
| after page, to do every trivial task, and having to enter SMS
| OTP on every step. With Ryanair is't one and done, i barely
| remember it. And every action is blazing fast, pages load in a
| blink, no spinners.
| Oras wrote:
| Scamming is, sadly, a common practice now for many services. I
| think the first time I saw it was on Expedia, before the
| pandemic, when prices started going up at each step.
| nico wrote:
| > coax me into using my local currency instead of GBP and hid a
| PS20 spread in the exchange rate
|
| BoFA does this for international wires as well. And I suspect a
| lot of companies do this to their international customers too.
| Unfortunately, it's become pretty standard
| quokwok wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Thanks, that makes sense.
|
| Why isn't Ryanair allowed to prohibit use of their website by
| resellers?
| mandelken wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| It's a restraint of trade issue. You're not allowed to
| restrain other's people's ability to run a business or earn
| an income, beyond some reasonable cases.
|
| Like running the only gas station in town and then refusing
| to sell fuel to a competitor who is trying to build a gas
| station that wants to compete with you.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That is not analogous, as online travel agencies are just
| middlemen. I am not aware of a law anywhere requiring a
| seller to have to deal with middlemen.
| dehrmann wrote:
| There's also the issue that you're making apples-to-pears
| comparison if Ryanair shows up in results. While Air France
| and British Airways have largely equivalent products,
| Ryanair's is...different.
| dwood_dev wrote:
| 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 you avoid
| all the extras, including bottled water.
| halapro wrote:
| 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 15EUR 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.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Go To Gate are on my ban list personally for awful
| behaviour when a flight was cancelled.
| miki123211 wrote:
| Most airports have water fountains, even in Europe where
| they're not as common.
|
| Whenever I fly, I always take an empty water bottle through
| security and then fill it in the secure zone.
| mft_ wrote:
| They can be hard to find! It took me about 15 minutes of
| searching in PMI one time recently...
| chrisjj wrote:
| > Third parties eliminate a large portion of their upsell
| pipeline.
|
| This is nonsense. Third parties cannot provide extra luggage
| space, priority boarding etc.
| bcye wrote:
| A large part of the pipeline consists of insurance, rental
| cars, hotels, etc.
| chrisjj wrote:
| > You get up charged for everything
|
| No you don't. You can:
|
| > deselect all the up charges
| nutjob2 wrote:
| > so these resellers make money by charging extra fees to
| unsuspecting customers
|
| I don't think thats correct, people who use travel agents do so
| because they like the service or are unable to book for
| themselves, it's not wrong to offer a service and be paid for
| it and there isn't any broad evidence that travel agents
| misrepresent anything.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Customers aren't unsuspecting. They are happy to pay the markup
| of OTAs to not have to deal with all the booking processes
| themselves.
|
| Ryanair are idiots to not accept free sales.
|
| The OTAs are idiots for wanting to sell Ryanair flights without
| gaining a commission.
|
| And the biggest idiots are the Italian court who sticks their
| filthy fingers in this whole business.
| nottorp wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I didn't know you were allowed to do that with cookies.
| nottorp wrote:
| UK site. Not in the EU any more.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| ... or no one bothers to enforce them any more?
|
| UK gov is too busy enforcing the death of anonymity
| online anyway.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > ... 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.
| nottorp wrote:
| Who's going to open a case and where? Is there any point
| in complaining to a local authority in an EU country
| about an UK web site? Esp since the guardian probably has
| zero business presence on the continent...
| embedding-shape wrote:
| If you're a UK citizen, and you see UK law being broken
| you report that to your local authorities. I'm not sure
| where other EU countries come into the context?
| nottorp wrote:
| In the context of this thread where I'm hypothesising
| that it's either legal or not enforced in the UK. An EU
| citizen may have grounds to complain if it's illegal in
| their jurisdiction, but to who?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| You said:
|
| > ... or no one bothers to enforce them any more?
|
| Which is strange, because why wouldn't the UK enforce UK
| law? There is no such thing as "EU-wide laws" as I
| previously explained, so again I'm not sure why other EU
| citizens are being pulled into context here, it literally
| doesn't matter.
