OK, I admit that no one will be the slightest surprised to hear that ryanair has irritated a potential customer. However it’s always fun to hear of others misfortunes and it might just save you from a similar experience…

So, following up my customer complaint to BA regarding their online booking procedures (which I now realise were a model of probity and plain dealing), here’s my recent complaint to Ryanair. 

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Dear Sir or Madam

I am writing to express my anger over my experience of trying to book flights with you.

Initially I entered a wrong digit on my credit card and was asked to resubmit. I did so and received a reservation number and was told that the booking was not confirmed until I received an email itinerary.

On ringing up today to find out when I would receive the itinerary I was told that, although you had all my information including my booking number and phone number, you had neither made the booking nor contacted me about it and that I would therefore have to rebook the flights at the current rate.

As your special offer is now over we cannot justify the new price (around £400 more) and so I am going to have to contact the hotels I had made reservations with to apologise and cancel.

What makes this even more annoying is that this problem was completely avoidable: 

1. if you had an efficient online booking service 
2. if you had a policy of ringing customers where there appears to have been a problem 
3. if you allowed rebooking at the previous rates in such circumstances.

I can only assume that you have decided that it is actually in your financial interests to ensure that these procedures are not in place. 

No doubt this is true in the short term. In the longer term I think that you are underestimating the importance of customer satisfaction and good will.

In the meantime you have totally destroyed our family holiday.

I look forward to hearing your response

Yours etc

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Clearly Ryanair.com is not a true phishing site – I wish they had used my credit card details! – but there’s definitely something phishy going on here. After all, having made arrangements, many users will decide that they have to go ahead with their original plans whatever the current price. At the very least Ryanair will make money out of the phone calls necessary to find out what’s going on and how to complain.

And of course this is on top of all the other regular complaints: the charge for hold baggage (£10 each, each way); the unavoidable debit card fee (£5 for each person each way!); the web check-in fee (£5), a lot more if you forget or can’t; a baggage allowance of 15Kg rather than the usual 20Kg; the inexplicable fact that this allowance can’t be pooled; the extortionate (and not unconnected) £15/€15 per kilo excess baggage fee; and so on.

Maybe it’s time for today’s anti-phishing filters to be expanded to notify users about such pitfalls on legitimate sites. Clearly there would have to be a threshold of complaints before the filter was activated, but I can’t help feeling that ryanair.com would sail through.