Pricewatch Daily

The Pricewatch blog has been buzzing with angry Ryanair customers so CONOR POPEput their gripes to the airline

Almost every time Pricewatch refers to Ryanair in anything but the most flattering of terms, its head of communications Stephen McNamara sends us an angry letter.

Even broadly positive references annoy McNamara. Recently, we wrote about airlines losing baggage and said “for all its faults” Ryanair had a good record on baggage handling. Cue another missive in which McNamara asked if there was “any possibility you could write an article on anything to do with air travel without having a dig at Ryanair”. He claimed it “doesn’t have a ‘good record’” but “the best record in the industry” and asked us to “indicate what you mean by ‘all its faults’”. When we put details of this on our blog, the response from readers was immediate, with many choosing to highlight what they believed were Ryanair’s faults.

“Ryanair does not provide what the consumer wants,” said one reader. Customers “want to be treated like a human being, to get to their desired destination (not 50/60 miles away), to be seated in comfort, and to be allowed to bring luggage without persecution”. Or “How about a complete and utter lack of communication when flights run late and infuriating jingles when the planes arrive on time/early,” said another. A third questioned why Ryanair charged passengers to check-in using their own computers and to print their own boarding cards, and asked why infants were charged €20 and given no hand-luggage allowance.

“I’m sick of that miserable ‘booking charge/service charge/ admin charge’ system,” complained another, while several gave out that Visa Electron cards, which would allow people to avoid credit-card fees, were almost impossible for Irish residents to get.

The charge of €100 to change a name on a ticket and the €40 fee for printing a boarding pass if you forget yours were highlighted, while uncomfortable seats, on-board advertising, the lurid yellow livery, and talk of charging for access to toilets were also referred to.

We forwarded the comments to McNamara who dismissed them as “subjective and inaccurate rubbish” and even implied Pricewatch had made them up to further some class of anti-Ryanair agenda.

He said claims the airline “does not provide what the consumer wants” were absurd, and insisted there was no lack of communication “during rare flight delays”. The on-time jingle is infuriating only because it is “played so regularly” and passengers who don’t want to pay a web check-in fee should “just travel on one of our promotional fares (€10 one way or under)”.

Apparently, Visa Electron is used by “many thousands of Irish residents” and the name-change fee is a good thing because it’s “designed to allow passengers who have bought non-refundable promotional fares the opportunity to transfer it to friends or family”.

The €40 boarding card re-issue fee is only levied on passengers who fail to arrive at the airport with their boarding pass, which “is a better alternative than not allowing these passengers to travel at all”, McNamara claimed. He concluded by suggesting Ryanair’s airlines seats were “extremely comfortable and our onboard advertising and yellow livery are much beloved by our passengers”.

The final word goes to a “reader” called Jean who said our spat was “like a bad romantic comedy, where you start off as enemies but then realise that you love each other. You’re Meg Ryan and Ryanair is Tom Hanks.”

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