|
| If no one is enforcing UK law, then obviously that's bad,
| but on another level. I'm not sure what point you're
| trying to do here. For example, if a company today breaks
| GDPR and I want to report them, then I'm gonna be
| engaging with my local agencies for that, regardless of
| where the company is based, assuming I'm in a EU country.
| There is no "EU bureau" you report to, since the company
| is breaking your local laws, you report them to your
| local authorities.
|
| As far as I can tell by the context, you don't quite grok
| how EU regulations are actually implemented in reality,
| which is why you keep bring up other EU citizens, but it
| really doesn't matter. When GDPR came into effect, it's
| because the countries themselves have written and
| implemented local laws in their countries that align with
| GDPR, there isn't one "GDPR-law" that is enforced by an
| EU entity across the entire union.
|
| > An EU citizen may have grounds to complain if it's
| illegal in their jurisdiction, but to who?
|
| If I'm in Italy, and a German company is breaking some
| Italian law, then I'm reporting them to the Italian
| authorities.
| hluska wrote:
| I can't figure out why you're being simultaneously
| argumentative and dismissive. But you're being
| argumentative and dismissive while talking about a
| totally different subject than the person you're replying
| to.
|
| EU citizens would have reason to be concerned about this.
| It's not clear how an EU citizen would deal with this nor
| is it clear this would even be prohibited since there
| have been some recent rulings that muddy this. Nor is it
| even clear there would be a UK response since certain
| kinds of analytics are fine under UK GDPR.
|
| You've taken something very interesting and open to
| interpretation and reduced it down to circular arguments.
| That's boring.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I guess if I disagree it seems argumentative, not sure
| how to disagree without others believing it's
| argumentative, it kind of is by definition. It isn't my
| intention. Regardless.
|
| > > > Hmm the guardian has gone "accept tracking or
| subscribe".
|
| > > I didn't know you were allowed to do that with
| cookies.
|
| > UK site. Not in the EU any more.
|
| This is the initial context for me in this conversation.
| As I understand things, whether UK is in the EU or not,
| they can still have laws active in the country that were
| introduced while the UK was in the EU.
|
| Then someone said:
|
| > ... or no one bothers to enforce them any more?
|
| Which I guess is where I lose track a bit of what the
| actual subject is. We're talking about UK laws, that they
| may or may not still have as active in the UK, but at
| that point I already suspect that they're talking about
| some "EU-wide laws" or similar instead, which for me
| muddy the waters.
|
| > Who's going to open a case and where?
|
| Then this appears, which has obvious answers; if you're a
| UK citizen and someone broke UK law, you report to UK
| authorities. If you're from $EU_COUNTRY, then you report
| it in $EU_COUNTRY.
|
| If you're in $EU_COUNTRY and UK company breaks your
| national laws, same applies as for any non-EU country,
| you report it in $EU_COUNTRY.
|
| Going back to the initial question, can The Guardian ask
| "let us track you, or pay to visit this website"? For
| entities covered by the DMA, the answer is clear: No (so
| Meta cannot do this, which is why they're changing it).
| Otherwise, the answer isn't so clear, yet.
|
| Now I don't know what I'm being dismissive about, I feel
| like I did my best following how the subject seemingly
| changed across comments, but I can acknowledge I lost
| track of the initial questions, for that I apologize. I
| guess I loose track of the discussion as the questions
| seems to get less specific, rather than more specific.
| justincormack wrote:
| Have seen this in EU sites too. It seems to be a grey
| area at present.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Well, I think Meta was the first to give it a try, and
| given that they had to revise it to not be like that
| (these changes incoming in January it seems
| https://www.euractiv.com/news/meta-to-tweak-its-pay-or-
| conse...), it seems to not be much of a gray area
| anymore, otherwise Facebook would continue offering that
| choice to users.
|
| > The social media giant was fined EUR200 million in
| April for breaching the bloc's Digital Markets Act (DMA)
| over the binary choice it gives EU users to either pay to
| access ad-free versions of the platforms or agree to
| being tracked and profiled for Meta's ads.
