Ryanair

I just stepped out and I’ve said to the “lady" we had all the bags checked when we left Stanstead last Friday and earlier 3.15 pm at the main front desk when we had to wait patiently for 30 minutes for the confirmation of the only one 20 kg checked bag which we had it booked and paid on 18.02.2019. I tried to get an explanation why Ryanair airline is using a double standards unexpectedly this "Lady" exploded (shocking my whole family and the people around us). She was far from treating us with respect. Extremely rude, unprofessional and very aggressive.

At this point I’ve asked her if she could give me her name as she had no ID badge visible. This just sparked the atmosphere and she got my whole family out of the line. Asking for her name again she was completely out of the box and my family was scared about the whole situation. Took my phone out to record the Ryanair airline “employee's behavior “ and I took a picture of her face. The Lady was shouting and threatened me like will call airport security to escort me out and I’ll lose my flight. I decided to make a formal complaint to her next in line manager but my girls were nearly crying and begging me to do whatever this ”Lady” demands.

She was shouting to me to delete the picture taken with her face and to show up the phone for her to check that, meanwhile also she took a picture of me with her phone. I said it’s fine as I’m not going to leave her impressive show without a explanation. I am still under the shock as after more than 10 years of using Ryanair airline and never had a bad experience. I hope you can check the video recording from the terminal and somehow to discipline this “Lady" which was called by one or her colleagues “Andrea." Hopefully you will reply to the message as we will try to seek legal advice in this problem.

And another extremely poor service is that Ryanair purposely split my and my partner up and gave us seats eg 1A and 33D. However when boarding there were free seats next to both of our allocated seats so we moved anyway. Never ever will I travel with Ryanair again. Their company is an embarrassment and should be ashamed of how they absolutely rinse their customers

I explained my situation but she would not listen, in fact, she warned me that I would not board the plane and she did not care a bit about my circumstances. I ended up paying for what took her less than 2 minutes to print the boarding passes and when I got back home I tried to speak with someone from their office. Good Luck to me... I tried online and by e-mail but could not get anywhere. After about 1 month I got an email stating their policy if you don't "check-in" or as I call it to print a boarding pass. If you can help it, stay away from this company. The prices may be good up front but they get you in other ways you can not even imagine.

Please note that, we had never received a message or email or telephone call to be informed. We were not provided any alternative flight, or money or a hotel room, which they are obliged to do so, as per the EU Regulations. So we had to book new flights from Amsterdam. Once I came back home I complained various times to Ryanair waiting for a compensation, and they kept declining. So I decided I would take things further with the AviationADR.

7 months down the line, Ryanair came up with the excuse that Stansted Airport was delaying the plane because of lightning striking the fuel station within the airport. I assure you, if that was the case, definitely it would be all over the news (load of lies). Today I have contacted the ADR and the only thing they said to me, is that Ryanair has terminated the contract with them and there was nothing they could do. It is disgusting that Ryanair goes to this extent of lying to the customers, and not considering for one minute that they are not doing their job right.

Funny thing is they kept sending me emails about a previous cancelled booking that I already know I have cancelled. Do you even read the emails properly? Seriously how incompetent are you guys to read about 10 emails wrong and respond with an answer that has got nothing to do with my request to begin with. Could have just said that you screwed up and I would have not wasted so much of my time on you lot. Finding the booking, making arrangements for the travel, chasing up the pointless chat agents, phone agents, one sided emails... All sorts...

Another hysterical experience was when one of chat agent wanted my credit card details to confirm my identity and only then she could send me the documents. The next time I try to chat, another agent goes - by law we cannot take anyone's card details on chat. Sounds like laws are agent specific. Lol. So then I call up to the UK customer services who says - "I recommend not contacting the chat agents because they are likely to misguide you more than guide." What team guys and what customer service. I mean what a bloody circus this.

They don’t care for their customers at all! This is the worst service I ever received!!! We only exchange emails as communication way because it is the only way we are able to communicate with them! We tried all phone numbers to call them and never been able to reach them! As if their numbers don’t exist! It is unacceptable that we cannot reach them by phone! So every time we email Ryanair, it is always a different person answering us without taking time to look at the problem! They just don’t care! It’s been more than 3 months and we have exchange hundreds of email. I will never flight with them again and will certainly not give up on receiving our compensation no matter what it takes!!!

