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EnergyFamily charged £200 to print Ryanair tickets - could you be caught?
Filed under: Holidays
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Fredrik von Erichsen/DPA/Press Association Images
So what was her major crime, and could you be next to face this stealth charge?
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Stealth charge
Suzy McLeod, from Newbury, Berkshire, was flying back from Alicante to Bristol with Ryanair. She had printed out her boarding passes for the outward trip, but some of the family had been unable to print them for the return journey.The issue was that they were out in Spain for 15 days, and Ryanair doesn't allow you to print the passes more than 14 days in advance.
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She had the pdf on her smartphone and thought that given the circumstances, this was enough. However, the airline disagreed and charged her €60 for each of the five boarding passes her family needed.
Complaint
She took to Facebook to complain about the 'unfair' charges, she said: "I had previously checked in online but because I hadn't printed out the boarding passes, Ryanair charged me €60 per person!!! Meaning I had to pay €300 for them to print out a piece of paper! Please 'like' if you think that's unfair." She had soon received hundreds of thousands of gestures of support from other Facebook users.Ryanair was, unsurprisingly, unmoved. A spokesman reiterated that this charge is made clear in the small print. The conditions do clearly state that you agree to print out the boarding passes, and that if you show up without them you'll have to pay £60 for each reprint in the UK or €60 in the EU. This charge has risen from £40 to £60 in December, but is made clear to passengers
Vast array of charges
In fact, all the many and various charges are made perfectly clear. It's clear that you have to pay extra for luggage, and that if you fail to pay in advance for it then you'll pay more at the airport. It's also made clear that you can't take a particularly heavy bag or you'll need to pay extra.The airline makes it clear you'll pay a levy for fuel, and for Ryanair to agree to adhere to the rules that everyone observes about taking care of customers who are delayed on their trip. There have even been suggestions that the airline could charge more for obese people, or charge to use the toilet. You can be sure that if and when these are introduced they'll be clear too.
If you want to avoid falling into the same trap as McLeod you need to read the small print detailing all the charges and then jump through every possible hoop in order to meet their difficult and exacting requests. While you're on holiday, you may not want to hunt down an internet cafe, and pay to print off your boarding passes in a miserable day away from the beach (at least four hours before you want to travel), but you'll have to if you want to avoid spending hundreds of pounds at the airport.
Likewise in the packing process you may not want to wrestle your case onto the bathroom scales and then start unpacking roughly half the things you planned to take but it's your only option.
Unfair
McLeod's point, however, wasn't that she hadn't known that she needed to print the passes, but that it had been made difficult because they had not been ready to print out earlier, and the subsequent charge bore no relation to any costs incurred by Ryanair, and were therefore not fair.There's a world of difference between 'clear' and 'fair', which is why Ryanair's Facebook page is awash with complaints. As one user put it: "Ryanair call themselves THE LOW COST AIRLINE! By the time you pay for your baggage plus an additional fee of the same amount on top, plus other fees your 'low cost flight' becomes high cost."
Service failures
The lack of fairness has driven passengers to post videos of themselves putting cabin baggage into an overhead locker which Ryanair said wouldn't fit, turn to social media because there's no phone number to call which doesn't charge a premium rate, and to such frustration that a good number of the Facebook posts are written in capital letters.It certainly cannot be helped by customer services, which posts responses that demonstrate nothing short of contempt for passengers.
Take the response to someone charged £50 extra for heavier luggage: "So, you arrived at the airport with obviously oversized baggage, and expected the aircraft to be delayed to accomodate (sic) your attempt to bypass the well-publicised baggage charges".
Or this response to a complaint about failures in the website: "Millions of customers can't be wrong. We suggest engaging a local IT trainer."
And to the comment: "Ryanair... Pfffff never been serviced this bad...." they received: "Then you've clearly never met the dancing boys of Inverness."