|
| > In a press statement, the Commission said the revised
| offer would give users an "effective choice" between
| consenting to their personal data being used to show them
| fully personalised ads or handing over less personal data
| and seeing "more limited personalised advertising".
|
| Seems like there will be a more nuanced choice available
| in January, than "pay us or we'll track you"
| rcxdude wrote:
| They did not. The rules are still basically the same just
| from a practicality point of view.
| dcminter wrote:
| They're doing business in the EU.
|
| Amusingly my voluntary subscription was just under the cut-
| off amount and I cancelled it as soon as this came in. I
| bought a subscription to The Economist instead.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Reminds me of when a newspaper I subscribed to went from
| no-paywall to a soft paywall.
|
| When I called to cancel and gave my reason as the
| paywall, they were very confused, but I knew what I was
| doing.
| rjsw wrote:
| Why wouldn't they be allowed to do it?
|
| You have the choice of not viewing the website.
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| That's non-compliant with GDPR. When shown to EU readers,
| they cannot block access based on accepting a privacy
| policy. Only essential cookies that really are needed for
| it to function are required.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| Facebook also does this.
|
| But the EU posted a press release last year that they are
| investigating this, as it could breach the DMA. [1]
|
| The Guardian doesn't fall under the DMA though.
|
| [1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en
| /ip_24_...
| fph wrote:
| This was 1.5 years ago; at this point they are
| functionally allowing it.
| rcxdude wrote:
| There's been some GDPR-related rulings in EU courts which
| seem to be allowing this kind of thing at least by some
| interpretations.
| jakubmazanec wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Had a very similar experience with eDreams. Absolute scammers,
| in hindsight it was foolish to trust an unnecessary middleman.
| dcminter wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Have you tried a credit card charge back?
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Compare and contrast with:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=46364852
| jakubmazanec wrote:
| What's there to contrast? It's basically the same experience
| as I had.
| yakkomajuri wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| Ryanair wins 'screenscraping' case against Lastminute in
| France
|
| https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2022/05/25/ryanair-
| wins-...
| amelius wrote:
| "Dear passengers, please have your credit card ready for the
| landing."
| hexbin010 wrote:
| New "we got fined" fee
| hexbin010 wrote:
| They'll contest it and won't pay it. Post again when they
| actually transfer the money lol
| hs586 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| dmaa wrote:
| If by 'the gutter' you mean cheaper - thanks Ryanair! I
| don't like the experience of flying either, but there is
| no denying that it is accessible to anybody today, 20 yrs
| ago it was still a luxury.
|
| Regarding the destinations, yes, Emirates does not fly
| from Memmingen to Stanstead. But why would anybody,
| unless they live in the village next to either.
| expedition32 wrote:
| I mean if you really have money there are companies that
| can get you on a private jet. No customs, no luggage
| check in, no Heathrow/JFK.
| sokoloff wrote:
| You still have the customs/immigration step; it's just
| often done planeside.
| testing22321 wrote:
| Yes, you are 100% correct. The routes that Ryanair flies
| are only serviced by the ultra budget airlines. The
| expensive airlines can't make it work.
|
| So again, if you don't want to fly with ultra budget
| service, don't.
|
| Train, drive, bus.
| ghaff wrote:
| Within Europe, I'm usually not in a big hurry or tight on
| budget within reason. But I understand that many are and
| it encourages race to the bottom budget airlines.
| Personally, I mostly do train within Europe even when it
| involves an overnight sleeper where they exist.
| hexbin010 wrote:
| I see you're doing Reddit level discourse. I'm out
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Second, Ryanair et al have dragged all the previous
| decent airlines down with them into the gutter
|
| Ryanair didn't drag anyone into the gutter. Buyers
| preferring to spend less did that, which could be for a
| variety of reasons, one of them being increased wealth
| gaps in society.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Legacy carriers run a hub-and-spoke model. Ryanair
| specialises in direct flights. If I can choose between a
| direct flight with Ryanair, or a connecting flight with a
| legacy airline, I'm going to choose the former to limit
| time spent in airports.