Upon receiving an email with my itinerary I noticed that priority boarding wasn’t included and that I had been charged more for the seat reservation. However the total purchase price was still the same, it just seemed that the reservation had been changed, priority boarding removed and the return flight price increased. On contacting Ryanair several times, and passed from one department to another, I have been repeatedly told everything is correct. It is however NOT CORRECT. I don’t know how to proceed, but I don’t want them to get away with this. It is basically their word against mine. I definitely won’t be using them again.

Funny enough two tickets were bought in the matter of 5 minutes and both had the same surname changed. To change name online it costs 115£ per flight, a nightmare and there is no way you can prove to them it is something on their website wrong so be aware to check your names always three times and check confirmation email too. Ryanair in answer to that says you have 24 hours to check for mistakes in your name, what if this is genuine mistake. Have you experienced similar? Email me **.

Okay fine. So they've added a 10 kg bag option for £10 online to allow for this. BUT, you have to go through the whole check-in process in order to add the bag and then once you've paid £10 you then realise that it only applies to your outbound flight. So guess what, you have to pay ANOTHER £10 to take that same bag back home with you. Had I have known this from the start I could have quickly realised that it would've been far cheaper to fly with a different airline. It is a disgrace that they are deliberately trying to scam people AND they get away with it! Who is in charge of regulating these airline companies and acting on behalf of the customers who lose at every turn! It's appalling. Transparency of prices should be enforced. Will never be flying with them again.

Then at the airport I was charged a surprise fee of 50€ to fly with my guitar. I have flown 12+ times with RyanAir over the last 18 months and have always simply booked the guitar as Hold Luggage for the usual extra 15 or 20€. I would accept the 50€ fee if it covered either: especially careful handling, insurance, excessive bulk/weight but it doesn't! There is absolutely no reason this fee exists.

I travel with an acoustic guitar in a hard-case which is already insured, only weighs 7 kg, and takes up no more room than some large suitcases. And, when waiting to board our plane, I saw my guitar case upside down on the tarmac. We have marked it clearly with arrows and FRAGILE tape. Why am I paying 50€ for baggage staff to treat my guitar like any old suitcase? When chatting with RyanAir customer service online after our trip, the reason given for the extra charge is "It is our policy" and that is all. I will never fly with them again and will be advising all my musician friends to follow suit.

The last 10 reactions from Ryanair were then copy & paste: the position would remain the same and that they trust that the matter is now clarified. I visited Facebook and read the running volume with similar experiences. People claim as well the bad support or they do not get a compensation for their failed flights. In future I will not book any special services by an airline. You have no trouble if the payment is not forwarded by the airline. Ryanair is not interested and withdraws from responsibility.

I wasn't allowed to board. They could have let me one, passengers were still boarding the plane but I think they (4 people) found it more important to get home early than help me. Anyway, booked a new flight for today, arrived on time, went to check in my suitcase, but I was informed the little letters said I should have checked my suitcase in earlier and not at the gate. They were waiting with the receipt book in hand to charge me another €10 for that. They are thieves. No respect for this airline or anyone that works there. Hope they go bankrupt, that will teach them. They have to be the worst airline in the world.

So I crossed the terminal and waited in queue at the Swissport Desk for 40 minutes with several other people who were in the same situation. Everybody looked angry and worried because there was only one agent handling customers, and she was moving very slowly. When I finally got my turn, it was too late. The gate had closed. When I told this to the slow attendant, she was exceedingly rude, remarking that I should have "spoken up" from the queue if I had an imminent flight. The problem was, every single person in the queue was in the same position that I was. Ryanair wasn’t letting anybody pay for their baggage at the baggage desk! Was I supposed to cut in line?

Leaving on a later flight would've caused me to miss my connection in London, so I had to pay 70 pounds to take a train from Edinburgh to London so I could make the connection in time. RyanAir has repeatedly refused to refund me for the Edinburgh-London part of the trip even though their attendants were at fault. Adding insult to injury, they keep sending me form letters which pointedly ignore the substance of my complaint. Essentially, they blame me for not taking "a long security queue" into account. I never even made it to the security queue! Given my experiences and their well-documented human rights violations (which I found out about later) I will never fly this airline again.

