March Matron

Ryanair Original Bullseye Liquor Baggies

At the moment the ice is free, but if we could find a way of targeting a price on it, we would. - Michael O'Leary (Ryanair CEO)

$23 to print a boarding pass, 2% of your total transaction mandatory credit card fee, $3 water, 20 cents per condiment, and $3.50 to receive a text message with flight information.

People say the customer is always right, but you know what - they're not. Sometimes they are wrong and they need to be told so. - Michael O'Leary

We at Ryanair have a policy of stealing hotel pens. We won't pay for Bic biros as part of our obsession with low costs. - Michael O'Leary

Through a series of misunderstandings, a British student was booked for travel on Ryanair under the wrong name . . . 

for a fee . . . 

A flight and a show. Classy.

I don't see how onboard gambling can make the image of airlines worse. - Michael O'Leary

and even though his girlfriend's ticket was under the correct name, it was part of the same booking transaction requiring an additional name change fee. 

Rather than paying Ryanair the $337 fee, he changed his last name from Armstrong to West and paid for a new passport . . . 

requiring an expenditure of $157.   

If drink sales are falling off we get the pilots to engineer a bit of turbulence. That usually spikes up the drink sales. - Michael O'Leary

Some of the best bits: 

James Lockley 

April 24, 2014 

Posted to Ryan Air today; 

Dear Sir/Madam, 

My wife and I . . . arrived at Stansted check in with just one hour until the flight. Knowing the strict Ryan Air policy on ‘check in closes 40 mins before the flight’ as you are the Low Fare Taxi of The Skies, we went straight to the Ryan Air assistant and explained our plight. She said we were still within the time and all would be fine but we had to make the attendant at check in aware and he would assist from there. 

We approached the attendant as instructed and explained. Unfortunately, in the main part, due to him being a child, and forgetting to bring his mother to work, he heard only half of the words before his brain fell apart like a wet cake. He led us to the line for closing gates, advised we should wait. 

We got to the front of the line and the lady, who we shall from this point refer to as Vacant, explained that she had literally just that second closed the flight . . . and that because [the child] hadn’t told her it was therefore our fault we had missed the plane. 

Confused by this process of blame apportioning, another check in clerk, who we shall refer to as Not That Bright, tried to blame us for not responding to the last call for the flight as we should have made ourselves known. I argued that the last call had not been made. Not That Bright then questioned Vacant on whether she had done a final call. Vacant did what she does best and looked, well, ……  

After establishing . . .  that all of this was irreversible, and my fault, Not That Bright and Vacant conferred to agree this was not a problem they wished to deal with and told us to get in a very, very long line of very, very unhappy people at the quite wrongly titled ‘Customer Services Counter’ as it was, in fact, a Customer Shouting Desk.  

Out came Colin, a man so angry all his hair had literally fallen out.  

[He] had clearly listened hard at Ryan Air Middle Gimp school as he managed to take two perfectly calm and sane adults and in a matter of seconds reduce them to angry people considering violence. 

‘Why is this our fault, and why should we miss the flight because Ryan Air staff have admitted they made errors?. 

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight!’ 

‘Do you acknowledge we have just cause for complaint as we tried to do the right thing and the only reason we are not on the plane is because of communication failures with Ryan Air Staff?’ 

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight!’ 

‘What colour are my trousers?’ 

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight!’ 

‘Do you think economic sanctions on Russia will diffuse the escalating situation in Ukraine?’ 

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight!’ 

‘Were Man Utd right to fire David Moyes?’ 

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight!’ 

[He] then conferred with Vacant and Not That Bright, and agreed that this was all our fault as we should have noticed that Child had made an error and we should have called the flight ourselves to assist Vacant in doing her job because she was clearly busy being, well, ….. 

We got to the Customer Shouting Desk and explained our plight to the lady there (who was actually very nice and clearly should not be working for Ryan Air as a result). She apologised but explained that [Colin] had finished being angry for the day and had returned to his padded cage. 

When she tried to re-book the flight she said that the flight we had tried to get was actually delayed by 1 hour and still at the airport and that what we should do is run to the gate with all our luggage, she would call through and they would check our bags into the hold at the gate.  

We ran as fast as we could, which is not very fast because I am fat, to security to do as instructed. Security advised us that because our flight should have left, even though it hadn’t, the ticket machine would not open the barrier for us and we would need to return to the Customer Shouting Desk. 

The net result of this ‘experience’ was; 

New Flights - £220 

Hotel £79 

Taxi x 2 £50 

Worlds most expensive sandwich in the only hotel we could get £35 

1 x significant breach of Tort Law (2008 as quoted by Lord Atkin) by Ryan Air, Google it, it’s a cracking read. I will leave you to decide the monetary value of this. 

1 x very angry and upset wife. 

1 x Missed wedding reception for our Slovakian family (sorry, forgot to mention this nugget earlier) who all turned up from all over the country to see us for an event we were forced to miss because Child and Vacant are clueless. 

You treated us badly, you cost us money and made us miss our wedding reception through a display of incompetence I have not seen since Greece was allowed to have money and a cheque book. 

Regards 

You bunch of…………… 

DJ Lockley