| notahacker wrote:
| You can get point-to-point connections with legacy
| airlines all over Europe (the hub and spoke model means
| you can _also_ get onward connections including to non-
| European destinations). Might not be exactly the same
| airport pair (and there are sometimes good reasons to
| prefer the second tier airport Ryanair flies too rather
| than the main city airport), but there aren 't many city
| pairs you're forced to use Ryanair or a connection,
| provided you're happy paying more money and flying at a
| different time.
|
| But yeah, you're not going to be flying Qantas or
| Emirates, you're going to be flying BA or Aer Lingus or
| Air France or even another LCC
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| With the expensive carriers, you nowadays get super cheap
| service but not the price...
| Satam wrote:
| 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.
| amrocha wrote:
| You can just pay more to have the old experience. Economy
| plus is what you used to get 20 years ago, and business is
| way more affordable than it used to be.
|
| I'd rather have a cheap flight and spend my money at my
| destination though.
| eru wrote:
| > The times when flying was luxury is over.
|
| No, the times are now. You just have to pay.
| dewey wrote:
| You are misreading it. It's not luxury any more (many people
| can afford it) but of course you can pay for a luxury
| experience if you want / can.
| Stevvo wrote:
| A bus is generally a far more pleasant experience. When taking
| bus you are not herded like cattle into pens based on priority
| queue status. When a bus has technical issue, they don't hold
| you hostage on-board for hours to avoid paying compensation. in
| Europe, a long-distance bus has the comfort of a business class
| airplane seat.
| blell wrote:
| Just the fact that people can't talk on the phone whilst on a
| plane makes it infinitely better than a bus.
| vosper wrote:
| Starlink on flights could put an end to this
| scottyah wrote:
| hooray for technology!
|
| Multiple lifetimes of thousands of the most brilliant
| engineers collaborating, sharing algorithms, protocols,
| mining, smelting, developing tooling to create tiny rocks
| that can think and blasting them to hover over the earth
| just so we can slightly annoy the person next to us with
| a conversation about the weird stuff growing between our
| toes.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| From a technical standpoint, the ability to make VoIP
| phone calls from planes exists right now, at least on
| planes with newer and better internet connections. It
| hasn't been enabled because of ferocious customer
| opposition every time the idea is proposed. Which,
| frankly, is just fine with me. People can still send
| emails and messages from in-flight Wi-Fi, no need to
| subject everyone else to your phone calls.
| ruszki wrote:
| Could? I flew a month ago on a flight with Starlink. I
| downloaded 10s of gigabytes of data without hiccups.
| Calling was not an issue. And it was completely free.
| jonasdegendt wrote:
| Quite curious, which route was this on?
|
| Not one time have I had a consistent internet connection
| whilst flying transatlantic on Delta, KLM or BA
| airplanes, to the point that I regretted having paid for
| it every single time.
| ruszki wrote:
| Qatar/Virgin Australia, Sydney->Doha. I've never had
| really good connection either before this, and I tried
| many-many times. That was the exception when it worked as
| intended.
| mdhb wrote:
| Do you not own a pair of headphones?
| ruszki wrote:
| Especially that it's completely normal to talk with each
| other on planes.
| aiiotnoodle wrote:
| Having been trapped on a 2 day flight to Madeira via
| Madrid, Porto and Porto Santo, eventually your powerbanks
| and headphones run out of charge.
|
| EU621 comp was denied because the aircraft could not land
| due to wind.
|
| I did spend about 12 hours in a fancy all inclusive on
| ryanair's dime (a bus arrived at the airport un-announced
| to the airport staff or us customers) while some slept in
| airbnbs and on the floor.
| ruszki wrote:
| You can reimburse your costs of unplanned overnight stay,
| even when it happened because of weather. So those
| AirBnBs were also free. Even the taxi to and from there.
| Ryanair was unlawful if they hadn't given this
| information.
