I see that Ryanair is in the news again – and as is usually the case, not for good reasons.
I’ve used Ryaniar a few times in the past few years, although not since about 2003 when we were nipping back and forth between the UK and France when buying the house. Stanstead to Montpellier made sense for the most part – although arriving back at Stanstead late at night meant that the UK’s joined up transport infrastructure left one looking at the closed gates of the underground at Liverpool Street just as the staff chuck you out onto the street to catch any taxis that might be about. A dash across London merely involved waiting on the freezing cold platform at Paddington for the first service west. As a consequence of this – and no suitable flights from Bristol – we switched back to the ferry for our trips to the Languedoc once the house was purchased. My journeys back and forth to work are not practicable for flying or using the train as I have so much stuff to carry about and many of my clients are nowhere near a suitable transport hub.
I am, however, planning to use Ryaniar later this month. They now have a route between Bristol and Béziers. I’ll be taking the ferry back to the UK to work as usual and as I need to get some extra work in before the end of the financial year, I’ll be staying longer than I normally do. Given this, I’ve decided to fly back home for a long weekend in the middle of the trip.
Ryanair do a flight for a fiver each way if you book early enough – and I have. They also charge for using credit cards which effectively doubles the cost, which is why the OFT is taking them to task.
According to a BBC Money Box report in November, Ryanair charges £5 per person, per flight, even if all the passengers are paid for on the one card, in a single transaction.
Mr Fingleton told the Independent newspaper: “Ryanair has this funny game where they have found some very low frequency payment mechanism and say: ‘Well because you can pay with that’.”
“It’s almost like taunting consumers and pointing out: ‘Oh well, we know this is completely outside the spirit of the law, but we think it’s within the narrow letter of the law’.”
He added: “On some level it’s quite puerile – it’s almost childish.”
Well, maybe so. I am also aware that the airline takes a great deal of flack from disgruntled customers, mostly as a consequence of their charge low pile ’em high philosophy – the Kwik Save of the airline world. A no frills, cheap and cheerful product. If you want more, pay more. If you want a high quality experience, use one of the big national carriers and pay several hundred pounds. You get what you pay for in this world and Ryanair makes no pretence otherwise.
My experience generally, is that they provide exactly what I have paid for – a cheap flight; nothing more, nothing less. I’m not really interested in extras and as I’m travelling sans luggage, don’t need travel insurance, don’t give a fig when I board the plane, I’m only getting hit for the one extra – the credit card surcharge. Given that the total for the flight is £10, the additional cost means that my total outlay for the flight is £20. Sorry, but you won’t find me complaining about that. And I am fully aware exactly what they are doing. I simply don’t care. For a total of £20 for the flight, it is still a bargain.
Yes, it’s cheeky. But then, Ryanair have a reputation for being cheeky – remember the £1 to spend a penny story – so we have no excuse for not knowing what they are up to and anyone who claims otherwise clearly hasn’t been paying attention. And, I have to say that I have a sneaking admiration for the way that Michael O’Leary does business as well has his bare faced cheek. You get exactly what you pay for – and for £20, I expect very little. A safe, efficient flight will do me just fine.
So, while the OFT may be technically correct, caveat emptor remains the standard advice…
Ah, but you’ve taken personal responsibility to look into the issue and make an informed choice. Thanks to years of socialist indoctrination, most of the current generation expect someone else (preferably from the government) to resolve everything in their favour for them…
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Ah yes, good old personal responsibility…
Which is all well and good. I’ve taken a couple of flights for £20 myself.
What is a pain is that if you just go for a bog standard flight + baggage you very quickly exceed the price of a BA flight.
When this happened to me, the next flight I booked was with BA.
Mind you, now they are installing these extremely carcinogenic x-ray full body scanners in all the airports I may just go by rail or ferry
This rather underlines Julia’s point about informed choices. I am flying home for a few days in the middle of a working stint, so don’t need to carry baggage at all. If I had to pay the same as BA flight, I’d choose BA and get the extra quality for the money – presuming they fly where I want to go.
As for the body scanners, don’t get me started; politicians – cowards, jackanapes and charlatans all – are reacting to a failure in the intelligence services’ communications by inconveniencing the travelling public. I despise them with every fibre of my being – not least because they have ensured that a failed plot has achieved exactly the same objective as a successful one. Craven cowards!
People never really think this through though, do they? If Ryanair are told that they can’t do it that way, they’ll just make the flights £10 each to start with, and remove the levy, meaning that those people who have gone out to get the particular card that lets you dodge the surcharge will be in the same boat as the rest of us.
It could be used as a metaphor for socialist thought – we don’t want everyone to be equally well off, we want everyone to suffer equally…
That about sums it up. I’m happy enough paying the surcharge as I’m an occasional flyer, so wouldn’t otherwise need to use the card that avoids the surcharge – or, at least, can’t be bothered to get one just to save £10 once in a blue moon.
I dont much care for ryanair and use them much less than easyjet, my cheapo airline of choice……..BUT they usually do a fair job of moving me around europe for laughably little money and nobody forces me to use them. However I AM forced to pay my whack toward the OFT which apparently champions those too simple to read small print, negociate a website or exercise any judgment over their own decisions.
I certainly am more in sympathy with mr o’leary who has created a very valuable business than the OFT chap, fingleton who is just another overpaid leech on society.
This reminds me of the long haul thrombosis scare stories (where have the gone?). I had to sit down with someone who isn’t think by any means and draw out a plane and explain about the costs of running being spread over the floor area, the more area you had the more you paid.
Would they see it, would they f***. All they cared about was getting cheap flights and expecting business class space and service.
.-= My last blog ..Tempting, very tempting.. =-.
@5, the top-up prepay card that FR requires you to use to avoid the surcharge takes a cut of the money you put on it. There is no way of getting a FR flight by paying its list price (whereas an airline which takes debit cards and charges a commission on credit cards is entirely legitimate). If you don’t think there should be rules forcing advertisers to show the correct price, that’s your outlook – but if you do, then FR is in breach of what a sensible set of such rules would permit. They should, of course, be allowed to advertise a headline price including the cost of acquiring and topping up the prepay card, if that’s cheaper than paying their surcharges on normal cards.
However… the thing that concerns me about FR isn’t ropey advertising per se (we all know their advertising is nonsense; all you can do is click through to the final credit card page and then compare with BA and EZY), so much as the application of the values that its advertising sums up to an industry as safety-critical as aviation.
Unlike most budget airlines, FR isn’t one with a grizzled-engineering-veteran COO whose word is absolute gold when it comes to operational decisions, with a CEO who shouts at him, but defers to him on those tactical issues – it’s a one-man-band with an accountant-turned-businessman calling all the shots, where pilots and engineers are working to the same revenue and cost focus as marketers and customer service people.
Plus, it’s regulated by six men and a dog who’ve spent the last 50 years dealing with a very boring monopoly national carrier (see: Iceland’s “UK-equivalent” financial compensation scheme). This (published a couple of weeks ago, incident Nov 08) would not have happened to a serious airline, and would’ve made a serious regulator turn a serious shade of puce.
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Which would be fine if those carriers flew the same routes. EasyJet fly to Montpellier – which isn’t too bad for me, but I’d have to go from Gatwick, which, frankly, would be a pain in the arse… Bristol Béziers is ideal for my needs.
I live close to Bergerac, I have a choice Flybe or Ryanair, I prefer Southampton as a destinatin so I go with flybe, their planes are just as cramped , slower and noisier so I agree £20.00 to go by modern jet is a very good deal. Johnny.