10 of the biggest consumer rip-offs
- 1. Mobile data roaming charges<p> <span style="text-align: left; ">Using a mobile phone to make and receive calls, send texts and browse the web while abroad can be extremely costly – especially if you are travelling outside the European Union (EU), where calls can cost up to 10 times as much as at home.</span></p> <div> </div> <div> To avoid high charges, Carphone Warehouse suggests tourists ensure a data cap is in place, use applications to check data usage, turn off 'data roaming', avoid data-intensive applications such as Google Maps and YouTube and use wi-fi spots to update social networking sites.</div>
- 2. PPI<p> <span style="text-align: left; ">Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) is supposed to help people to continue meeting their loan, mortgage or credit card repayments if they fall ill or lose their jobs. However, policies are often over-priced, riddled with exclusions and sold to people who could not make a claim if they needed to.</span></p> <div> </div> <div> At one point, sale of this cover - which was often included automatically in loan repayments - was estimated to boost the banks' profits by up to £5 billion a year.</div> <div> </div> <div> Now, though, consumers who were mis-sold PPI can fight back by complaining to the bank or lender concerned and taking their case to the Financial Ombudsman Service (08000 234567) should the response prove unsatisfactory.</div>
- 3. The Lottery<p> It could be you, but let's face it, it probably won't be. In fact, buying a ticket for the Lotto only gives you a 1 in 13.9 million chance of winning the jackpot.</p> <div> </div> <div> With odds like that, you would almost certainly be better off hanging on to your cash and saving it in a high-interest account.</div>
- 4. Budget airlines<p> No-frills airlines such as EasyJet may promote rock-bottom prices on their websites. But the overall fare you pay can be surprisingly high once extras such as luggage and credit card payment fees have been added - a process known as drip pricing.</p> <div> </div> <div> Taking one piece of hold baggage on a return EasyJet flight, for example, adds close to £20 to the cost of your flight, while paying by credit card increases the price by a further £10.</div> <div> </div> <div> It may therefore be worth comparing the total cost with that of a flight with a standard airline such as British Airways.</div>
- 5. Credit card cash withdrawals<p> Cash advances, which include cash withdrawals, are generally charged at a much higher rate of interest than standard purchases.</p> <div> </div> <div> While the average credit card interest rate is around 17%, a typical cash withdrawal of £500, for example, is charged at more than 26%.</div> <div> </div> <div> What's more, as the interest accrues from the date of the transaction, rather than the next payment date, costs will mount up even if you clear your balance in full with your next payment.</div>
- 6. Supermarket 'deals'<p> Supermarkets such as Tesco and Asda often run promotions under which you can, for example, get three products for the price of two.</p> <div> </div> <div> However, it is only worth taking advantage of these deals if you will actually use the products. Otherwise, you are simply buying for the sake of it, which is a waste of your hard-earned cash.</div> <div> </div> <div> To avoid paying over the odds, it is also worth checking the price per kilo to ensure that larger <a href="http://money.aol.co.uk/2012/05/24/supermarkets-slammed-for-multi-buy-rip-offs/">'economy' packs really are cheaper</a> than the smaller versions.</div>
- 7. Train fares<p> Buy a train ticket at the station on the day of travel and the price is likely to give you a shock - especially if you are travelling a long distance at a busy time of day.</p> <div> </div> <div> However, <a href="http://money.aol.co.uk/2012/03/13/how-to-cut-the-cost-of-your-commute/">you can cut the cost of train travel</a> by 50% or more by going online and making the purchase beforehand - especially if you book 12 weeks in advance, which is when the cheapest tickets are on sale.</div> <div> </div> <div> Other ways to reduce the price you pay include avoiding peak times and taking advantage of so-called carnet tickets, which allow you to buy, for example, 12 journeys for the price of 10.</div>
- 8. Packaged current accounts<p> Most High Street banks offer packaged accounts that come with monthly fees ranging from £6.50 up to as much as £40, with a typical account charging about £15 per month.</p> <div> </div> <div> Various benefits, such as travel insurance and mobile phone insurance, are offered in return for this fee. But whether or not it is worth paying for them depends on your individual circumstances.</div> <div> </div> <div> Before signing up, it is therefore essential to <a href="http://money.aol.co.uk/2012/01/14/maximise-your-current-account/">check that you will make use of enough of the benefits</a>, and that you cannot get them for less elsewhere.</div>
- 9. Overseas withdrawals/card payments<p> Overseas money transfers or travel money purchases attract the same high rate of interest as credit card cash withdrawals.</p> <div> </div> <div> Worse still, most credit cards – and debit cards – also charge you a foreign loading fee if you use them to make purchases while abroad.</div> <div> </div> <div> You can, however, <a href="http://money.aol.co.uk/2012/02/17/how-to-avoid-overseas-bank-fees/">avoid these charges</a> by using a Saga Platinum or Nationwide Building Society credit card.</div>
- 10. Premium rate phone lines<p> Numbers starting 0871 cost 10p or more from a landline, while those starting 09 can cost more than £1 a minute <a href="http://money.aol.co.uk/2012/03/21/call-0800-0808-and-0870-numbers-for-free-from-your-mobile/">from a mobile phone</a>.</p> <div> </div> <div> And the operators of these high-cost phone lines, some of which are banks, often get a cut of the call charges.</div> <div> </div> <div> Most 09 numbers are linked to scams and should therefore be avoided at all costs, while 0871 numbers can often be bypassed by searching for an alternative local rate numbers on the saynoto0870.com.</div>
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