|
| Btw, there are power banks and headphones which can
| easily handle 2 days.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| The infrastructure for air travel requires all that for safe
| travel
|
| As a pilot myself I know why all the holds exist and while
| not perfect, the majority of complaints aren't random
| bullshit they are flight safety issues
|
| The fact that people demand luxury because it went from
| veblen good to commodity is the problem
| Stevvo wrote:
| Different airlines have different policies. e.g. others you
| don't get stuck waiting on the plane because they don't
| load passengers while a mechanic is still working on the
| avionics.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Do you love that bus so much that you want to sit in it for
| 30 hours?
| matsemann wrote:
| > 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.
|
| The lack of transparency is that it's hard to price compare.
| Your will almost never pay the ticker price at Ryanair, but at
| others you might.
| cvakiitho wrote:
| I don't follow, I never paid more than ticker price?
| latexr wrote:
| To me, their general attitude and invasiveness is what puts me
| off.
|
| https://noyb.eu/en/want-book-ryanair-flight-prepare-face-sca...
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| My one and only experience with Ryanair was that they were
| rude and hostile even in places where they weren't trying to
| fleece you. From in-your face rude signs (official, corporate
| designed ones, not something printed from Word by a random
| employee), to a UI where you needed to concatenate strings in
| order to craft a valid input (something like "enter your
| credit card number, followed by #, followed by the MMYY
| validity date"). Maybe that was to make people fail checkin
| and force them to pay for checkin at the counter, but I
| _think_ it was early in the booking flow, i.e. where they had
| no incentive to make it hard.
| hs586 wrote:
| When was this? I have zero recollection of ever doing
| credit card number formatting anywhere.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Yes, this sounds made-up/not Ryanair. I've used them for
| over a decade, paid with many different cards and have
| never encountered this with them (nor anywhere ever
| really).
| carlosjobim wrote:
| He didn't mean it literally. Read the comment more
| carefully.
| yunohn wrote:
| Your devils advocate position appears to be in direct
| opposition to multiple court rulings that forced RyanAir to
| acknowledge and remove dark patterns. And thus, may not be an
| opinion that others share for pretty obvious reasons?
| scottyah wrote:
| It is something odd about their branding or something, because
| people's perceptions do not match the reality. Somehow everyone
| knows Temu is going to be highly likely to sell you very cheap
| stuff, and it's ok because the expectations are managed. Lots
| of people still expect Ryanair to not be a cheap airline. I
| don't get it.
| xandrius wrote:
| 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.
| throw-12-16 wrote:
| Ryanair would charge for air if they could.
| dmaa wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Me hating Ryanair in no way implies I have net positive
| feelings about other airlines.
| scottyah wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| scottyah wrote:
| 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.
| lmc wrote:
| > No one is being forced do fly with them
|
| Sometimes they are the only option :-/
| scottyah wrote:
| Did they eliminate the competition because people chose them
| over the other providers, or are they the only option because
| no other airline chose to offer that flight segment?
| ruszki wrote:
| It's not that simple. I've seen several routes where ultra
| low cost carriers simply lost against normal airlines.
| Especially when there are multiple airports in a given
| city, they often loose at usable airports. For example in
| Brussels.
| iberator wrote:
| Sometimes you ARE forced to fly with them. Some airports have
| contracts with them etc etc
| elAhmo wrote:
| It is a ridiculous claim. It is always a choice, you are not
| really forced to fly in any case. If you do want to fly, or
| have a very strong reason to, there are other means of
| transports, or flying to different airpots if you really want
| to avoid Ryanair.
| christkv wrote:
| This like two scam artists fighting over the right to rip off
| people.
| Beijinger wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| "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/
|
| But then we are talking about serious travelers and airports,
| where flights are scare.... ;-)
| latexr wrote:
| I wasn't familiar with that one, will check it out. Thank
| you.
| mixu wrote:
| 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 EUR/PS55.
| elAhmo wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Why are OTAs entitled to sell Ryanair tickets in the first place?
| sbennettmcleish wrote:
| At least it's a wonderfully round number :)
| lentil_soup wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Interesting, are you at least entitled to rule 261
| compensation?
| elAhmo wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Why not EUR512M?
| a10x wrote:
| Flying is not the safest thing you could choose to do for a
| couple hours
| gxs wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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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