As far as I am aware, the normal, standard practice of all other airlines provides for check in at the airport at no cost. Further, in this case, my two bags had to be physically processed at the counter anyway. Wanderio acknowledged that "the details that we shared in the confirmation e-mail might have not been clear enough regarding this issue". To add injury to insult, it also informed me that the extra charge over the price of the tickets was not $60 as at the airport, but rather 79 Euros or about $85! It then grandly offered not a CC refund as I requested, but a voucher for that amount for future bookings, which is worthless to me under the circumstances! The whole episode is a total scam IMHO. There were other passengers at the airport who went through this scenario as well. Moral: Don't book on Ryanair and/or on Wanderio if you don't want it to happen to you too!

Also, the lady at the Ryanair desk at the Bergamo airport was extremely uninterested, rude and wouldn't let me finish a single sentence. After waiting for everyone to pass through the gate, even though I paid for primary, I was seated in the plane at the same exact seat that I booked with the first ticket - they didn't even cancel my initial ticket before I boarded, and they should've, if they thought it was invalid! Not to mention the stress I went through, extreme migraine that the whole thing initiated, anxiety attack and arrhythmia. I can't imagine what would happen if I was to be alone in that situation. So, I paid more than €250 to get from Milan to Timisoara, for a seat & flight that I already paid for (so I paid twice for the same exact thing) & it cost me not 40€, but 250€ and a lot of stress. Because their booking system thinks it knows my last name better than me.

Upon filling various forms on their website, the only thing I got was automatic replies. After 15 day limit has passed, I contacted their live chat service and got tossed around from one person to another and finally got "kindly" told off with "thank you for contacting us, if there is something else we can help you with bla bla bla" and the chat closed, with no further option to talk to someone through that channel. Then I contacted the complaint tracker team, ofc they told me that I "should've checked my information before submission" and that the fact that I had to buy another ticket is "a goodwill gesture from their agent". How ironic.

Also, in the whole chaos that is the Timisoara airport, when I got to our apartment in Milan and got unpacked, I noticed a few cosmetic bits missing from my zip lock bags. Since I was in Doc Martens, I had to take my shoes off before going through the scanner, and missed the lady rummaging through my bags. Didn't bother about that, though, since it wasn't anything too valuable, but it doesn't make the thing right to do. In conclusion. DON'T FLY RYANAIR. DON'T DO THAT TO YOURSELF. I travel a lot, and this trip is utmost the worst ever, and it was completely ruined by the whole ** show that is Ryanair.

I took the time to talk with my bank and the situation was resolved, logged in again but price had now increased on my flight(which was half empty), checked exact same flight on the Ryanair app on my phone after turning off cookies and deny them my location on my phone, the flight was available at the lower original price yet on my laptop a higher price. Contacted Ryanair and they claimed this was not possible. I stilled booked the flight at original lower price as they are the only carrier for this particular route on these dates.

I then went through the process of complaining via their website and again it's a cynical approach to client's complaints, they ask you to fill in all the relevant details, maximum 1,000 words, which I did, very clearly detailing the complaint to my maximum allocation, then you get a nice standard response as follows, "Thank you for contacting Ryanair. Regarding you recent correspondence in order to best address the situation could you please send us a more detailed description of the situation? We remain at your disposal for any further information." When you attempt to reply to this email, another standard email gets sent with different areas/subjects where you can complain and a relevant email address for that particular type of compliant, you then select the email address and it asks for all the same information as if this is the first submission.

Again my review is about the cynical approach of Ryanair towards their clients, firstly by attempting to overcharge clients by using cookies to their advantage, secondly by making the complaint procedure difficult and frustrating by making you repetitively detail your complaint... in the obvious hope you just give up, because Ryanair do not want to engage you on any level other than making a few more bucks. The unfortunate reality which I have grown to accept over the years is that where I live in Southern Spain, Ryanair are the main carrier and that's why in most cases they don't care. Anyhow, when visiting the Ryanair website turnoff/disable your cookies on your computer and deny them your location on the app before booking, this will save you money because if you don't book first time and you return to their website their objective is to try and charge you more and cookies enable them to do so.

