Don't fly with Ryanair!
What is claimed to be and seems to be cheap when you first visit the Ryanair website is not so in the end. You proceed with the booking and soon everything is extra and they will charge you for just anything when (not if) you need support.
Here's our story.
You compare
flight seats on the Internet and Ryanair looks very good in comparison with
SAS, KLM, Lufthansa etc.
Ryanair also fly from city airports to city airports and this is of course
good for environment, travel time and comfort.
So you
start the online booking and add on just keep on coming and just everything
is additional.
You want to be covered so you buy the travel insurance to a reasonable cost.
When the booking is finished it's still acceptable, but hen you have to
check-in online in order to get your boarding card (not having this at the
gate will charge you 40€ each way). The total fare that seemed to be quite
competitive compared with SAS, KLM and Lufthansa turns out to be more
expensive. SAS charged 5250sek for the same trip and Ryanair charged 3816sek
when compared and as you can see the final cost with Ryanair exceeds the SAS
price with nearly 1000sek.
The final sum is way beyond the price stated when you first started, but you think that you’re well covered with insurance, the environment factor and city to city comfort and you don't have rent a car at the final destination.
Now the problem starts.
A slip on
the desktop when one of the passengers works his online check in result in
the booking number ending up in the passport box as well. Ok, the passenger
should have seen this but the human error is present and the Internet site
doesn’t react to a “must be common mistake” with the booking number in two
places. It's like they want you to make mistake so that they can charge you
money.
Once the check in is done there’s no way to adjust a simple mistake and
you’re in the hands of the heavy charge phone support.
And you must solve this prior the check in at the airport or they will
charge you 40€ each way to solve the boarding card issue.
There’s of course no Swedish support or local support centre.
You now
have to call Ryanair on 0900 20 20 240 for a charge of 4sek per minute.
They will let you know the charge of this phone call and then they will let
the phone ring for a loooong time.
You try again with the same result…
After 5-7 tries you get through and the first thing they do is to ask if
they can put you on hold.
Before you even get a chance to answer you’re on hold.
When you finally get through they tell you that they can’t help you on this
number and direct you to 0900 20 20 245.
Calling 0900 20 20 245 will charge 15sek per minute!
Same thing over again and it will take many tries and waiting before you get through and can get support to solve the passport number issue.
To make things worse your business partner on the destination calls and state that there’s a problem with the agreed visit date and we ought to cancel the visit and find a new date.
You are now back to square one.
You are
calling Ryanair on 0900 20 20 240 for a charge of 4sek per minute and hope
that it will be enough to pay 4sek/min to get support.
After 5-7 tries and some waiting on hold you are told to call 0900 20 20 245
for booking support.
You know the drill… Try until you get through, wait on hold and then they will tell you they can’t do nothing for you and that you money spent on tickets, luggage, check in fee’s, administration etc are not refundable.
When you
state that you bought the Ryanair online insurance they will direct you to
Ryanair website to find contact information to the insurance company.
There’s just no help to get from Ryanair phone support.
You visit
the insurance page and you print the insurance policy and the printer
doesn’t stop until EIGHT pages later!
Horrified you realise that most likely you’re screwed over by Ryanair and
the insurance that you paid for is worth less than toilet paper.
There’s no phone number to the insurance company.
So you once
again call the 0900 20 20 245 number and spends another 150sek to the
Ryanair support just to ask if they have a phone number to the insurance
support.
They will politely state the insurance company as if it is not under Ryanair
wings, but you’ll get a link to an Email support.
ryanair.refunds@axa-travel-insurance.com.
You write
an Email to this address 11th September but you get no response.
Two days later you write another Email and include the first Email.
Still no response!
A third Email is sent the 14th September but of course the response is none.
We have
know come to the conclusion that we’re fucked by Ryanair and we will see our
tickets and expenses as lost and a valuable lesson learned.
We will never again use Ryanair and the Email sent to Ryanair will be
forwarded to every person in our contacts and it is now published on our
website!
“A satisfied customer will tell their family and
closest friends, but a dissatisfied customer tells the world if he doesn't
get support!”
Maybe something small for Ryanair to consider in the future.
Thank you very much Ryanair!
Best Regards / Med vänlig hälsning / Mit freundlichen Grüßen
WothRline Sweden
Mr. Jan Ellwoth
Mobile: +46 (0) 768 - 818115
Email:
jan.ellwoth@wothrline.com