She helpfully advised that if we could we would be best making the alternative booking ourselves since this would be the same outcome as queuing in the very LONG queue at Customer Services Desk. The outcome is, after two months of unanswered e-mails to Ryanair, only a refund of our Ryanair money, not the additional flight cost, since we did not follow the procedure of going via Customer Services desk/phone help desk first! Our ‘mistake’ was that we followed the advice of a member of their Customer Services Team! Terrible, terrible company.

I then went on to the next screen where it asked me to review my itinerary. I reviewed this along with my wife and we both agreed that the details fulfilled our requirements. Once happy I proceeded to the payment page filled in my card details and submitted payment. On submitting payment I received a message saying my booking was confirmed and that I had been charged £812.59. At first I couldn’t understand why the amount paid differed from the amount it should have been (£1022.59).

I then looked at the email confirmation and could see that the priority boarding and hold luggage was no longer on my booking. When I then tried to add this after the booking I could see that it was now £110 more expensive to add. At this point I decided to contact customer services via web chat as the phone lines were closed.

We did our best to explain the sequence of events but got the reply that the priority boarding and additional hold luggage was not on the booking, but that we could add it now if we wanted. I then tried again to explain that something had gone wrong with the booking and I did not believe that it was my fault so why should I be expected to pay an extra £110. The time was now 9.00 and the chat line closed before we could get any resolution.

I then phoned the customer service line on Tuesday morning only to be told that the priority boarding and additional baggage was not on the booking and if we wanted to add it we would have to pay the after booking price. I then asked to speak to someone in the complains department and was told that we could not and that all complaints were dealt with online. I have contacted them many times and explained the situation but they are not interested. This is Ryanair customer don’t care.

He also said a lot of the customers are "Too stupid" to check in correctly. He was being incredibly condescending and insulting. Furthermore he said he checked, and that the website had not been down during the times I specified. When I arrived in Riga, I called Ryanair Germany's helpline. A lady, Ms **, who I spoke to confirmed that their site was in fact not working properly and that they have been made aware of it by their IT department. She gave me the details for Ryanair impression and said they should give me a refund without any problems.

I wrote to them with all the details, include proof of people alerting them on Facebook about their site not working and not being able to check in on those exact days. Ryanair replied 2 weeks later saying that they will not refund me, as it is my responsibility to call them when their website is down. I find this ridiculous since they don't mention anywhere in their correspondence as to what to do in case they are experiencing technical difficulties. I find them to be dishonest and unethical. What companies benefits financially due to a technical error with their site?

I proceeded to attempt to make change and the application froze and when it did work it didn't accept changed date (one date change). They blamed it on the browser I was using which was the same one, Chrome, they were using. And on and on with excuses and then they wanted to charge me $130 to make the change since I didn't complete it within 24 hours: note their application and customer support would not allow for the change and as this story ends I still could not get their website application to work. I filled out a complaint form.

Ryanair boarding staff had told me to buy another flight with another company and I can get refunded online by Ryanair - ummm thankfully I bought the cheapest most inconvenient flight, as still 4 months later, after receiving many deadlock letters they have of course, refused to pay what they promised. a €40 flight ended up costing €390 (what with all the additional hostel and food costs on top of my new flight). Oh and of course all the extra stress and time wasted. These guys are CRIMINALS of the highest degree - I do not care if they seem to say they have cheap flights, I would much rather go with Easy Jet or the like and pay the $20 more to know my flight will leave and I will be taken care of.

Oh, and just to add to the infuriating factor of this company - after a whole summer of cancelling literally thousands of people's flights they are now CHANGING their BAGGAGE POLICY!! So, no more free cabin bag... Please save yourself the hell and pay the extra €20 for a flight with an airline that actually cares about you! I personally will never fly with them again out of principle not to associate with liars and criminals.

Roussou ** proceeded to aggressively shout at me dismissing the fact that I do not have mobile data or that I do not speak Greek as “not her problem”, which I found very rude and extremely poor customer service, especially at a manager level. I find the extra boarding pass fee as predatory practice used by Ryanair, as this is a surprise to many travelers using their service. Buyer beware, as this is the "cost" of doing business with a budget airline.